Medical care is a very profitable industry, recession-proof, with guaranteed growth. To a great extent, as you point out, this is partly due to government subsidies, which are now channeled to benefit primarily the middle and upper classes who can afford the initial price of admission. No one with a piece of that wants it to change. And no one who benefits from it wants their contributions to go up.

It works like higher education, if you can afford tuition, you get education at a discount, at taxpayer's expense.Those who can afford it don't want to pay anything to help those who can't. Especially if they aren't "nice, middle-class folks" like themselves. But of course, they feel perfectly entitled to those government subsidies.

Workers afraid of losing their health care make docile, quiet employees who will put up with any shit on the job rather than risk their families' health. This keeps salaries down.

No, the opposition to this is from the same crowd who fought the Child Labor Laws and every other social legislation that has made life tolerable in this nation for a century. And for the same self-serving reasons. "It will be the end of freedom and civilization if my taxes go up."

We are not Steppenwolves. We are simians. We have always lived in bands. We take care of our aged, our weak and our sick like we take care of our young. Without that, we are no longer human. And those who cannot accept humanity as the price we pay for civilization are not human either.