What I don't get is how stupid or just plain niggardly that group is. Medicare for all and free university and/or vocational training is an economic development program. It benefits business big time. Imagine that liar Obama had bailed out the banks by bailing out the homeowners. There must be a secret law that no law may help the people in addition to the billionaires.

hardcore conservatives are against single payer at this point, and our two political parties, the duopoly of course. But that's a tad depressing reading about how Truman backed it back in 1948 and here we are today with Trump and the repubs, with the democrats help, trying to further institutionalize a bad system. Seventy years later.
As I said before, this is like trying to tackle the military industrial complex. The health insurance/big pharma and medical corporations are just as big and powerful.

in terms of news coverage, and therefore momentum.

But the most salient, hard-truth (and depressing) point is this: these polls mean nothing legislators. Literally. And it's proven.

The Princeton Study revealed this in such a glaring and jarring way. To me the fundamental truth they uncovered, about exactly which legislation gets passed and doesn't, should be the clarion call to the 99% that this shit is no working. There's no getting around it. Our gov't is an auction, sold to the highest bidder.

To wit:

Using data drawn from over 1,800 different policy initiatives from 1981 to 2002, the two conclude that rich, well-connected individuals on the political scene now steer the direction of the country, regardless of or even against the will of the majority of voters.

The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy," they write, "while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence."

Here's an interview with one of its authors, "Scholar Behind Viral 'Oligarchy' Study Tells You What It Means"

Q: Let's talk about the study. If you had 30 seconds to sum up the main conclusion of your study for the average person, how would you do so?

A: I'd say that contrary to what decades of political science research might lead you to believe, ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does in the United States. And economic elites and interest groups, especially those representing business, have a substantial degree of influence. Government policy-making over the last few decades reflects the preferences of those groups -- of economic elites and of organized interests.

Seems to be the only thing, like you said, is for folks to get out in the streets to #ShutItDown. I get the feeling voting and polls can always be both manipulated and/or ignored, when you have armies of propaganda and big-money, power movers at your back.

there was a movement among doctors to cut their prices in half on the condition that their patients pay in cash. They did not accept private insurance. Other doctors agreed to charge cash patients what they charged the insurance companies if they also paid a yearly fee approximately equal to a couple month's premium.
Also, about fifteen years ago the clinic where I get my care said that it might have to close because of the administrative costs of having to deal with the insurance companies.