OBTW: We aren't done with the health insurance issue

[SHRED]

A public insurance system will emerge in the USA eventually. The private insurance system will collapse.
People bitch about the "gubmint" being "wasteful" but I guess they are forgetting that Medicare covers, for the most part, the highest cost age group to our health system so that burden is lifted from private insures. Even with the public essentially subsidizing the private sector by creating a less burdensome market via Medicare the private insurers still need to jack up the rates to sky high levels while skimming 30% of every dollar we pay in for to pad their bottom line.

A public (single-payer) insurance system (health provider system stays private) will happen here like it did in Canada...It will happen State by State.

A big obstacle I think is public perception regarding their own government. 30 years of pro-corporate/anti-government propaganda over the airwaves, especially the radio, have taken it's toll. The lies that have been told about the rest of the modern world's health care systems are plentiful, nonstop, and broadcast almost daily.

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[gratuitous]

1. I'd like that to be true

But I suspect any further work on our health care system will go the way of the "side agreements" on labor and environmental issues that were supposed to be worked out after NAFTA. It's been 16 years, and we haven't done squat-ah about that, to the detriment of the environment and working people in all three countries.

The half-measures enacted in 2010 will become the be-all and end-all within 18 months and the clock is ticking. Republicans run the House, and have defeated filibuster reform in the Senate (based on their fingers-crossed promise to be more cooperative), and while they can't roll back ACA gains, they will set them in amber and stop any further necessary work.