Reading all the comments about ACA, think how simple it would have been just to extend something like Medicare to everyone, with a little tweaking here and there.

Instead, I think the idea of ACA was to not disrupt the insurance and health industries too much while trying to provide insurance coverage people would have to pay for, with concessions for income, pre-existing conditions, children, etc. After all, those industries are rife with employees and there will be a lot of shifting around within them to accommodate provisions of ACA while adhering to the law itself.

Even with Medicare, many corporations are involved in its administration; it’s a shifting of monies around, and ACA will no doubt add tens of millions of people to companies’ customer bases. So health care overall and the payments for it are a hybridization of private and public access, coverage, and administration.

Of course, considering the circumstances under which ACA was passed (a testament to Pres Obama’s keen politicking, even in its final form), there was no way single payer was ever going to fly, but I don’t think it’s an improbability that we’ll see it in the future, and health care will become a feature in our daily lives. That will only happen if there is some major shifting of income from those who have been profiting the most, avoiding the most in taxes, and shorting wages and hours of employees. In other words, the very things the Republicans are desperate to keep as the status quo and are holding up the functions of govt to achieve.

Now, unless we can actually get people interested in assuming some knowledge and responsibility for their own health, such as eating right, exercising, avoidance of unhealthy substances, etc, something Michelle Obama has tried to do, with varying success in reaching certain demographics, it won’t matter how much we invest in health care, nor how many “cures” science finds. And even that won’t help as long as there are people who think that “society” or whoever they want to name, doesn’t give a flying fig about the ordinary person, no matter from what angle they see it, and there is plenty of evidence to support their outlook, but blaming this administration is not just silly, it’s wrong-headed and racist. Despair and misery are deadly forces, and bread and circuses as covers for inaction and injustice just cause more of the same. Until people have a decent education, adequate housing, food and other necessities of life, including jobs that will provide those things and preserve human dignity, I don’t have much hope that things will change. OTOH, not knowing what you don’t know can be a panacea of sorts, I suppose.

But maybe I’m preaching to the choir here.