Sorry?
You saying I am incorrect?
Lets get this on record.
Let's look at the facts......The democrats didn't need one republican vote to pass whatever they wanted.
Obama did want a single payer system.
If Obama had enough votes to ram that system down everyone's throat, he damn well would have done it.
Obama didn't have enough votes with his own party to get his ideology passed.
Just so. And if the GOP keeps fouling up as it has, we republicans are going to get hammered next year. Then single payer may be the next great horror.
You're a republican? Crazy.
Anyway, if you don't think this current program is going to lead to single payer, you're all out of your minds. Look at the basic outline of this bill.
Insurance companies have to start paying medical bills for people with preexisting conditions (I'd say offering coverage, but insurance coverage is a just in case measure. If you need your bills paid already, it's not insurance, it's paying your bills. Big difference) and they can't charge said people any more than those without preexisting conditions. i.e., on that end, insurance companies are guaranteed to take a financial hit. After all, if monthly premiums had prices that rivaled the cost of your medical coverage, it'd be more advantageous to pay out of pocket and nobody would bother with insurance. No matter how you bend this wording, this measure forces insurance companies to bleed money.
The intended compensation is via the individual mandate, which forces young and healthy people to buy insurance, and more than they're likely to need. Because they'll be paying in more than the insurance companies will have to pay out for them, those companies can theoretically balance the bleeding that occurs when you force them to pay peoples' medical bills who didn't acquire coverage before their incident (in this case disease/medical conditions) occurred.
So, we should still be on the same page here. Everything I've put above, whether or not you agree with the obviously negative opinion I have on these measures, is the stated, intended function of the greater part of this bill.
Check out the penalty, though. If young people who don't make a lot of money yet and are still healthy decide they don't want to drop hundreds of dollars a month to buy insurance they don't feel they need, they pay a penalty. IF you'll recall, Justice Roberts' deciding vote identified this penalty as a tax. REmember that. The penalty is a tax. The penalty is also considerably lower than the price of a years' worth of health insurance. How many kids in their late teens and early 20's do you know? I'll give you a second. . .
Now, how many of those kids do you think are the type who'll pay more than they feel they need to out of pocket to make sure that the insurance industry stays healthy? LMFAO, are you ******* kidding me? No, most of them will just let the government go ahead and pull the penalty out of their refund come tax time. EIC'll offset it lol!
Ok, now remember how the penalty is a tax? So when those kids who, in stead of offsetting the added costs to the insurance companies by paying more than most of them will feel they need to, decide to pay the penalty in stead, that money goes where? Not to balance the books at those evil profiteering insurance companies. No, no, no, that shit's a tax, and like all taxes, it gets kicked into the general fund!
Now, after all the demonizing that's been done of the insurance companies, can you see one single slimeball politician signing off on using any of those funds to keep Obamacare working? If that means giving it to the insurance companies to offset their new costs? Those evil fuckers? That proposal'd be political kryptonite!
So, from the point of view of the guys with the kind of capital to invest in the health insurance game, how long do you think the insurance game'll remain profitable enough to be their choice investment? How long til insurance companies start closing up shop?
As a stand-alone bill, much of what I've seen of Obamacare strikes me as asinine. As a destructive stepping-stone to single payer, though? ******* BRILLIANT!