you think Bernie Sanders has a shot? | Page 20 | The Compost Bin | Forums

Where my wife works there is a hell of a brass ring to grab onto...have 10 years of service and be at least 55 and you are eligible to have health insurance through them for life at their rate...it's a great benefit...she is counting the months and days til she turns 55 (me too).

As for the ACA...it would have been better to never gone down this road and just started rolling back the Medicare age a little each year...providers already understood Medicare, there was already a processing and payment system in place, and there would have been a less money involved vs starting something new (i.e. ACA).

...one thing the ACA/insurance for all has never addressed...is that when 'all' people have more access to more health care...the Health Care System is not able to handle that kind of demand...plus, many Health Care Providers are baby boomers that are retiring or cutting back to part time, this is a huge number of experienced professionals that are leaving practice and they are the 'system' can not back fill their exiting of the medical field fast enough....so more access, less providers...boom!...plus, many providers won't accept the ACA health plans in my region...a real mess ... I hate that tax payers are footing the bill for a 'mess'.

Ok, here's my take on single payer. GR said it well, if you put everyone on medicare, there will not be enough providers to treat everyone for every thing. It'll be fine if you get the flu, or have a broken arm or something. Great! No problem. The real meat of the issue is where you have a major illness in the last few years of your life that we run into trouble. Cancer? Alzheimers? Dementia? Lou Gherig's disease? Now you have a real problem, because you can't just go to the doctor for these things. Well, you can, but it doesn't guarantee treat, and certainly not in the timely manner needed in a serious case like these.

You see, right now cost is the bottleneck for providing care. If you take away the cost to the consumer, everyone is going to want expensive treatments. The 86 year old who needs open heart surgery, even though it might only buy him a year or two? Why not? Because removing the cost on the consumer level (or really hiding it in this case) doesn't remove the actual cost of providing the treatment. Single payer can't make that go away. So now, the government has to figure out how to save money to be able to continue to provide this service. Those savings come from our 86 year old heart surgery patient not getting his treatment. He gets put on a "waiting list" and sent home with some vicodin. This is a slippery slope, that could lead to the government mandating that people stop smoking, or drinking, or forcing them onto a government mandated diet, or forcing them to quit potentially dangerous activities like extreme sports, all in the name of providing you health care.

I hear people complain all the time about how the US has terrible quality of care compared to other countries. Bull. The care we get is right on par with everyone else, we just happen to be really expensive (due, once again to government regulation). There's a reason why when people from other countries get things like cancer, and can afford treatment here in the US, the come here to be treated. It's because they actually get their treatments in a timely fashion with quality doctors and surgeons. Because they are paying for the service.

In closing, having a choice is always better. A good analogy to what single payer actually looks like internally is the public defender system. let's say  you have to go to court and face criminal charges and like 5-10 years jail time if convicted. It doesn't matter what the charges are, but lets say you actually are innocent. What if the only lawyer you were allowed to have by law was a public defender? Do you really think he's prepared to take your case to trial and see you exonerated? Or do you think he's going to plea you out, get that five years down to two, you do a year and a half in jail, get out as a felon, lose your rights to vote and own a gun, parole etc. Or would you rather have a choice? Would you at least want the option to be able to get a trial attorney with some juice who can actually get the charges dismissed? Having a choice is ALWAYS better.