If The SCOTUS Strikes Down The ACA, Do Not Expect Single Payer Health Care Any Time Soon

[Yavin4]

By getting rid of the mandates, that will set up a pure battle between a highly dysfunctional private health care system vs. a Single Payer system. However, do not expect Dem pols to take up the Single Payer battle. Sure, some Dems will give it lip service. Sure, some Dems will propose it, but it will go no where fast.

The ACA, as flawed as it may be, was the one glimmer of hope to get health insurance to more people. Without it, the ranks of the un-insured will grow, and Single Payer won't happen for another 50 years.

[MannyGoldstein]

1. Fully two-thirds of Americans want Medicare for All.

Polling consistently shows this.

Unless the Democrats don't want world-class health care at far lower cost, or they're staggering wimps, they could pass this - or if not, they could make the Republicans radioactive for stopping it.

Two-thirds. Incredible.

[MrSlayer]

3. Since when do they care what the peons want?

The people who put the money in their pockets don't want it and they are the only ones that matter.

[99th_Monkey]

10. Since elections happen.

If the Tea Party can take over the US House of Rep. that way,

why not Occupy Congress in 2012?

[MrSlayer]

16. I'm all for it.

I just don't see it happening. The baggers have backers with deep pockets, Occupy does not.

[Yavin4]

4. That 2/3 of the People Is Not Reliable

First, once the right wing propaganda machine turns its guns on Medicare for all, that 2/3 will drop significantly.

Second, the people don't really matter. What does matter is the money that the health insurance industry can pump into campaigns against enough pols to head off any Medicare for all bill.

[MannyGoldstein]

5. Did the Koch brothers win in WI? In OH?

If we get clear, and we fight, we win.

If we go Third Way, we get creamed.

[Hoyt]

2. Sadly, probably true.

[Journeyman]

6. I have hopes my granddaughter may one day have sensible health care. . .

she's not quite 2 yet, so there's maybe enough time before she's middle-aged.

[JaneQPublic]

7. No Single Payer until we first get...

...A majority in the House and a 60+ majority in the Senate. And those majorities must be with Progressive Democrats, not Blue Dogs, like the Mary Landreau or Ben Nelson types.

We didn't have enough votes for Single Payer when Pelosi was speaker, we have fewer now, and we may well have even fewer after the election.

[earthside]

8. So, if ACA is unconstitutional, who screwed-up?

Are you going to blame the Supreme Court?
We all knew who the 'conservative' Justices were when it was passed.

Pres. Obama for selling out the public plan option?

The Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate that wouldn't get rid of the filibuster rule?

The single-payer advocates that were principled, yet supported the ACA legislation in the end because Pres. Obama asked them to?

I don't understand this acrimony from some over the prospects of the Supreme Court throwing this very flawed health care law out the window.

It is what it is and the President and the Democratic Congress knew that when it was passed and signed into law.

It does little good now to complain.

[Yavin4]

14. The Acrimony Is Because Realists Know

that the ACA was the best hope to get some form of health insurance to the masses.

Single payer is a pipe dream.

[msongs]

9. slavery will never be ended. oh wait.... nt

[Yavin4]

13. Yes, Slavery Ended

It just took 200 years and a bloody Civil War to do so.

[99th_Monkey]

11. One tragic irony from all this is, that the "mandate" issues would not exist

if our beloved Prez Obama had stood up for Single Payer in the first place..
ipso facto, no mandate.

[subterranean]

12. I don't think it will take 50 years.

The current structure will collapse before that. But I think the move to single payer will be led by the more progressive-minded states. The fact that it already passed in Vermont, and nearly passed in California, is a good sign.

[TheKentuckian]

15. The only way the insurance cartel can last 50 years is the Wealthcare and Profit Protection Act

I think 20 years is a real stretch based on current practices, wealth distribution society wide, and demographic trends.

Anyone yelping this "50 years" crap is shilling for the cartel and the pharmaceutical industry, wealthy they are on the payroll or getting reamed with the rest of us.

The legislation passed is to support and secure existing profit centers not to help the uninsured. If the intent was to help anyone then they wouldn't have to be forced to buy junk insurance that they can't reasonably be expected to be able to afford to use. Nor would the final rebuttal always be the cartel standard line about the uninsured costing their paying consumers "thousands a year" and never not once mention the idea that the uninsured charges be legally held in line with the insureds rather than be a cheap tactic to squeeze more money from the system. Never, not once.

If too big to fail status, huge federal investment, a mandate, and entrenching these predatory interests is "the best we can do" then our duty to the Republic and not just the sick and the poor of today but the ill and impoverished for generations is to let the corrupt system die rather than attempting to prop it up until it takes the government down with it.