re: #180 goddamnedfrank

If engineering more and more debt into the education system over time was the first jaw of the trap, then making the healthcare system dependent on employment was the second. Because until the ACA (as ridiculously crippled as it is) came into existence it just wasn’t possible to get coverage as an independent contractor with no employees if you had a pre-existing condition. The system creating the very weaknesses in its working class that it then exploits for control, to prevent turnover and enable further abuse like lower wages, time theft & union busting.

These flaws in the healthcare system preceded the contemporary debt problem of education. It should have been solved years earlier but our devotion to a particularly rapacious form of capitalism had prevented any serious attempts at dealing with it. Though Nixon did have a proposal that Ted Kennedy rejected — but those were the days that Medicare was still new and Democrats thought something better was possible.