Another notch for single-payer

Ezra Klein, on the political implications of the Obama administration's decision yesterday to exempt from the ACA's individual mandate anyone whose lousy, wholly inadequate policy got cancelled, with editorial clarifications inserted:  

If [incurably palsied] congressional Democrats [who flee in terror from responsible governance at the bellow of every Republican Boo!] use this [politically coerced] ruling as an [asinine] excuse to [irrationally] delay or [arm-in-arm with the predatory opposition] otherwise de-fang the [absolutely essential] individual mandate for anyone who doesn't want to pay for insurance under Obamacare, then it'll be a very big problem for the law.

Whenever one ponders the sublime simplicity of single-payer--Oh, you're sick? Well you're also covered. Period--the intermediate hoops through which we're required to jump, just to arrive at that most sensible place that everyone knows we'll eventually get to, are rather stunning to behold. Politically necessary, for now, and for sure, but someday Americans will look back on this crude, primitive era and ask--They settled for what?

 

Comments

[Peter G]

Look on the bright side. Every actual flaw in Obamacare hastens the journey to universal single payer. Or some reasonable facsimile thereof. All it will take is a rather small percentage of the population signing up. Young people don't matter and it was foolish to expect young immortals to do so. I certainly never did.

The system, burdened with those with pre-existing conditions will make render it financially unsound and unsustainable. But politically it will be undoable. Self interest will not permit those millions of newly insured to go back to nothing. And it includes Americans of every stripe and ideology. I wish the Republicans luck in convincing those voters that throwing themselves under the bus in the interests of right wing ideology is just what the doctor (they can't see) ordered. And the Republicans know it too. Elections are now won on very small margins by and large.

So the system will be fixed. Pressure will come from every side, including the insurers, to do so and funding streams commensurate with the task will be found.