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In reply to the discussion: Dem lawmakers call for single-payer healthcare [View all]ehrnst
(32,640 posts)Last edited Thu May 25, 2017, 11:26 AM - Edit history (2)
And I'm seeing that happen all over the place. Anyone who suggests that there are other options than "single payer" is called a corporate shill as fast as someone trying to talk to an antivaxxer about the safety of vaccines.
No, the hard work has not already been done. The huge infrastructure and of the health care system that will have to be demo'd an rebuilt has grown huge over the last 60 years, and will take more work that "simply expanding medicare to everyone" implies.
ColoradoCare was rejected soundly last November, and the only reason that it was possible for them (and Vermont) to even try to do that was that the ACA had a provision for states to experiment with their own systems.
The ACA is on the chopping block right now, along with much hope that states will independently create their own single payer systems independently of each other. It took Canada decades for all their provinces to do this, and only then did a federal mechanism come into being with the election of a very liberal administration. It was still being changed and tweaked legislatively in 1999.
No, our GOP Congress is not "amenable" to legislating any sort of federally supported health care coverage. They are trying to enact something quite the opposite.
Yes, people are dying that don't have to die. And yes, we look at our ancestors as barbaric for rejecting national health in the Truman administration when it could actually have been implemented before the massive infrastructure of our health care system was in place.
No, business will not "be attracted" to anything that will cost them money without an immediate return. See Vermont single payer, which exempted large businesses that had employees in different states from paying into the system. Those large businesses were NOT attracted to it.
Medicare requires multiple payers for the complete range of health care services - but those payers are administrated and regulated at the federal level. Medicare itself is a basic plan - not anything like what Green Mountain Care in Vermont, or what Sanders calls "Medicare for all." Those were/are far more expensive and cover more than actual Medicare, which is having some real issues right now with approvals for procedures and timely payment for services. Those issues need to be addressed, but as we have seen, this administration will not address the issue of fixing anything that is administered at the federal level - they want to cut, cut, cut.