At the time ACA was passed Democrats had a majority in the Senate and the House plus Obama in the White House. They could have passed any plan they wanted - they chose to pass ACA which was 95% written by Healthcare lobbyists. The Republicans had no involvement in the Democrats deliberately choosing not to pursue single payer. The Democrats can only point the finger as themselves when people ask why we have Obamacare and not single payer.
This Fox headline is a wonderful illustration of how disinformation based on accurate information may be even more powerful than real information, depending on the messenger. Note the weasel word "largely" which keeps the lie out of the outrageous category and converts it to the run-of-the-mill lie category. Of course a passable Medicare for all Bill would not outlaw private insurance. But the intellectual level of many Fox viewers is such that they might very well believe that. In fact Medicare for all would be profitable for private insurers, just not as profitable as the current system, which cleverly hands the young and healthy, low-risk customers over to the private insurance industry and the old, sick, and dying to medicare. Nothing is quite so profitable as insurance covering the improbable. The last thing anyone should want is to allow people to opt out of medicare for all. That would kill the cost efficiency inherent in concept of medicare for all. This is not socialized medicine being proposed, it is socialized base insurance. Socialized medicine is what England and the VA offers. Medicare for all is simply a proposal for a national insurance plan backed by the Treasury and supplemented, probably by 20%, via the private insurance industry -- just as medicare for those 65 and older works now! If Medicare for all gets legs after 2020, rest assured there will be many attempts by the Republican Insurance lobby to make it optional, and allow people, i.e., the healthy, to opt out. This will be the poison pill that the Insurance industry will hope to force down the legislation's throat, just as Obamacare was made to swallow ruinous poison pills. Though it may seem this country has become a hopeless plutocratic quagmire of legislation by and for the 1%, who own everything, we can, nevertheless, still make out faint rays of hope on the horizon.
A lot of people seem to like thier private insurance or buy into the socialized medicine bullshit.To quit thier bitching and blocking medicare for those that want it we probably have to find a way to let them keep it.
why do you make shit up about Obamacare? Bacus was a democrat and Obama selected him because of his ties to health insurers. He received millions from them Obama caved to Democrat's cronies and special interests. Obamacare was passed without a single republican vote...they could have done whatever they wished.
You just keep making shit up to support democrats... Fox was not the only website to say such things.. Politico did as will in fact... Here is the google search snipet... House Democrats to release 'Medicare for All' bill — without a price ... https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/.../house-democrats-medicare-for-all-118913... 5 days ago - Government-run single-payer system would eliminate most private health insurance and ... The lead sponsor of the "Medicare for All" bill, Rep. .... abortion coverage would eliminate the long-standing ban on federal dollars for ... Here is more... "The bill also orders the creation of a national health budget requiring federal officials to negotiate annual payments to providers in advance. And, for the first five years, at least 1 percent of that massive budget would go toward programs helping millions of health care workers displaced by the creation of a single government-run system, including “wage replacement” and retirement benefits in addition to job training. Jayapal estimated that 1 million to 2 million people in the private heath insurance industry could lose jobs. The government would also be empowered to negotiate drug prices directly with pharmaceutical companies — a longtime policy priority for Democrats — and create a single list of covered drugs that encourages providers to use cheaper generics."
It is a myth of course that Democrats voted as a block, so there was never much choice in plans they could pass! The only way they could muster enough votes in the Senate to pass O'Romneycare was if Max Baucas, a "democrat" who had taken more money from the insurance lobby than any other legislator, got his way. So no, they could not have passed any plan the rest of them may have wanted, but they could pass any plan Baucas would go along with!
You probably didn't notice the use of the subjunctive in the Title to the Fox Article. You could take a look at my response to gwb if you are interested in more detail re Baucas.
They'll keep it as supplemental insurance to cover the 20% that medicare doesn't cover. We can't afford to let private insurers continue to siphon off the young and healthy, as they do now,* and also give them the cost breaks that medicare negotiates. That would wreck the efficiency and average cost of medicare. The care under medicare is identical to the care under private insurance; the cost claimed by private insurers for patients under age 65 is vastly higher than the equivalent medicare costs. ______ * a primary reason U.S. healthcare is so costly and so inefficient. You pay double premiums, medicare and private insurance, until age 65, then you drop to medicare plus private supplemental insurance. One of the political hurdles that has to be got over is that few under age 65 really understand how medicare works. And practically no one understands the burden placed on U.S. medical care costs of allowing for-profit companies to siphon off the young and healthy, charge them outrageous premiums, falsify billing by not disclosing discounts negotiated with drug companies and providers, and then dump the aged sick and dying on the public system. Remember that because of the McCarran–Ferguson Act, insurers are exempt from Dept of Commerce Regulation that would otherwise prevent acting in restraint of trade, and depending on the state they operate in they don't have to publicly disclose their costs. They are exempt from most anti-trust laws.