re: #109 FrogMarch

There are Youtube videos that show Obama saying outright that “if we could start over, he would prefer a single payer system”.
To be fair, he has backed off, but obviously that is due to the weight of public opinion. The Congressional Progressive Caucus is pushing the single payer or “public option.”

And then he follows that with “of course we can’t start over, we have to build from what we have now.”

And the “public option” is not single payer; it’s letting people who don’t have coverage through their employment, make too much to be eligible for medicaid, and can’t buy on the individual market (because they or a family member has a pre-existing condition) buy into medicare.

“Single payer” is what they have in Canada — the gov’t is the only company paying bills, but the doctors and hospitals are owned by a variety of entites (some public, some private). “Socialized medicine” is what they have in the UK (the govt owns the hospitals and pays the doctors a salary). Switzerland has all private insurance companies, but heavily regulated.

Every one of those countries spends 1/2 per capita what we spend on health care; half the GDP percentage that we spend; and they all have longer life expectancies and lower infant mortality rates and nobody goes bankrupt from medical bills.