Brainspore pretty much says it, No one said it was going to be easy.
And it’s even harder state by state. It is monumentally harder to a single state to go single payer, while still trying to play the same ruthless game of economic competition that the other states are in. Caring does make you vulnerable after all. Also, it surprises exactly no one that powerful interests are not interested in increased taxes, and see this as a greater crime than millions of people going uninsured, or being poorly insured. Making states go state by state fighting/rejecting the powerful insurance industry leaves them at an incredible disadvantage while that industry is still empowered by a cash flow from all the other states. Money is speech, and this amount to 49 against one. when a state tries to pioneer.
from the coloradocare article:
The most represented industry was health insurance: Dozens of insurance companies, including Anthem, Centura, Cigna and Kaiser Permanente, denounced the amendment — and gave generously to the opposition campaign, Coloradans for Coloradans.
One of their main reasons for the opposing the measure was the increased tax burden on employees and employers. Business owners said the extra taxes would have been burdensome and unpopular, driving business from the state. Detractors also said that health care providers potentially would be inadequately reimbursed under the new system, causing them to stop providing care in Colorado and, thus, decreasing Coloradans’ health care choices.
I partly suspect that your opposition is actually down partly to political feasibility (a-la, the super-rich would never let it happen, and all the burden would fall on the middle class), as that’s been teased out of you in past discussions (not on this subject specifically, IIRC, but still) It’d be more neighborly of you to lay these points out explicitly.
It seems to be, thank you, although it takes 2-3 years to be sure.
Your country has bought two outright lies:
That private industry is better than government at all things. This is palpably false when you look at the state of infrastructure. To create and maintain the roads, ports and so forth that connected the continent took a level of investment that no company could afford, but the entire country benefited. Ditto education, ditto healthcare. In the latter case, you actually gain efficiency, because the main activity of private industry in health insurance is rent-taking.
That freedom is possible without concomitant responsibility. I pay my taxes so that the government can maintain the infrastructure (roads, education, health, etc.) that makes democracy possible. My duty as a citizen is to make sure that government does its job properly and doesn’t tip over into authoritarianism. Government’s responsibility, other than the necessary expenditures, is to make sure that private parties don’t exploit the citizenry (i.e., regulation). Thus we have a series of checks and balances all through the polity. If government is actively called on to abnegate its responsibilities in the name of “freedom”, then you have, as we are seeing, crumbling infrastructure, an increasing divide between haves and have-nots, and less ability of the latter to resist the former. That’s a slippery slope to feudalism, which is kind of the antithesis of freedom (except for the lords of the manor). You need to ask who benefits from all this (i.e., follow the money).
I wonder if the way Canada did it would work in the U.S.:
If your state introduces a single-payer provider that meets certain qualifying conditions (in Canada’s case it was: universal, portable, comprehensive, and accessible), the federal government covers half of the cost.
I’d say that it’s an offer that’s too good to refuse, but there are states that refused the 100% federally-covered Medicaid expansion that was part of the ACA, so I don’t think the individual states can be relied upon to act rationally.
Ask him or her if applying Medicare’s payment rates and Medicare’s billing rules (which carry the threat of jail time) to every patient in the practice would be likely to cause consideration of early retirement.
Why should it? It’s not a problem up here, where exactly those conditions obtain, and it ain’t that medical personnel are poorly off - they’re not at all.
You originally pointed to difficulties in approving or implementing single payer systems in individual states. In both cases, lack of federal support for such a system was cited as a major obstacle. My point is that a limited federal single payer system already exists which could bypass entirely the need for a patchwork of state fixes. If I were to talk to a doctor I’m guessing that, once implemented, billing only one public insurer instead of 10 different private ones would be a preferable arrangement. Eliminated redundancies, economies of scale, blah blah blah.
I if were to assume that doctors are only in it for the money, then your use of the status quo to defend the status quo makes slightly more sense. Insofar as a good insult towards a group you are not a member of really ties the incoherent rambling together.
Thank you for referring to this healthcare for America as the ACA, as it is legally named; Obamacare was always a Republican moniker that Ex-POTUS Obama classily endured. It bugged me then, and it bugs me now to hear “Obamacare”…
Grow up, Republicans, do your jobs, and defend our country from all enemies, foreign and domestic, now, or lose all efficacy as a party forever. Seriously.
Here private health insurers being used to offload roles that the public healthcare system should be doing. I view it as a way of salami slicing the public health system until there’s practically nothing left, and you will effectively have to get health insurance
I’d prefer a system in which ads for health insurance were met with uproarious laughter.
Thai food.
