Political suicide? Seems more like a political platform, unless facing an opposing platform is considered suicide...? Many candidates have won, and more seemed primed to win, with a more generous approach to American health care...
Right, but that's a pretty recent change, at least in the non-rivalrous care sense. Which is to say that "I deserve free care" has been a thing in ostensibly conservative camps, for a long time, but the notion that everyone deserves free or at least affordable care has only really started catching on recently.
As recently as the nineties, a serious attempt at reform failed in a way that seriously hampered a Presidency, and the ACA is, while a significant improvement, also pretty compromised. The idea that UHC is a reasonable political platform, within the bounds of "normal" American political discourse, is pretty new.
There are large sections of the American populace who think that access to social support is zero-sum and universal access takes something from A if B also gets it. So while we have had Medicare and Medicaid for quite some time, the discussion has been resistant to actual universal health care largely due to these factors. You're right that that's changing, but the question being "WTF, America?" about why it's still not a thing is pretty valid to me.
Put another way: it's been proven out, and to me pretty inarguably, that conservative Americans are pretty OK with socialism for themselves and for people like them--this is the genesis of the whole "keep the government out of my Medicare" meme, because it's real. And to people who adopt that workview, providing the same services to people who are unlike them codes as giving things to "undeserving" people. This remains true even as the "center" moves somewhat leftward and universal healthcare discussion becomes a tenable option in the Overton window--even many people in favor of things like UHC are in favor of UHC for themselves, not for everyone. Asking "what's wrong with you that you let this happen?" is, to me, quite fair.
