http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/05/us...-care-act.html
This article has a lot of lessons.
But perhaps the largest lesson is that if you want to do something truly transformative and costly, you need to rework the social contract that we have in the US.
For example, you may need to double taxes. In a lot of countries taxes are much higher. And that's because the govt. pays for things like healthcare. And let's be honest--many of those countries don't have the same immigration issues we have. Which is lots of poor people coming illegally and not paying much in the way of taxes.
Montreal and Quebec. High taxes.
Americans don't want that. Americans want all the services and none of the cost. "You mean I have to pay for this stuff??!!"
I mean at the federal level we can always over promise and run deficits.
But at the state level things actually have to be paid for. And the liberals in Vermont have thrown in the towel.