Can Obamacare Be Changed To Make It a Single-Payer Health Plan?

[red dog 1]

Is it possible to change the Affordable Care Act into Universal Health Care?
Wouldn't Congressional Republicans block any such attempt to change the ACA?
The answer is... "Of course they would!"
But, if it ever got to that point...if President Obama and Congressional Democrats pushed for such changes, and the Republicans then blocked it, wouldn't the Democrats running for House and Senate seats in November be able to say:

"See,we tried to change Obamacare in a bi-partisan way to make it a better health care plan; but the Republicans refused to go along with us.
We tried to give the American people the kind of universal health care that nearly all the Western countries already have; but the Republicans said 'No'
We are for the American people.
The Republicans are for the big insurance companies."


Sanders Subcommittee Hearing-Access and Cost:What the US Health Care System Can Learn
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024655434/

Single-Payer Advocates: It Hurts To Say I Told You So
"We may have an 'I-told-you-so' moment, but it's hard to get any pleasure out of it knowing how many people are actually going to get hurt," said Stephanie Woolhandler, a New York-based doctor who co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program, a group that pushes for universal health care..."You had a bad system, and you're putting a patch on it using the same flawed insurance companies that got us here in the first place," she said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/22/obamacare-single-payer_n_4312394.html/

Physicians for a National Health Program:
http://www.pnhp.org/


Poll: 64% of Americans Say Obamacare Should Remain Law
"Bloomberg News found that a combined 64% of Americans said they support keeping the law in place..That includes 51% who said it should be kept, but may need some small changes."
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014754006/

(Note that 51 percent said that the law "may need some small changes"...I wonder how many would have said that Obamacare should be changed to make it a single-payer health plan, if that had been an option for them to choose?)

13 votes, 1 pass | Time left: Unlimited
	Make the necessary changes to Obamacare to make it a single-payer health plan.
	12 (92%)
	Leave Obamacare alone....Don't change it at all.
	0 (0%)
	Make only small changes to Obamacare, so as not to upset the GOP or the insurance companies.
	0 (0%)
	Repeal Obamacare.
	1 (8%)
	1 DU member did not wish to select any of the options provided.
Show usernames Disclaimer: This is an Internet poll

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. I'd love single payer. Not entirely sure how it can be built on Obamacare, though. And I'm not

on board with just expanding Medicaid to everyone. I'd like to see some changes made to that program, such as the recouping costs from the estate of the patient, for example. Do other single payer countries do it that way?

[truebluegreen]

2. Don't the states have the option to go to single-payer after 2017?

Isn't that what Vermont is trying to do? If so, seems it could be catching--but would take an unconscionably looooooong time.

OTOH, inserting a public option into Obamacare would undercut and probably kill off a lot of the private competition in short order.

[jeff47]

18. You build it on Obamacare in the blue states.

The good part of "Obamacare" is it moves the battle for single-payer to the states. And that's a much more favorable ground to have the battle.

States can become single-payer or offer public options starting in 2018. Vermont is already going single-payer. We may be able to get full single-payer in some additional blue states.

In other blue states, public options should be a relatively easy sale. Sell them to the legislature as a 'check' against private insurance profiteering. With no need to profit, public option plans should end up cheaper, which will cause people to sign up. When those people don't die, the FUD against "government healthcare" is reduced, causing more people to sign up. Which makes those plans even cheaper, which causes more people to sign up.

As a result, those public options become de-facto single payer.

With blue states humming along nicely in single-payer systems, it becomes easier to sell such plans to purple states. Several of them will follow the same path.

With both blue and a few purple states humming along nicely in single-payer systems, we can return to the national battle in a much stronger position. And have a Congress where single-payer could actually pass.

[jazzimov]

3. Say "Medicare-for-all", rather than "Single Payer".

Most people don't know what single payer means, but they're too ashamed to admit it. So, they vote against it. However, everyone knows what Medicare is, and it's very popular. Polls bear this out; most people polled don't support "single payer" but they do support "Medicare for all" (even though Medicare is a single-payer system).

[Loudly]

4. I love this post. And Democratic candidates need to be campaigning on it. Vigorously.

Or they're going to get their asses kicked in November.

