Comment by s1artibartfast
1 year ago
I dont want state funded single player Medicaid for all, and would vote against it. I think my united healthcare plan is better (somewhat ironically).
Instead, I think medicaid should be offered, at cost, as a non-profit public option to all ages. This was discussed briefly during the Obama healthcare debates, but broadly rejected by left who wanted to eliminate private options. We got compulsory private healthcare instead, but I think it is still the best option. Give everyone a non-profit option with a national pool size.
> This was discussed briefly during the Obama healthcare debates, but broadly rejected by left who wanted to eliminate private options.
As someone who voluteered in this field during that time, this is just a repetition of right wing propaganda. There was no serious movement to eliminate private options. Every country with a single-payer system that I'm aware of has private options as well, they just aren't popular because they aren't good or necessary. Right wing extremists want to present this as eliminating options, but in reality, it's just people not choosing private options when they have other options, because private options suck.
The real reason the left rejected a the "compromise" of non-profit options is that it still requires people who don't have money to pay for insurance. Simply slapping a non-profit label on an insurance company doesn't fix anything.
Note that non-profit health insurance companies exist already, and have solved exactly zero of America's health insurance problems.
Single payer literally meant that all citizens are subscribed to the same government operated health insurance.
If the entire "single payer" program was completely optional and offered at cost, they totally missed the messaging on that one, because I was paying attention and that wasnt my take away.
> Single payer literally meant that all citizens are subscribed to the same government operated health insurance.
Correct, but that's a pretty big change from the propaganda you repeated in your previous comment. What you said was, "This was discussed briefly during the Obama healthcare debates, but broadly rejected by left who wanted to eliminate private options." In another now-deleted comment, you also said, "the left was too fixated On preventing people from buying better care".
Nothing about having single payer healthcare prevents people from also purchasing private healthcare. Single payer does not require the elimination of private options--when you said that was what the left wanted, you were repeating a lie. People can and do purchase private healthcare in countries with single-payer systems--it's just not common because generally the private healthcare options aren't worth it.
> If the entire "single payer" program was completely optional and offered at cost, they totally missed the messaging on that one, because I was paying attention and that wasnt my take away.
Single-payer is optional in the same sense that current subsidies to insurance companies are optional, it just costs less and results in less death and human suffering.
Your insistence that it has to be "offered at cost" is basically an insistence that people who can't afford that cost but need life saving care can just die. So no, it wasn't "offered at cost"--that's the entire point. I want Americans to be able to receive life-saving medical care when they need it, even if they are poor. That's just basic empathy for our fellow humans.
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