Why is is that Obamacare does not insure all our uninsured?

It was not meant to provide health care. It was a gift to the health insurance industry, and a was supported and written by these entities. It was inspired by Romneycare the we had here in MA.

And yes, I agree that it’s a crime that we don’t have universal single-payer coverage. It’s obscene.

Because conservatives will fight all efforts to give us a First World health care.

Obviously the thing to do is get rid of such a flawed system. And let’s replace it with nothing, just to teach all those losers a lesson: namely, that them as has gets, and them as don’t, don’t.

Because not everyone thinks they need insurance and also insurance is ridiculously expensive unless you qualify for a big subsidy, but even then some people still are reluctant to buy insurance. Obamacare did not mandate everyone have insurance, it did not do enough to address costs. The insurance companies and medical providers are still thieving.

I just received an EOP for my last set of blood tests. It read that my tests cost $507.78, my discount with my insurance was $470.18 and so I had to pay $37.60. What a total fucking joke. I happen to be getting insurance through my husband’s work right now, but I was using the ACA marketplace for three years, and the insurance was the same joke.

I can tell you for sure that throwing it out to pure competition will not work. We already proved it doesn’t work before Obamacare. Prices were already getting outrageous. We know pharma, hospitals, insurers, were gouging and people were suffering and dying way before the ACA.

@Call_Me_Jay What do you call “First World health care”? Is it like the NHS in the UK? Or would you model it after Canada?

@Jeruba Touché. I don’t think it would get replaced with nothing. It would essentially go back to the situation prevailing before Obamacare. So, instead of the 44 million uninsured now, we may have as many as 64 million. Keep in mind that even the uninsured people do have a safety net: it is called the ER’s. Unfortunately, the Obamacare experiment did not work worth a damn.

@Call_Me_Jay: “Because conservatives will fight all efforts to give us a First World health care.”

This is a bipartisan effort. This is why we have 2 anti-healthcare candidates running against each other again in 2020.

@crazyguy: “What do you call “First World health care”? Is it like the NHS in the UK> Or would you model it after Canada?”

Don’t get hung up on which healthcare we should try to emulate. Rather, we know that every single person in the US could have complete coverage if we were to do something as simple as implement M4A. We should be able to have even better care than other countries, due to our obscene wealth.

The existence of a private health insurance industry means that the US is a shit country.

@JLeslie You hit the nail on the head. Not everyone thinks they need insurance. They would rather spend their hard-earned dollars on something else.

I am not defending that decision, but I would be the last person to take the choice away from them. The Individual Mandate tried to impose a financial penalty to make the decision harder, but did not change enough minds. Long live American freedom.

The only way that I can see of reducing our actual costs is to enforce transparency and to make the consumer responsible for the costs s/he is willing to take on. The consumer may elect to buy insurance, or s/he may elect to underwrite the costs himself/herself. But, as long as the mentality is, I am not paying for it, so whatever the doctor says is ok, we’ll never reduce expenditures.

The question is ludicrous and implies the obvious that Obamacare is flawed in that not everyone is covered. It ignores the fact that millions MORE are now covered than before. It is not Obama’s fault or the plan with his name on it which is responsible for the fact that not everyone is covered. A more pertinent and reasonable question is “ why are we the only first world country where everyone is NOT covered and we have the most expensive healthcare in the world?” Any fool can see that the other systems insure EVERYONE at often half our costs. The flaw in Obamacare is not that people believe they can get away without paying the scalping robbery insurance fees associated with access to healthcare. People don’t NEED insurance. People NEED healthcare! People who believe they don’t need insurance are ABSOLUTELY correct. People should be just as entitled to that healthcare as clean water or paved streets. You want to talk about freedom? How about the freedom even WITH insurance to face bankruptcy from a medical diagnosis?

@stanleybmanly We don’t need insurance (because we have to pay for that), but we need healthcare (that we don’t have to pay for). Unfortunately, there are no free lunches. Somebody will have to pay for healthcare. By making far-reaching, painful to many, changes, we can reduce the actual cost of health care in this country; but, no; we’ll just take the easy way out and call it “affordable” by making the government responsible for paying even more inflated bills. A typical Democratic solution to any problem.

It’s the only SENSIBLE solution as the rest of the world demonstrates right in front of us. Healthcare for ALL is every bit as reasonable and NECESSARY a service as a fire or police department.

