How to Fix Health Care Without the Mandate [View all]

[marmar]

from YES! Magazine:



How to Fix Health Care Without the Mandate
Why truly affordable care means single-payer.

by Sarah van Gelder
posted Apr 06, 2012


What happens if the Supreme Court strikes down the “individual mandate” in the health care reform law?

Commentators ranging from former Labor Secretary Robert Reich to Forbes Magazine columnist Rick Ungar agree: Such a decision could open the door to single-payer health care—perhaps even make it inevitable.

This may be the best news about health care in years. Because ever since Republicans convinced the Obama administration to drop the “public option” in the Affordable Care Act, health reform has been in trouble. True, most Americans favor many of the provisions of Affordable Care Act. But the overall plan rests on forcing you and me to buy insurance from the same companies that have been driving up the costs of health care all along—the same companies that have been finding creative ways to avoid covering needed care, shifting costs on to patients, and endlessly increasing premiums and out-of-pocket expenses for all of us.

Forcing all Americans into a failed system is bad policy, and it’s not just President Obama’s opponents who say so. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/sarah-van-gelder/how-to-fix-health-care-without-the-mandate