As I've mentioned
here and
here, there ought to be some pretty easy fundamental and shared bonds that drive governance in the USA. And all of it should derive from the common will of the electorate - an electorate that wants nice things that are attainable and will act in the voting both to hold leaders accountable for failure to engage in simple problem-solving (even if there will always be conflict and disagreement on tons of issues).
Health care in the US is barely functional. Patients aren't the clients of doctors or hospitals; payors are. It's all a complicated and effective billing industry, but there is no centralized care or treatment. If you break your arm, sure, you'll get the basic appropriate treatment. If you have cancer that has been diagnosed, I'm sure you'll get the appropriate treatment. We have some amazing drugs and treatments that we didn't have years ago. But it's still fundamentally broken. Getting care, especially when things aren't straightforward, is incredibly difficult, defeating, unhelpful, and mostly just non-existent. Nobody really talks about those things and there's no reason we shouldn't expect better. There is no accountability, no clarity, no plan; care points are parceled off to discrete billers that do different things with zero "health care" accountability. People will do stuff, but that's not at all the same as providing care. It used to be better in a former simpler world, but it could achieve the same today if the patients demanded it. The hospitals and insurers sure won't; it's not in any way in their best interest to change anything. Why isn't there more outcry? Instead, all we get is talking heads spouting off the latest partisan inanity on the topic du jour in a galactic struggle for party control that has little bearing on the daily lives of all of us (though, of course, there is that little thing we're experiencing now of seeing our democratic republic on the verge of totally losing its validity).
Public schools. They're basically under assault and caught up in a partisan battle that isn't going to lead anywhere good. Public schools have historically and traditionally held a critical part of our national system. Now they are seemingly the enemy despite the profound and real reasons we recognized the critical role to begin with.
There's a long list, but central to the decline is a lack of caring about those nice things. I wish I understood it.
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