Because of this.

@crazyguy The problem with emergency rooms is that people wait till the illness they may be beyond help or has become a collection of illnesses that is now very costly to taxpayers. Who do you think pays the bills when they can’t pay it. A few hour’s visits to the emergency room cost about 5 thousand to 10 thousand, depending on what state you live in for a non-threatening ailment or to treat someone with asthma or high blood pressure. And people complain but I know for a fact my insurance kept steadly going up before Obama care and my co-pay. Single-payer for everyone would be ideal where hospitals and doctors get what they get no matter what state and pharmaceutical get what they get. But insurance companies will fight this because it will mean they are out of work. And pharmaceuticals will fight it because they can’t pimp out their meds to doctors to pitch and they will get what they get.
This means we will never get that because you know pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies donate a lot of their money to politicians to keep things the same.

Bullseye for @gorillapaws.
Bitch about Obamacare all you want. Just remember that it is basically a carbon copy of Romneycare which was devised by insurance companies to ward off single payer universal healthcare. The stupidity of this country is disgusting. Even in the midst of a fking pandemic there are dummies claiming that we wouldn’t be better off if everyone is protected. And yes It should be the government’s job to see to it that ALL of us are covered if ANY of us are capable of spreading a disease. Any moron should be able to figure THAT one out.

The only thing that will work is to expand Medicare for all individuals. As a conservative it’s taken me a long time to come to this point of view. But it’s the only way.

@crazyguy “Keep in mind that even the uninsured people do have a safety net: it is called the ER’s.”

People who must rely on the ER for healthcare cannot pay for it. If they could they wouldn’t have to rely on the ER. Since they cannot pay the healthcare providers must make up that loss somehow. That results in higher costs for those who can pay.

@crazyguy The choice is part of the problem. A lot of people are stupid. They feel like Superman, they will never get hurt or sick or old. That’s just not true. Either they or someone they love will get hurt, or sick, or old. We blatantly see it with covid. QAnon is feeding on it, telling people covid is nothing and if you are healthy and right with God you don’t have to worry about some silly virus.

You have to get everyone paying into the system so the premiums are more reasonable. You have to take the massive profits out of the system to make the cost reasonable.

I agree transparency is part of what helps control costs. I think we need a public or private group that watches over costs and profit, and calls out the gouging to create more pressure if we don’t have laws yet to control costs. Everyone I know wants doctors and nurses to make good salaries, and most people are fine with pharmaceutical companies making some profit. It’s the extremes that are crippling our system.

Are you ok with letting someone die if they can’t pay for services? If not, it’s in your interest to go to a system that has everyone paying in. That’s why we have Social Security. Force people to pay, because we know a lot of people won’t save for retirement. We used to have poor houses for the elderly, now people have more of a chance to be able to stay in their homes as they age and maintain their lifestyle. Do you want 70 year olds begging on the street?

Do you want 30 year olds unable to get cancer treatment that can cure them? Cancer treatment is not typically emergency room care, you have to pay for it.

Any chronic illness is not going to be tested for and treated in the ER. Thyroid problems, skin problems, stuff like that, ER is not the answer for.

@jca2 An ER, from what I understand from my medical friends, will treat all emergencies. So, if any of the problems you mention, cause an emergency situation, the ER will treat it. Perhaps some of the emergencies could have been averted by an earlier catch. However, keep in mind, many people with excellent insurance do not have their problems caught until they become emergencies. I have a good friend who just passed away in Toronto because of a Stage IV cancer that was not caught earlier.

@JLeslie So, since the government knows best, we’ll force everybody into the same bucket? Do we do that with flood insurance? Earthquake insurance? Umbrella insurance?

Do you trust the government to save us from “the extremes that are crippling our system”? I think our system is being crippled because third party insurance has made consumer decisions unnecessary; and because doctors, hospitals and big pharma are run by humans, they realize they can maximize their profits by paying the politicians to keep the system as is.

Think about this. How exactly did Obamacare lower the +total cost_ of health care? Not the patients’ share, but the actual cost?

@Caravanfan As I understand it, you are a doctor who should know more about the “excesses” in healthcare. Has Obamacare addressed a_any_ of these excesses? How do you think Medicare for All will do it?