[red dog 1]

6. + 1

[red dog 1]

5. Makes sense to me.

I hope President Obama & the Dems in Congress work to change the Affordable Care Act into a
Medicare-for-all health plan...soon.
...so we won't have a Republican Congress voted in this November

I still very much like President Obama,
I thought he was great with that Zak guy on "Between Two Ferns"..
Obama not only held his own in the interview, he actually was quicker & funnier than the Zak guy was.

He may be the smartest POTUS we've ever had..

.but damn, Obamacare needs to be changed....and soon!

Why can't he see that?
Why can't the Democratic Leadership in Congress see that too?
Bernie Sanders can't be the only Senator who wants Medicare-for-all

[Recursion]

7. Where did people get the idea that single payer is the only model that works?

It's not even the most common model (the UK doesn't use it, for instance; neither does France). The US as it currently stands is actually closer to single payer than the UK is. There's nothing magical about that one model.

[joshcryer]

8. It's the most cost effective model.

I think that's the real selling point.

I myself would love to get free health care as rich liberals complain that they're having to pay too much.

[Recursion]

9. Is it? I think the NHS model does better, doesn't it?

The UK seems to do better than Canada, and in the US the VA system does better than Medicare.

[joshcryer]

11. What makes NHS not single payer?

I'm getting confused by Google searches for cost comparisons.

[Recursion]

13. I suppose strictly you could say it is, but that usually means

"private practices with a single social insurance fund under government control". AFAIK that's relatively rare on a national scale for the whole population (even Canada does it by province, for that matter). The point of my kind of pedantic complaint is that single payer is one means of many by which countries achieve affordable universal health care.

[joshcryer]

14. It does look like Blair made it so you can opt out.

And pay for your own insurance.

But generally Medicare's overhead is 1% while an insurance company is as much as 20% (under the MLR it would be around 15% as far as I recall).

I don't think the ACA will ever be as affordable unless we get a national government run insurer, basically Medicare For All.

[Recursion]

16. The more interesting part to me of ACA is the FQHC model

The Federally Qualified Health Clinics operate more like the NHS than like the Canadian system: they receive direct funding from the Federal government and in return charge patients based on a sliding scale.

[Lost_Count]

19. Oh yeah...

The VA nails it on a regular basis...



http://washingtonexaminer.com/veterans-affairs-purged-thousands-of-medical-tests-to-game-its-backlog-stats/article/2544580

[red dog 1]

10. "The UK health care system, National Health Servise, (NHS)..

..remains to date a service available universally that cares for people on the basis of need and not ability to pay, and which is funded by taxes and national insurance contributions."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3405352/

Sounds like universal health care to me.


In most cases, "universal coverage" and "single-payer system" go hand in hand, because a country's federal government is the most likely candidate to administer and pay for a health care system covering millions of people.".......Source: "About.com, Health Insurance"
(sorry, I was unable to post a link to this)

[Recursion]

12. You seem to be confusing "universal health care" with "single payer". They're two different things

Single payer need not be universal health care (Medicare is single payer but not universal), and universal health care need not be single payer (most country's health care systems are universal but not single payer). Single payer means one entity pays all claims for providers who are in private practice. Canada has universal single payer health care (and even that is by-province, not Federal), but that's a pretty rare model -- most countries do single payer for a subset of the population and mixed payment for the rest. Others like the UK have government-operated health providers (which is also not "single payer&quot .

[red dog 1]

15. Thanks, I didn't know that.

Either Universal Health Care OR Single-Payer would be better than what Obamacare is now, IMO.

[Recursion]

17. I hope the FQHC part of ACA really gets going

The Federally Qualified Health Center is a great model -- the clinics take Federal funding in exchange for charging patients on a sliding scale. Their expansion (ACA tripled their funding) was a main reason Sanders ended up supporting ACA. Personally I think that mix (large public funding, income-based use fees) is probably the most realistic option for our current economy and politics.

[Demo_Chris]

20. The entire POINT of Obamacare is to funnel trillions into the hands of insurance companies...

Both through the mandate and the subsidies. It is the largest corporate welfare plan in history.