Good. Block their deal, let them drop out of obamacare, and then give us the Single Payer that we've always deserved and watch those fuckers go bankrupt like they've always deserved.
Anyone who thinks this is leading to single-payer is dreaming. Whether you think it's a good idea or not, the political will wasn't there for in 6 years ago, and there is much less political will for it now.
There's a lot more political will for a "public option" now (largely because the people who have said it wasn't necessary in the ACA-style setup and that private insurers -- augmented by the coops that the ACA created a framework for -- would step up have increasingly been proven wrong.) Whether a public option is a step on the road to single payer depends on a number of things, including how private insurers respond.
A proper public option receives no more government support than a private company does. If answering to political pressure instead of answering to a board of directors turns out to be an amazing thing for health care efficiency, single-payer could be on its way. I think that's dreaming by people who have never run anything in their life, but I also think that they should be free to try and fail, as long as it's a genuine same-as-a-private-company public option.
When you want something to happen politically, you need to work from a position of strength. If you have had a bunch of failures recently, people will not trust whatever new promises you are making. (And saying the failures were someone else's fault is the worst excuse of all. It's not like all those people you blame the problems on have died.)
The most likely outcome is a public option in the exchanges. I don't expect that many private insurers will continue to participate in the exchanges if they have to compete with a public option, so the public option will end up being a de-facto single-payer system for poor people who have to use the exchanges.
The public option isn't supposed to be government supported. It's run by the government, but with a private budget, taking all their operating fees from users. A lot of people on the right are skeptical that it will become either de jure or de facto government supported, and comments like "I don't expect that many private insurers will continue to participate in the exchanges if they have to compete with a public option" are the reason.
I'm skeptical of that the public option will work as well as its proponents say it will. We already have non-profit health insurance companies, and they haven't completely eaten everyone else's lunch. But it's worth a shot, as long as it really truly sticks to that mandate of not being government supported. The argument would need to be really convincing given how many of its backers think it ought to be government supported any way.
By walking away from the exchanges they are just walking away from a money losing business. That isn't twisting in the wind.
The ACA established programs to make payments to insurance companies that got unusually expensive customers but the funding for those payments has been blocked.
The issue with those blocked payments is that the program was established to deal with an uneven distribution of unusually expensive customers. Insurance Company A makes more than expected so it pays into the pool. Company B loses more than expected so it draws from the pool. Thinks were expected to even out overall.
But what has happened is that all (or most) companies are losing money on the exchanges so there is no one to pay into the pool. Congressional Republicans have blocked funding the pool with government money because the pool wasn't supposed to cost money in the first place.
So your earlier comment is entirely irrelevant then, seeing as we're not talking about bread delivery, but delivery of healthcare, where - irrespective of whether we'd agree on the feasibility of efficient delivery of "singlepayer bread" - it has been conclusively proven by example that efficient delivery in a single payer model is possible.
In fact, not only is it possible, but almost every country in the world that has it does it cheaper than the US (depending on currency fluctuations, Norway is ironically one of the less than a handful of countries that is occasionally more expensive than the US - largely driven up by high salaries).
Ask yourself what those studies measure and if you can honestly consider those measures fair measures of quality, quantity and equity in providing care.
It usually boils down to $5,000 for surgery X in one country, $8,000 for same surgery in another. What an analysis like this always skips is the care that wasn't provided that should have been provided.
A large proportion of developed countries use single-payer, single-provider, or insurance vouchers. Including... Canada where you live.
Serious question: are you a refugee or emigrant from an oppressive communist country? Often this can color one's thinking to reject all aspects of those regimes, even including the few positive things.
Edit: I don't think it's insulting to ask a question. Context helps us to understand each other and the world around us. Downvote, but also reply.
the idea that SS and medicare are great and have done wonders is what's causing the country to go broke and costs to skyrocket.
it was never good in the first place. you see the benefits when the programs are implemented, but everyone fails to see the costs and lost future opportunities.
The irony that you are blaming social security and medicare on the US costs while US healthcare is far more expensive than almost every socialised healthcare system in the world is astounding.
The difference between the US and the single-payers is that more care is given and better care is given vs. the rest of the world where gov't budgets are constrained so care is constrained.
I'm in Ontario and I can't even get a general practitioner. This is worse than communism.
The US healthcare system consistently gets a mediocre ranking by the WHO for a reason: It's great when you have lots of money. For everyone else, almost every other developed country is an as good or better place to get healthcare.
As for your problem getting a GP, that sucks for you, but that is a local political problem and not a systemic problem with single payer. E.g. in Norway everyone has a legal right to a named GP, and gets one. I live in the UK now, and while there is no guarantee here I've never had a problem finding a GP.
I can afford private insurance here if I'd like it, but I've never had any issues with the NHS that'd justify it. On the contrary the treatment has always been stellar (I've not had to use it all that much myself apart from a "mystery infection" t
If you have the money, nothing stops you from getting supplemental private insurance in Canada either, so I wonder what you mean when you say you can't find a GP. Do you mean that you're unwilling to go private? Or that you actually can't find one either way?
More care may be given, but I can't find any way that the statement "better care is given" could be taken as a true statement. The US falls far below every other western nation in terms of money spent vs patient outcomes.
free market systems are dynamic and adjustable to real-world inputs in a way that no planned system can match in terms of providing the most service/product to the most people.
what people really want when they push for socialized medicine is equality over improvement.
Eastern Europe didn't have equality. It had less equality than Western Europe and the US - the party elite basically carved up their countries as fiefdoms.
To blame equality for problems caused by systems that never implemented anything like equality is quite bizarre.
…the story about the two fellows in the Soviet Union who were walking down the street and one of them says: Have we really achieved full communism? Is this it? Is this now full communism?
The other one said: Oh no, things are gonna get a lot worse.
Liberalize healthcare to allow anyone to provide it.
Did you know that before the AMA was created that doctors had to do house calls or face living in abject poverty as a result of the market being flooded with healthcare professionals?
Given the appalling amount of quacks already providing "alternative" therapies that have no medical value: No thanks. I'd rather live a long, healthy life.
I find it almost comical that you want to opt for such an extreme measure rather than accept systems that have a proven track record of delivering much cheaper care.
And as I've pointed out: Both in Canada where you live, and in the UK where I live (as well as in unlikely places like China, which doesn't have a proper socialised healthcare system) you can pay to go private if you for some reason don't get to see a doctor fast enough, or isn't happy with the service. But at least in these countries there is something in place for those who can't afford to.
Actually they do here as well in the states. My wife and I just had to deal with the rapid loss of our dog to skin cancer.
Her treatments were cheaper than paying a doctor here in cash. Normally I pay a doc $150 or less for a routine walk in with "I have the flu".
Our dog got chemo pills, checkups, hell the vet even called us each week to check her status between treatments cheaper than that $150 I would pay for fifteen minutes of doctor time.
