Let's make one thing clear, the ACA is about health insurance, not health care...

[Barack_America]

...its aspirations to health care gasped their last breath with the death of the public option.

But as policy focused on improving access to health insurance that provides meaningful coverage and reduces the potential of financial ruin due to medical expenses...yes, it does accomplish something there.

Of course the prices are going to be high and there is going to be sticker shock for many. That's the price of offering health insurance that actually covers something, while still allowing insurance companies their profits.

The only long-term solution for affordable health CARE is to get rid of the insurance company profits and offer single-payer, or at least a public option so large the insurance companies and hospital corporations will have to slash their profits and overhead just to compete.

But hey, at least with the current ACA we can take comfort that we're not "socialists" (*eyeroll*).

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

[gopiscrap]

1. good point

[Barack_America]

2. Thanks. I think it's important to judge it for what it is.

And hopefully people will come to understand why they would pay a lot less for actual health care.

[gopiscrap]

3. Like I've been saying: SINGLE PAYER UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE!!!

[Recursion]

27. Wait. "Single payer" describes a health *insurance* model, not health care

It's a model of health insurance with a monopoly of enrollees and a monopsony with providers.

[Loudly]

4. So is / isn't Medicare right? n/t

[frazzled]

5. The public option had nothing to do with health care

It was just government-run insurance (like Medicare), as opposed to private insurance. It was insurance, not health care (meaning doctors, clinics, et al.). Medicare is insurance, not health care.

Your notion of health care would be a system in which the government employs the doctors and runs the hospitals. That was never going to happen, and indeed is relatively rare.

[Barack_America]

12. My notion of healthcare is a system freed from profit margins.

That can happen with single-payer. If the government is the only payer, hospitals will adjust their charges to what they will be paid (Medicare pay rates already dictate most charges).

[Recursion]

28. About half of the insurers out there are non-profits already

Blue Cross in particular is not-for-profit in many states.

It hasn't made their plans noticeably cheaper.

[frazzled]

37. Fine, but your notion is only yours and still about ...

Economics and finances, not about health care in any sense of the word. No health policy expert or health economist would agree with your wording.

And by the way, private insurers also dictate charges to hospitals.

A system of health care, as opposed to health insurance, would be more like the VA, which provides its own health services.

The ACA for the first time regulates health insurers and provides universal access to insurance.

[oldhippie]

51. "hospitals will adjust their charges to what they will be paid" ...

No, hospitals will adjust their COSTS to what they will be paid. Or they will go out of business and operation. Do you think that would improve the care to the patients?

[AnotherMcIntosh]

6. Insurance company profits will never come down as long as stock can be owned by politicians and

parties related to them.

Owning health insurance company stock is a guaranteed source of income.

[jsr]

13. Their only legal duty is to maximize profits.

[solarhydrocan]

16. check out these charts

The biggest:



the rest:

Link for multiple charts on AET AFL AIZ CI CNC CFIN HNT HUM SIE TMK UNM WLP

http://finance.yahoo.com/quotes/AET+AFL+AIZ+CI+CNC+CFIN+HNT+HUM+TMK+UNM+WLP/view/dv

[AnotherMcIntosh]

22. Too bad that we don't have charts showing how the net worth

of the politicians has risen.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

31. All we have to do for that

Is get the fascists to pass a law allowing us to see how they engage in fascism. Easy as pie.

[LostOne4Ever]

7. The PPACA is a stepping stone for single payer

It won't happen right away, but it lays a foundation.

[Recursion]

29. There's no need for it to be

Single payer social insurance is one model of health care provisioning that has worked in some countries, but there are plenty of others that have worked too. What wasn't working was what we had. ACA needs improvement, but we don't have to sign a death pact with the concept of "single payer"; plenty of other systems work too.

[Bluenorthwest]

41. The second largest single payer system in the world is American, the VA.

Why do you call the VA a 'death pact'? Why reject the system that works best for us right now, right here?

[Recursion]

49. First off, the VA is not single payer. Medicare is.

The VA is government-operated, like the UK's NHS. The "death pact" referred to requiring that it be literally a single payer system and nothing else. I'd prefer a national health system like the UK has to a single payer system, personally.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

32. Lemme guess

It's a confidence building exercise.

[russspeakeasy]

8. Thanks for posting this.

[NYC_SKP]

9. What if, a year or two out, the government offers up it's own plan, an option....

...and just puts it out there to compete, a little, at first.

Would that not lead to full blown single payer after a few years, if done right?

The reality of it all is that we were never going to be able to change overnight from 100% corporate insurance to 100% single payer public care.

What we have in ACA is the best we could get that moves us closer.

[Barack_America]

14. I think (hope) the seeds of that are in the "family glitch".

At this time the government can't afford to extend exchange participation to dependents, forking out money to all these insurance companies with rates elevated by the relatively small size of the plans.

A potential fix? A government plan for families paying over 9.5% of their incomes for medical premiums, in order to bring costs down.

Here's hoping.

[Hoyt]

24. You would think, but look at Medicare. 28% and growing choose Advantage Plans,

offered by insurance companies. Not to mention government has, from day one, not taken on the costs and risks associated with administering Medicare - - contracting with insurance companies to do it, under Federal rules.

[Recursion]

26. Yup. Medicaid is essentially 100% provisioned by private insurance

It's sort of the dirty secret.

[Bluenorthwest]

43. Medicare and Medicaid are not the same programs.

Fairly basic stuff.