@stanleybmanly Just because Obama thought a plan modeled after a “Republican Governor” plan, does not make the plan good or bad. However, those of us who have actually tried to buy insurance without government subsidies know just how expensive the plans are. Even the bronze plan is unaffordable. How about higher deductible and higher co-pay? Sorry, that plan is not available for your age group!

@Pandora Catching a disease early is often more luck than skill. Perhaps @Caravanfan can weigh in on this. I have had many friends with excellent health insurance whose major illnesses were not caught until it was too late.

@gorillapaws That is a great find. I have not seen it before. But it did not surprise me in the least. I always knew Obama was more concerned about his election than anything else.

@stanleybmanly What has the only SENSIBLE solution achieved in bringing our costs down? How many people on Obamacare pay for their actual insurance? Why would 44 million of us choose to go without this great invention?

When I was laid off a few years ago, I was offered COBRA. It allows you to maintain your insurance for 36 months after being laid off. Trouble is, it’s so pricey, no one can afford it. Especially if you are laid off! It would have cost me $800 a month. I chose to make my house payment and play Russian roulette with my health.

@chyna So now you can pay for the bronze Obamacare plan the same $800 per month, or even higher.

@crazyguy: Perhaps you missed my point. People often say “you can go without insurance, and if you get sick, just go to the ER.” You said it above: ”“Keep in mind that even the uninsured people do have a safety net: it is called the ER’s.”OK, but say you have a slow thyroid (chronic condition). Symptoms that need to be managed are weight gain, hair loss, dry skin, etc. The patient needs prescriptions of medication for their thyroid. Are they going to go to the ER to discuss their symptoms and get a prescription?

Someone has diabetes. Chronic condition. They need insulin or other diabetes medication or else their numbers are going to go into “danger mode.” Who is going to check them and prescribe the medication on an ongoing basis? What about tests needed to check their progress with the medication(s)?

Someone has high cholesterol. Chronic condition. Who’s going to test them on an ongoing basis? The ER?

@crazyguy – I’m confused. Are you arguing against the ACA because it didn’t help bring healthcare to millions of Americans, or are you against it because it….wait – what are you saying?

You’re not really arguing that we should maintain a whole industry that profits off of denying people healthcare, are you? And is your assertion that health care is not a right and should not be? You are all over the place.

Did anyone mention the Republicans would have gone into a tizzy if Obama’s plan insured everyone? ACA was a compromise.

Also, @jca2 is right that people with chronic problems aren’t treated in ER’s. That was my cancer treatment example, but hers is better. Diabetes, thyroid, all sorts of chronic illnesses.

@jca2 I am not a medical doctor. Even if I were I would not presume to have all the answers. However, I do know that the one size-fits-all or Obamacare’s approach of 3-sizes-fit-all is doomed to fail. What I am saying is that every person has unique circumstances in terms of financial resources and health needs. The government cannot possibly provide the millions of separate solutions required. If there is sufficient demand for thyroid condition control, or diabetes monitoring or high cholesterol monitoring, an industry will develop around the need.

@crazyguy: “What I am saying is that every person has unique circumstances in terms of financial resources and health needs. The government cannot possibly provide the millions of separate solutions required.”

What do you mean by “the government”? The only thing people have discussed here is single-payer. While it would be nice to nationalize the whole thing, single-payer is not “the government” providing any “solution”. What are you talking about? Seriously.

@crazyguy There is sufficient need for cancer drugs and that industry colludes to charge high prices.

Also, patents prevent competition.

One size fits all? What does that mean? You don’t know what illness you will have next month. God forbid.

@crazyguy: Having people without insurance go to an ER is a “one size fits all,” proposed by you and others (here and elsewhere), and it just doesn’t work.

There are clinics people can go to, but they still need tests and the exams and tests still cost money. A test like an MRI or CAT scan might be hundreds of dollars or more. You take that plus the cost of the exam plus the cost of the medications and you can see where it develops into thousands of dollars for someone.

@crazyguy – Please correct me if I’m wrong. I’m going to attempt to summarize your position here.

Having private for-profit health insurance companies is a good thing, because it allows people the choice of buying health insurance or not, and purchasing coverage that they believe they need.

