Simulating single-payer (by Paul Krugman)

[HuckleB]

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/simulating-single-payer/

When I first began writing a lot about health care, I often found myself taking the pro-single-payer position against people who argued that it was better to work through private insurance companies. I took to arguing that Massachusetts-type plans were, in fact, just imperfect, somewhat inefficient ways of simulating the results of a single-payer system. And if I thought there was any chance of creating Medicare for All any time in the next decade, I’d be pushing for single payer now.

But what actually seems possible — not in the distant future, but tomorrow morning — is the passage of a Massachusetts-type plan for the United States. And now my argument cuts the other way: what we’re getting will, in its overall results, work a lot like a single-payer system. It will be an imperfect, inefficient simulation; but those on the left who decry it as terrible, evil, nothing but a giveaway to the insurance companies are missing the very real good it will do.

Let me show you two schematic charts I’ve used over the past couple of years to describe two different approaches to near-universal coverage.

... (interesting charts) ...

I wish there were a public option in there; I wish there were broader access to the exchanges; I wish the subsidies were even bigger. There’s lots of work to be done, work that may eventually culminate in a true, not simulated, single payer system. But even in this form, we’re looking at something that will make America a more just, more secure nation."


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I stand with Krugman on this matter, as I have made clear. I only hope that the information he presents with care and respect will be discussed similarly.

Cheers!

[HuckleB]

1. Oh holy unrecs, the button brightly shining!

:evilgrin: (I know I'm dumb.)

[DJ13]

2. "I've said plan A was crap in the past, so now that the Senate passes Plan A Im all for it"

:crazy:

[HuckleB]

4. And he explains why.

:eyes:

[Hello_Kitty]

3. Krugman's charts are simplistic bullcrap

He divides Americans into "high income" and "low income" as if the middle and lower middle (working classes) don't exist. I presume that "high income" includes everyone who doesn't qualify for subsidies, which means that individuals who make $44k and families who make $88k are now "high income". Which means the premiums they are expected to pay will be a helluva lot more than the taxes they'd pay under single payer.

[HuckleB]

5. They are simple.

They're charts. However, they are not bullcrap, as you try to claim. You make presumptions here, and in the thread you started, that have nothing underneath them. Without that, you're "bullcrap" critique is bullcrap.

[silverweb]

6. Krugman makes a lot of sense.

Much more sense than the all-or-nothing demands we've been hearing, and I agree with him:

"There’s lots of work to be done, work that may eventually culminate in a true, not simulated, single payer system. But even in this form, we’re looking at something that will make America a more just, more secure nation."

Let it be so.

[HuckleB]

7. That's where I'm at... let's make things as good as we can.

It's basically what I try to teach my three-year-old when he wants to do everything in a day.

[silverweb]

8. Yup.

Maybe that's the problem with the all-or-nothing crowd: no good parent ever taught them how to handle their inner 3-year-old's tantrum for instant gratification.

:P

[HuckleB]

9. All right. I'm done.

I'm tired of the obfuscation, the personal BS, the rewriting of what others say and write and then arguing against that rewrite.

Examples of all of these can be found here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7307735

I'm out. This is just ridiculous.