[Recursion]

50. Right, which is what I was saying

Medicare is partially provisioned by private insurance, as Hoyt was pointing out, and I added the point that Medicaid is essentially entirely provisioned by private insurance. Fairly basic stuff.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

10. Good evaluation

Of where things stands

[leftstreet]

11. DURec

[ReRe]

15. It's no wonder....

... that the roll out of ACA is hitting so many bumps. What did we expect? The insurance & pharmaceutical companies wrote the legislation (or their lobbyists), right? And could the website problems be a bit of political cyber-war? It's too bad they went to all that expense, but hey, they are "risk-takers" aren't they? No one twisted their arms to plot against the success of the ACA. It's the law, cretins, like it or not. Cut your losses and let it go. You're going to lose. Bigtime.

[blkmusclmachine]

17. Yep. ACA is a Republican WET DREAM, cooked up by the GOP way back in 1994.

[awoke_in_2003]

19. Romneycare. nt

[Puzzledtraveller]

53. ^^this^^

[SoapBox]

18. K & R

[snappyturtle]

20. Thank you....many don't want to hear this. nt

[grantcart]

21. I disagree. It is about the entire health care system. Title III is about establishing

an entirely new care model, moving from fee for service to global care.

The insurance part is like the tip of the iceberg. There is a lot more involved but it will also take time.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3917066

[Left Coast2020]

23. Yes it is!

So why isn't dental care/ procedures i.e. root canel, filings, etc part of ACA?

A dentist has told me that heart disease can come from poor dental health--namely an infection in the gums.

Very disapointed dental procedures are not included at he moment.

[Recursion]

25. Umm... Medicare and Medicaid are just about "health insurance" too

[stevenleser]

30. As is every single payer system. This talking point is tiresome and meaningless. nt

[treestar]

34. Amen. Whoever thought it was such a clever, meaningful bumper sticker point

Was absolutely wrong.

[stevenleser]

40. I dont think it has helped convince anyone of anything and it never will. nt

[treestar]

33. The public option would have been about insurance, not health care

Single payer would be about taxes, not health care.

It's all about paying for it. We don't expect doctors, nurses, etc. to devote their time for no pay.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

35. The only thing this law has done is mandate corporate profits.

Every facet of the law relies on corporations. When they said they couldn't remain viable at current rates while expanding coverage the regulations came from HHS to let them do what they're doing. It's part of the bargain.

And those who think we're getting single payer after this are dreaming. The politicians crawled in bed with the corporations to get them on board. Now the corporations have all the dirty pictures they need to keep their lover obedient and loyal.

[jsr]

36. No truer words.

[JoePhilly]

39. That ... and save my neice's life. But other than that, nothing.

[woo me with science]

45. +10000 That was the goal all along,

as with policy direction in virtually every area right now.

Our government is purchased by corporate interests, and its entire reason for existing has been corrupted.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

52. Exactly. No amount of cheerleading will change that.

[Puzzledtraveller]

54. Of course saying that here Nuclean Unicorn as

I have agreed with you in other threads get us branded all manner of things up to and including teabagger plant yadda, yadda.

[leftstreet]

57. I've been called a 'troll' for pointing it out

They're really desperate

[JoePhilly]

38. And Money isn't Food.

[madokie]

42. So is my health care

I use the VA and paid my premiums 40 some odd years ago. I'm paid up in full. And yes it was/is insurance when it comes right down to it
I wish everyone in America had the same health care I have.

[marmar]

44. Yep. The vermin need to be extracted from health care. Period.

[woo me with science]

46. +1 The corporate vermin need to be extracted from virtually every area

of government and policy-making. We currently have a government of, by, and for the corporations.

[marmar]

48. True that.

[sibelian]

47. I think ACA's greatest advantage is actually that it legitimises

or at least *opens* the *possibility* of legitimising a socialised model in the minds of the populace. ACA is very obviously an improvement on what was before. I think that's being kind glossed over at the moment.

I think you're likely to now find that further changes to the way healthcare is perceived in the States will ratchet inevitably towards a more socialised model. I think the Republican leeches know this, and realise that they are now kind of screwed.

[MineralMan]

55. Actually, as long as healthcare delivery is through privately-owned

institutions and by private practitioners, it will still be about insurance, even with single-payer.

In a true national healthcare system, the profit motive would be removed completely with health care delivered by government run hospitals and clinics. Think of the VA hospital model. The only real way to control costs of health care is to take profit out of the picture across the board.

Single-payer AND Single-provider is the most economical and most equitable health care system that can be designed. We will not have that in the United States. It would be enormously unpopular.

Until such a system is established, any system will be a system of insurance paying private providers. As long as that is the case, profit will drive the system. From hospitals and healthcare professionals to pharmaceutical companies and medical product companies, and everything in between, for-profit is the current model.

Truly, the only purely government-run healthcare system I know much about is Cuba's. I can't imagine the U.S. instituting anything similar to that in any of our lifetimes.

[ScreamingMeemie]

56. The price is not "high" for me and my son.

And the health insurance at least gives me the option of getting to health care. And that is a start. Thank you.

[ProSense]

58. This is kind of ironic in light

of the amount of people upset that they can't keep their crappy plans.

[IronLionZion]

59. single payer is insurance

because its not care, its the way to pay for care. Issues like what treatments are covered and how much will be reimbursed and the cost of care will still be issues of contention with single payer, just like it is in every country that has it.

Payment for care, is what gets care. A reliable payment system is the only thing that will fund opening more health care providers.

Successful implementation of the ACA will build popular and political support for further reforms like single payer. But first we need more health care providers and people who are used to having near universal insurance coverage for whoever wants it.

Single payer will come one state at a time. See how they did it in Canada, then see Vermont.