If the above is correct, you also support the following:

- It’s ok if people purchase the wrong level of health insurance and are unable to get the care they need, because “freedom” or something.
– It’s ok that people lose everything they worked for if they get sick and don’t have sufficient coverage
– It’s ok that millions of people can’t afford any health insurance, because if they really need it, they can just walk into an ER. Preventive medicine and everything that is actually considered health care is nonsense.
– It’s ok that all of the above suffering exists because it allows private health insurance companies to make huge profits.

I could be way off, so I apologize if this is not what you are saying. But if you are, that’s a pretty extreme position to have. It’s explicitly calling for the suffering and death and millions of people.

@crazyguy ”...What I am saying is that every person has unique circumstances in terms of financial resources and health needs…”

Every fire is different. Should we go back to the days of fire insurance and disband the fire department?

Every crime is different. Should we have private security protect us via insurance instead of the police, so you want the murder, arson and rape policy, but don’t want to upgrade to the forcible sodomy or malicious wounding coverage?

Every student is different. Should we abandon the public schools and take up the “small government” Somalia model?

The government cannot possibly provide the millions of separate solutions required

Every other advanced economy does it, at half the cost per capita. Americans pay literally twice as much per person with worse results.

American government health care spending per capita alone is higher than countries like Germany and France and Canada. That does not include all the private spending, including employer and employee insurance premiums.

This was true long before Obamacaere.

@crazyguy You are always going to have people who don’t go to get physicals or go to the hospital until what they have is serious. Insurance or not. But their insurance is going to pay for it. The hospital doesn’t get stiffed for the whole bill and pass it on to taxpayers.

As someone who grew up in a poor neighborhood where insurance was unheard of, I can tell you for a fact that the emergency room in my neighborhood was the primary medical care for most of the people. When the kids got sick that is where they went. And there will also be those people who will refuse to go to the hospital because they can’t afford to pay a thing and they feel it wrong. Like my dad. Who hemorrhage after having a tooth pull and waited till it was almost too late to go to the hospital because he had 7 mouths to feed and didn’t like charity. Sure it was partly pride and maybe insurance wouldn’t have changed the outcome, but also maybe he would’ve listened to my mom and gone to the doctor sooner before he needed blood. He ended up going to the hospital and got tainted blood. (1960).
And yes you can still die even after getting a medical check-up. My aunt lived a healthy life and got her dental work done every 6 months. She had healthy teeth and on her final 6-month exam, the doctor discovered she had aggressive mouth cancer. She died 5 months later. Nothing could be done for this cancer.
You also forget the people with long term illnesses who will just go to the hospital if they have no insurance. Again. Passed on to the Taxpayer. So why not Univeral Health Care? The government regulates the cost and there’s no freaken co-pay. . You get sick your covered.

@crazyguy you misunderstand me. I didn’t state Obamacare as the best solution. I’m saying the obvious best solution would be the universal coverage typical in every first world country but ours. I’ve won the lottery simply through living long enough to qualify for medicare. I’m comfortable and covered whether I use it or not. I can sit on my but and wait out this disease, while some poor slob slaving for minimum wage not only cannot afford decent coverage, but runs the risk of financial ruin if not death simply for doing his crappy job. Ours is indeed a great country, but the injustice defining our healthcare situation is beyond intolerable. Again, we are going to wind up with socialized medicine, whether we want to or not. Trump IS NOT going to come up with a better plan for exactly the same reason the Republicans have not invented anything. The insurance companies invented Obamacare because it was the best they could do to guarantee their own survival and ability to rake in exorbitant profits as parasitic middlemen. Again, the best way to cut costs and cover everyone is to eliminate the hugely expensive hodgepodge and tangle of insurance. We ARE going to do it anyway. What do you suppose is going to happen with the arrival of the covid vaccine?

@Pandora I am talking about people who go to the doctor for physicals and all recommended tests, and still do not discover cancers or other life-threatening illnesses until it is too late. Medical science is not perfect, as I am sure, @Caravanfan will confirm. The example I gave was of a female in Toronto who just passed away at the ripe old age of 64 because her colon cancer was not discovered until it got to Stage IV. Your aunt is a perfect example of somebody who was current with her dental appointments and still succumbed to something that could have been caught earlier – see https://facty.com/conditions/cancer/10-symptoms-of-mouth-cancer/?style=quick&utm_source=adwords&adid=294920321975&utm_medium=c-search&utm_term=%2Bmouth%20%2Bcancer&utm_campaign=FH-USA

Your Dad may have been helped by national health, but maybe not. Remember, under national health, doctors become salaried employees; you get dedicated ones and shall-we-say not-so-dedicated ones.

