Great essay written by a billionaire Dem

[JHan]

95. It wasn't just that... we needed Independents to get it passed in the Senate.

There was also fallout from the "Cornhusker kickback" which tarnished the ACA in the eyes of many, but the main reason is that Democrats didn't have a filibuster-proof majority to pass it through the Senate unobstructed because Republicans decided to be assholes.

We needed the vote of independents like Lieberman - who refused to vote on it with the Public Option attached and refused to drop the age for Medicare entry to 55. So the ACA was gutted. If Democrats won in the midterms in 2010, they could have fixed it but people decided their hissy fit against Obama was more important and gave Republicans control of Congress in a census year. Bills which aimed at fixing the ACA were killed in committee because those committees came under the control of Republicans.

The only similarity it has with the heritage plan is the insurance mandate. The ACA functions best with an expansion of both Medicare and Medicaid, and the heritage plan calls for the scrapping of both those programs.

And yes Scandinavian countries are VERY capitalist. There is nothing really socialist about their economies - Liberalism is regulation of capitalism, where you see efforts to "Transfer wealth" which is not to be confused with the neo-liberalism of Thatcher and Reagan, which calls for deregulation of capitalist endeavor. Socialism, on the other hand, is transfer of ownership .

You can have collectivist policies in capitalist states.