[gruez]

> You've missed the point. The fact is, most of the US does support healthcare. That doesn't matter to the legislators. They have lobbyists convincing them to fight against any public option, they don't want to piss off their backers, or their club.

I'm not denying there's a disconnect between what americans say they want in surveys, and what legislators actually do. I am skeptical that this purely a post 1997 phenomena, as like your theory would suggest. I suspect this disconnect existed well before 1997. The oldest survey I could find on this topic was was this[1], which showed public support for federally provided healthcare at 64%. Sure, it only dates back to 2000, but barring some major national event, it's hard believe why public opinion u-turn in the years prior. Furthermore, most developed countries had public healthcare way before this. UK and France implemented public healthcare shortly after ww2. Canada had public healthcare by 1984. This wasn't something that was on the cusp of getting implemented, and the pharma industry shot it down after 1997. Public healthcare clearly wasn't something that was going to be implemented in the 90s or in the 2000s, with pharma intervention or not.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/FT_17...