AH Challenge: NHI and a guaranteed annual income in the US

MrHola

Banned
Alright, mission impossible: come up with a way that, by 2009, the USA has a national health insurance and a guaranteed annual income. Bonus points if you can get this done with a POD no sooner then 1974.
 
Nixon pushes a modified version of his negative income tax (aka guaranteed annual income) that gathers support via liberals—by giving everyone a certain amount of money every year—and via conservatives by means-testing social programs, not indexing them to inflation, and eliminating welfare.

In the Senate, under pressure from multiple sides, and with Nixon's popularity still high Ted Kennedy and the other liberal hold-outs agree to back Nixon's national healthcare plan.


(POD: Nixon shows somewhat more interest in domestic affairs.)

OTL:

Nixon's negative income tax fails in Congress under conservative pressure because it fails to do anything about the social programs it's designed to replace.

Nixon's national healthcare plan is rejected by liberal Democrats who believe they will elect a fellow Democrat in '76 (true) and that they will then get single payer Canadian style healthcare (false).
 

MrHola

Banned
A good POD for all of this, could be that Nixon becomes governor of California in '62. He campaigns about the negative income tax because (let's say because of butterflies) he tried it in California and it worked. Something like that. Plausible?
 
A good POD for all of this, could be that Nixon becomes governor of California in '62. He campaigns about the negative income tax because (let's say because of butterflies) he tried it in California and it worked. Something like that. Plausible?

Sure that could work. Perhaps in response to Goldwater in '64 Nixon looks around for an issue that a) can be considered economically conservative, and b) can also gather support from liberals. The NIT works well on that front.

I just went the way I did because IOTL Nixon proposed both the programs you wanted, and I'm lazy.
 
Top