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According to a recent report from the Pew Research Center, nearly eight-in-ten Americans say that, when it comes to important issues facing the country, most Republican and Democratic voters not only disagree over plans and policies, but also cannot agree on basic facts.

Only 18% of Republicans and 23% of Democrats surveyed said that voters of the two parties can agree on basic facts, even if they disagree over policies and plans. Among the differences in respondents of the Pew survey, their ages were most telling. Younger Americans were less likely than older Americans to say that the two parties cannot agree on basic facts.

The American “healthcare system” has evolved piecemeal over the course of the last century. With Theodore Roosevelt’s defeat in the presidential election of 1912, the United States diverted from the European dialectic. America disavowed nearly all social legislation that addressed challenges to health, work capacity, and longevity. Only the Prussian notion of Workmen’s Compensation Insurance made landfall and was rapidly embroiled in debates relating to Constitutionality. The solution was that each state was to develop a scheme that required employers to provide medical care and income substitution for a worker who suffered an injury that arose out of and during employment.