Single payer rises and falls with the ACA.

[gulliver]

If the ACA succeeds, then single payer is inevitable. It positions the Democrats as successes, and their next ideas will carry more weight. People will want to take the next steps to listen.

If the ACA fails, the failure will crush single payer. Republicans certainly won't propose single payer, and the left will have lost all credibility. It will be like the Republicans on national security or on the economy after their boy George W. Bush. Disgraced and ignored.

If you are not committed to ACA success, you are not committed to single payer. This plane is going over the mountain or into it.

[villager]

1. the ACA is not from "the left"

Progressives wanted single payer in the first place.

The ACA is a sop to insurance corporations.

[gulliver]

3. That dog won't hunt.

Republicans will have a heydey. No one will think of single payer as anything but another idea from the left. Single payer will be considered to the left of an idea that failed because it was to the left.

[villager]

5. More's the pity then, eh? Since the left kind of warned the center-right about all this

...in the first place.

[progressoid]

15. Yep. n/t

[Puzzledtraveller]

27. HIPPA

Health Insurers Profit Protection Act, aka ACA.

[enlightenment]

2. Bookmarked.

Let's see how prescient you are in a couple of years.

[MADem]

4. I agree with you. The ACA is a waystation on the road to single-payer.

Medicare and Medicaid were the starting blocks.

This plane is going over the mountain or into it.

Nice analogy with the plane. Sums it up compellingly.

[1000words]

6. Honest question:

Who exactly has gone on record proclaiming ACA is a means to a single-payer end?

[VanillaRhapsody]

7. Because written into the ACA is the ability for any state to start their own Single Payer plan...

and that is exactly what will happen....

[1000words]

8. Thank you, VR

That is encouraging, isn't it?

[Whisp]

9. +++

It will happen, it was built that way to happen.

But it sure isn't going to happen next week!

[Morganfleeman]

12. It's superfluous

Because under the principles of Federalism, health care is an area where states have always had what are called "police powers", i.e., the ability to regulate laws governing the health and health care of its residents, except to the extent pre-empted by Federal law.

The states didn't need the ACA to implement their own solutions as they've always had that right (again, except to the extent pre-emption applies). All the ACA does is codify a power that states have always had (see e.g., Massachusetts).

[VanillaRhapsody]

13. not just codified....encouraged...as an approved alternative plan....

[Drunken Irishman]

10. Yup. If it fails, Americans won't trust any idea of government-run healthcare...

[Lifelong Dem]

11. From government run health insurance

To government run health care. Yet the Repubs already call it government run health care. Sometimes they don't realize how they are actually helping.

If we screw this up then say goodbye for another 20 years like the Clinton's caused. But it's already law and things can be fixed as needed. So I don't see this as failing no matter what the R's do. And that includes holding ACA hostage with a shut down threat.

[TheKentuckian]

14. Don't be saddling "the left" with a fresh take on the right wing think tanks plan

Leaving that to the side, what the hell do you think we can do about making a fundamentally flawed and fairly wrongheaded that hasn't even had structural flaws exposed yet work now?

The thinking is all out of order, spin all day salesmanship only mean so much, if the law has problems we can't wish them away and you can't just shout them down. That isn't "fixing it later", that is piling on the shit in a bout of faith based politics and insistence on failure because of the kneejerk and largely condescending and accusatory reactionary response to issues and concerns whether real or imagined.

The same people being told to shut the fuck up and suck it are the very folks you are trying to sell and are supposed to be helping.

[Jim Lane]

16. Are you predicting that, if ACA fails, there will be a big push to abolish Medicare?

I don't think there'll be any such push, even though it would be the logical consequence if ACA failure permanently tainted any idea of a federal role in health care.

Here's one route to single payer: Reduce the Medicare eligibility age by one year (or, more ambitiously, by five years) for each calendar year that goes by. I don't see how any ACA failure could undercut support for that phase-in plan. Medicare is up and running and is a known quantity.

[Democat]

17. Government healthcare either succeeds for fails with Obamacare

It would be generations from now before it was tried again if it failed now.

Republicans know this too, which is why they want to kill Obamacare.

[Demo_Chris]

20. No, because the ACA is not government healthcare...

It is the last desperate gasp of a failed private healthcare system as well as a MASSIVE give away to the healthcare industry.

[Recursion]

18. What makes single payer inevitable? Many countries use a different system

Whether government-operated or based on a regulated insurance marketplace. Why is that particular phrase so important?

[Demo_Chris]

19. This assumes no efforts to divorce corporatist healthcare like the ACA...

From Single Payer or a National Health Service type system. Since this is obviously incorrect, and the difference self evident, I believe your conclusion is flawed.

In fact, I believe the opposite is true. The ACA represents a huge step away from single payer, and the more successful it is, the more entrenched it will become. If you want Single Payer you better hope Obamacare crashes and burns.

[Democat]

21. To many Americans this is "public healthcare"

Obamacare is an experiment in government provided healthcare. If it fails, then many people will believe that public healthcare doesn't work.

The plan as it is barely passed. It's doubtful that it would get more support if more Americans saw public healthcare as a failure.

[area51]

22. How is the conclusion being drawn that the ACA is govt. provided health care?

It's completely provided by private, for-profit companies just like before. This is 180 degrees away from govt. health care.

If the ACA fails, it's a complete failure of the private, for-profit system, which in the USA configuration of it, no other country is trying to do, because they actually have brains and want their citizens to live.

Sadly, it may take the ACA's failures to point the way to single-payer.

[Fumesucker]

23. The Heritage Foundation is now "the left"?

Well, I suppose from where you're sitting it looks that way.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

24. I despise the ACA. It is corporatist fascism at its worse

However, I have refrained from posting the horror stories about its rollout. My only criticisms have been reserved exclusively for those who are dismissive of the real concerns of real people, especially when done in demeaning tones because it will exacerbate the damage if we insult the electorate.

But I understand exactly what you are saying. If nothing else this could have been a confidence-building exercise to move us towards SP or MFA.

Now it has turned the Democratic party into a public spectacle. Not only have we lost any gains from the shutdown we can't even hang the shutdown as an albatross around the GOP's neck because they shutdown the government over the ACA.

However, now that we're running around trying to salvage insurance policies we are now tacitly admitting that we need the insurance corporations and we dare not allow any harm to come to them. We thought we were creating new life, now we have a Frankenstein's monster we must forever appease lest it turn against us, not they will (HINT -- and they now have the government guaranteed profit margins to gain all the lobbying they desire for executive fiat decisions).

[bemildred]

25. Should we set our hair on fire? nt

[LWolf]

26. I don't see that at all.

The ACA is founded on private insurance. It's the wrong foundation for single payer.

[alc]

28. if ACA succeeds, why do we need to change?

Maybe I don't understand your definition of "success" but it seems like if the ACA is a success we are done changing things (at least major changes like single payer). What Democrat would want to take a chance that the change to single payer could turn out like the mess they are in now if things are working?

If it's good for the people but costs the government too much, that's exactly what the republicans said from the start so credibility will be mixed (since republicans said it wouldn't work as well as costing too much). Reducing cost with single payer is not an argument the democrats can credibly use, so what would their argument be for replacing a successful program with single payer?

If it "fails" (by some definition) and costs to much, you may get the republicans proposing single-payer catastrophic coverage and everyone-for-themself non-catastrophic coverage.