What if All of the Blue States Banded Together for Single-Payer Health Care?

[MannyGoldstein]

At least those of us in blue states could have better and cheaper health care. This would also lower the cost of doing business in our states, attracting industry. As red states hopped on the clue train, they could join us.

[ladym55]

1. I like how you think!

Single payer is the way to go!

[w4rma]

2. Nice. That's an incredible idea. (nt)

[imdjh]

3. It might not be just blue states from the start

Many of the electric power co-ops are in red states, are they not? Those people get that the co-op means lower power rates. Those states also tend to be rural, where many people are paying through the nose for private health insurance as self-employeds or doing without. It's just a jump to the left...
And then a step to the right

[rucky]

4. This organization in Ohio is pushing for a statewide plan...

http://www.spanohio.org/

Maybe this is the way to get it through Congress' thick skulls - State Action!

[Oregone]

5. You mean blue as in progressive or blue as in Blue Dog?

Serious question. Think about it. Not going to happen.

[MannyGoldstein]

7. Blue As In Leaning Democratic

As in MA, VT, etc.

[Oregone]

10. This entire country is leaning Democratic with huge majorities in Congress and an Exec branch...

Yeah, still not going to happen nationally.

[Canuckistanian]

6. Oooo, I like it

A coalition of like-minded states. They could bypass the feds altogether.

Then when the stats and citizen testimonials come out, people all over will be crying out for it!

I guess that's why they pay you the big bucks, MG.

[jberryhill]

8. Multi-State Compacts Work In Other Areas

That's brilliant.

[JimWis]

9. Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't California's legislator create

a single payer system that was vetoed by the governor? Twice? And I think they were going to try again. Did I hear that on the Bill Moyer health insurance special? I do think that is one way it may finally happen, state by state. Get a few going and it will catch on.

[Mnpaul]

11. This follows an idea by Al Franken

attack it state by state(much the same way gay marriage is being done). Once successful is several states, the rest will follow.

[Jim Lane]

12. The problem would be reverse cherry-picking

In some health insurance setups, cherry-picking occurs when private companies accept only the healthiest applicants. People more likely to need health insurance (i.e., people more likely to require costly medical services) are relegated to a public or default plan, which therefore has higher per-capita costs.

If blue states set up public health care, funded by taxes, the conservatives in the red states would laugh at it and boast about their lower tax rates. That is, until they got sick. Then they'd move to a blue state and demand free care.

Obviously, this wouldn't happen for every little sniffle. But take someone like Jay Bennett. (See this earlier thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5724070 for the details.) He's told he needs hip replacement surgery. His private insurance won't cover the $50,000 cost (pre-existing condition). Wouldn't he just move to the nearest single-payer state?

I'm not sure the state would be permitted, under the Constitution, to discriminate against people who moved to take advantage of the health-care plan.

More broadly, people who didn't have a specific diagnosis but had reason to believe they might need some form of expensive medical care would be more likely to move to blue states, leaving the healthier (less expensive) patients for the other states.

There might also be an issue with nationwide collective bargaining agreements (such as the UAW's) that provide health-care benefits to union workers. A federal single-payer law would have provisions governing the transition from such contracts.

Interstate compacts work in some areas. For health care, though, "single payer" should mean single payer: the federal government.

[Greyhound]

13. Great idea.

What do we do about the parasites that own the blue states though?

Bill Moyers pointed out a year of two ago that our political campaign system today is nothing more than legalized bribery and that carries down to the state level, too.
:kick: & R

[pnutbutr]

14. What if we just left it up to the states

to create their own single payer systems similar to how the Canadian Provences have done?

[warren pease]

15. Which then begs the question...

... if our useless, bribed-into-slavish submission federal non-representatives are incapable of responding to the overwhelming popular outcry to dump this extortion racket ASAP and join the other 18 post-industrial countries -- all of which have some version of single-payer, universal access health care at less than half the per capita costs we pay for this utter bullshit non-system here -- why expect anything but the same shuck and jive, bowing and scraping from them on all other progressive issues?

Thus far, all I can see is a party so convinced of its own impotence and incompetence -- and so controlled by the built-in quid pro quo attached to massive campaign bribes -- that even with the fabled 60 votes in the senate -- which Reid keeps trying to cut back by refusing to seat Franken and, before him, Roland Burris -- they still spend their time playing battered spouses to the GOP's Stanley Kowalskis -- wife-beater shirts and all.

Learned behavior? The cumulative cynicism fed by zillions in campaign bribes over the years? Self-interest uber alles? Doesn't really matter; the effects on us are the same.

Honestly, does the excerpt cited below seem like a story about a strong senate leader with numbers and overwhelming public support behind him doing the public's bidding? Or does it sound like another milquetoast, bought-and-paid-for useless mainstream faux democrat DLC punk trying to find a way to repay his real employers in the bribocracy while finding any lame excuse to keep on screwing the 300 million or so in the general population out of actual representative government -- as per usual?

By Thomas Ferraro

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid yielded to Republican threats and agreed on Monday not to immediately seat fellow Democrat Al Franken, whose razor-close victory in Minnesota faces legal challenges.

Senate Republicans had planned to disrupt the opening of the new Congress on Tuesday by blocking Franken's swearing-in.

And in another ugly fight, Senate Democrats vowed to block, at least for now, the seating of fellow party member Roland Burris whose appointment by embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich carries a whiff of political scandal.

Note that "Senate Republicans had planned to disrupt the opening of the new Congress on Tuesday by blocking Franken's swearing-in." That's the part that made my blood run cold.

Wowie zowie. Imagine the horrors and miseries such antics would inflict on the delicate sensibilities of our patrician democratic members of congress! Imagine how their good breeding and senses of propriety would be damaged... perhaps permanently. Imagine Ms. Nancy's botox injections no longer doing the trick.

Better yet, imagine how little I could possibly care about offending their delicate upper crust blue blood breeding.

Imagine how cool it would be to watch Pelosi in a jumpsuit and baseball cap, janitorial service logos everywhere, wielding a mop, pushing a bucket of greasy gray water, swabbing the halls of congress instead of pretending to dominate them.

Imagine how satisfying it would be to watch Harry pull latrine duty instead of pissing all over his national constituency and the constitution as well.

Until I can afford to buy a senator or two, along with a few house members, and keep on sending them cash and great prizes to make sure they're going to stay bought and vote for in my interests only, then my needs and points of view are unlikely to be represented in the capitol -- except by accident when somebody like Bernie Sanders or Dennis Kucinich manages to sneak past the wingnut media filters and find a seat in congress.

Until then, it seems to me that the only rational political stance is to marginalize them into irrelevance. Kind of a quiet secession, if you will.

Really, who would even notice after a few months? Except the air quality would noticeably improve as the toxic, malodorous stench of Washington bullshit gradually blew out toward the Atlantic and stayed there.


sf

[BuyingThyme]

16. kcik

[Cleita]

17. I wish we could. We tried it in California. Both houses of the legislature

passed it, but Arnold vetoed it. :grr: You will have to make sure that all your pols are on the same page.

[janx]

18. There are some Dems who don't want single payer.

They're retired and happy where they are. (I'm not one of them.)

[Cleita]

19. Well, when their insurance denies them for pre-existing conditions or finds

a way not to pay for a hospital stay, they will change their tunes.

[janx]

20. YES indeed they will.

That's why I'm perfectly happy with Obama's ideas--and Howard Dean's ideas. Let's provide an alternative and let the "market" go where it will.

The only reservation I have about this is the money that flows from insurance companies to politicians. But I think that this alternative will pin those politicians into making a choice. ;-)