Meet the new normal, just as bad as the old normal

The Democratic Party — whether by the free will of the voters or the machinations of the party’s leaders does not matter for present purposes — has chosen Joe Biden to be the nominee for the general election. This is a choice made in a time of duress after three years of Donald Trump’s administration and the current pandemic, and many of his supporters say that a desire to return to normality has motivated their decision, but they should consider the reality that for many Americans, the status quo ante was itself bad.

Biden has declared his opposition to Medicare for All, campaigning on a commitment to Obamacare out of what I must presume is an unwillingness to admit the failures of that program. The Affordable Care Act, a program that is a stuttering version of the Swiss system, might have worked in 1993 — the Swiss adopted their current healthcare law in 1996 — but only by including a comprehensive individual mandate and a guarantee of insurance for low-income people through programs like our Medicaid. Their system has the second highest expenditures per capita, almost double what the British National Health Service costs, but they are still paying less than we do with our lack of guarantees and requirements for buying insurance, but their disease burden is the second lowest in the developed world. Whether or not this is the result of their relatively high…