Until we have transparency in medical costs that leads to a meaningful reduction in costs, it is pointless shuffling the costs around.

@crazyguy, “You get dedicated ones and shall-we-say not-so-dedicated one”, You get dedicated one and not so dedicated now even with paying the high cost they charge. You also get quacks and doctors that barely passed medical school. You don’t know who you get until you are in their care. Don’t believe that everyone who becomes a doctor does it for noble reasons. If anything it may make the ones who got in the medical field to become rich out of it, so you only end up with the doctors that actually care.
Oh, and save on a lot of unnecessary test and procedures that help pad their bills.

@stanleybmanly I understand the assumed benefits of universal coverage. What most people do not realize is that universal coverage is universal in the sense that everybody is covered , but is not universal in the sense that every test and treatment are covered. In almost all every “first world country” private insurance exists in parallel for those expensive and/or experimental tests and treatments which have not yet been added to universal health care, The only exception I know of is Canada; and that is why hospitals near our northern border provide services for Canadians.

My wife and I are both on Medicare. We have purchased a Medicare Advantage plan from Kaiser Permanente and other than minor co-pays from time to time, have no medical expenses. Medicare could be made available to everybody and to all pre-existing conditions. As you may expect total costs will rise, but cost per covered patient will decline simply because younger people just don’t catch diseases of age.

By all means. However, keep in mind that the US will spend twice as much as any other first world country. Because by just switching the payor, you do not magically reduce the costs.

@crazyguy You do reduce the cost if you reduce what they can collect. That is why the medical community, and insurances and pharmaceutical companies don’t want this.

I think that judgement is incorrect regarding costs. Of course there would be supplemental private insurance available for those willing to buy it, just as there is with medicare NOW. But what would be eliminated is most of the expense dedicated to corporate profit, CEO and other bureaucratic salaries and the blizzard of paperwork currently consuming the working hours of medical professionals.

@crazyguy – Ok, so it’s just a theoretical cost concern, despite the fact that we’d be reducing all kinds of middlemen and having a bigger say in negotiating costs, etc?

Sounds like you are edging your way towards a true nationalized system. Your concern – not an invalid one – is that allowing any profit motive into health care will invariably result in people profiting. I agree.

The single-payer compromise has been killed by the Reps and Dems because they receive a ton of money from the insurance industry. Single-payer is overwhelming popular, yet this position doesn’t have a place in either corporate party. We tried single-payer. Now with 2 parties publicly advocating for the death of Americans, we can – and should – push for nationalizing the whole thing. If they realize their mistake in a couple of years, panic, and decide to go with single-payer, fine. But that’s no longer enough.

I agree with you that health should not be commodified.

@crazyguy ”...Because by just switching the payor, you do not magically reduce the costs…”

Sure you do. Medicare has much lower administrative expenses, it doesn’t have shareholders that expect dividends/stock buybacks/rapid growth, it doesn’t have a C-suite with executives pulling in 8 figures, it doesn’t have marketing expenses or corporate jets, or lobbyists. All of that shit has nothing to do with healthcare, it’s just like a parasite that’s siphoning value out of the system, meaning less care for patients and lower reimbursements for the providers.

@Pandora By making all billing fully transparent, and giving the consumer (the patient) a choice of what treatments and tests are chargeable on his/her account, you will reduce costs. However, if the consumer has zero incentive to save costs, expenses will never come down.

@gorillapaws Is that why the Department of Defense is so efficient that a toilet costs the Pentagon 10 times what you and I would pay?

^ I knew you were for nationalizing it all! Nice.

@crazyguy I thought we were talking about Medicare? which has consistently had much lower administrative overhead than private insurers. If Medicare is buying expensive toilets somehow, it’s doing so and still managing to crush the private insurers in terms of efficiency of healthcare dollars spent on healthcare.

@crazyguy ”...if the consumer has zero incentive to save costs, expenses will never come down…”

If I offered to 100% cover the cost of a colonoscopy for anyone under the age of 35 on this site, how many people do you think would immediately jump up at the opportunity for a free ass-probing? Generally speaking, the demand for healthcare is inelastic.

