Lord Larehip

Well, if you can get a law passed that doctors and hospitals get paid by our tax dollars so that we don't have any out of pocket expenses just like the police, most people won't go for it because the tax hike would likely be too much to make it feasible.

But maybe not.

Euronomus

No, so-called single payer healthcare would actually be cheaper than Obamacare or the old system. With the personal mandate essentially everyone is being taxed for healthcare already, but 20% of what you pay goes towards insurance company bureaucracy and profits, and some say up to a third of what gets paid to hospitals and doctor offices goes towards their financial bureaucracy. A "single payer" system only bills one entity, doesn't have dozens of different policies to interpret, and no-one but the actual people providing care(well also Janitors and cooks etc..) are making money off of it. The problem is just that though-"single-payer" would kill tens if not hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country. That's why it would be so hard to get put into law, and why we have the compromise that is Obamacare.

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Lord Larehip

The original ACA bill had single-payer. Obama deleted it in an attempt to appease his opponents who were against it who assumed he wouldn't delete it. when he did, they had to find something else to bitch about and the left was furious with Obama for deleting single-payer.

Yeah, why kill jobs implementing single-payer when we can just shut down the govt which is so much more productive?

Euronomus

No, you're thinking of a public option, ie medicaid with no enrollment restrictions. the ACA was always an insurance-based program. And yes a lot of people, myself included, chose Obama over Hillary specifically because of his support for a public option, and were quite pissed when he caved.

The people who are causing the shutdown are the ones who would make it most difficult to pass a single payer system.

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Lord Larehip

Yes, I was thinking of public option. I'm ambivalent towards it but lean away from it. The left wanted it so that makes me suspicious.

As for single payer, Medicare and the military already use it and it works. I was in the military and never spent a dime on medical or dental care. hell, they pulled my wisdom teeth for me--you know how much that costs in the civilian world?

As for the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs--frankly, so what? They are largely useless jobs that waste money and are chiefly responsible for why healthcare costs are so bloated. Lat them go work at something else, I frankly don't care what. Those jobs will be lost someday anyway and if they can't read the writing on the wall then they can go sleep in the park for all I care.

Yeah, I'm a dick.

Euronomus

The left wanted single payer more than Obamacare. That's why so many on the left wanted a public option and those on the right didn't-it would pave the way for single payer.

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Lord Larehip

When only one small faction of the political spectrum wants something, it's no good. So maybe the whole public option/single payer idea blows and that's why Obama took it out.