@crazyguy I’m all for transparency, but what choice do you have if there is one drug to save your life? What choice do you have in an emergency? What choice do you have living in a one hospital town? What choice do you have when very few doctors have experience doing a particular procedure?

How many people do you know who trust doctors and don’t understand medical problems nor the medical system well enough to evaluate possible choices available to them? You seem pretty smart, that means you are probably smarter than 50% of the population on the bell curve. What might seem obvious to you is not obvious or available to everyone.

@gorillapaws Medicare has lower administrative costs because there is zero incentive to reduce payouts. It is easy to save on administrative costs if all you do is check to make sure the forms have the right kind of entries and then you pay. However, administrative costs go up when you actually start looking at what the content of those entries is.
You say: “Generally speaking, the demand for healthcare is inelastic.” That is because the American consumer thinks all doctors are infallible. My medical friends and I know better.

@JLeslie Transparency will tell you, the consumer, what the doctor’s recommended test and treatment will cost you and your insurance company. If you have zero skin in the game, you probably wouldn’t care. But if you were responsible for say 10% of the cost, you may want to dig into the relative benefits and costs.

I dare say that you do not understand what the service advisor tells you at the local auto dealer’s. Yet you hopefully don’t say yes to all the expensive repairs he is incentivized to sell you.

@crazyguy: “But if you were responsible for say 10% of the cost, you may want to dig into the relative benefits and costs.”

Yeah, when my son had to have an emergency appendectomy December of last year, I really would have preferred to be presented with a full list of every test, procedure, and cost before giving the thumbs up to treating him. And when his procedure left him with an abscess in January, that created a very dangerous situation that required an emergency admittance and 3-night stay in MGH, I certainly should have said, “woah! Hold up there skippy. Let’s take a look at that menu and prices. I’d love to see everything you’re about to do to save the life of my son before I give you thumbs up!”

You can’t truly believe what you’re writing. And since you’ve dabbled with some good points about commodifying basic things like healthcare, and even suggested that we nationalize the whole system, I think you might be playing devil’s advocate for some reason.

This isn’t about cost, and you understand that. It’s about human rights, and whether we should continue to demand the murder of our neighbors because we like the idea of private health insurance. It’s also about the concept of tying healthcare to employment, which is another absurd concept that should have everyone walking out into the street right now, rolling their guillotines behind them.

@crazyguy I am one of those people who do give a damn about what my insurance company pays or what the insurance pays or what the EOB says. I agree knowing fees ahead of time might help people shop around a little, but it doesn’t work for emergencies, when there is no competition, and that happens a lot in medicine. Not to mention, how often do I ask my doctor how much something costs and they say, “you will have to ask your insurance,” and then my insurance asks, “what will it be coded?” It’s a circus half the time, purposely made difficult. I just received a statement from my insurance for blood work. I was charged $507.78, received a discount because of my insurance of $470.18 and I paid $37.60. My insurance paid ZERO, I have a high deductible plan, I pay every penny that is owed to the lab. You don’t think that is total BULLSHIT a discount of 90%? Of course it is. Aren’t I so lucky that my insurance company gets me a 90% discount? That is a total game. I can get the tests for $100 on my own. They jack up the price just to bring it down. That is your free market at work. The labs and insurers can charge and say whatever they want on a bill. They LIE to try to make you feel so grateful you have insurance and keep you in the system.

Plus, people develop relationships with their doctors, and if that doctor starts gouging them they are not going to compare prices or shop around so fast. Remember how Republicans were so upset some of them had to change doctors when they used the ACA? Well, do they want to be able to keep a relationship with their doctors and have reasonable costs or not? Do they prefer to shop around?

On facebook I was just reminiscing about Bethesda Naval Medical Center (now Walter Reed) and my treatment there. Two of us on the thread had extremely similar memories of getting healthcare there when we were growing up. I remember when I first was on my own as a young adult dealing with private healthcare and after a short time I realized how horrible it is in more ways than one. That is one of the reasons I am in favor of socialized medicine, I grew up in it an see the difference. My uncle who is a hard core Trumper and Republican and retired doctor, he used to be against socialized medicine, but in the last 15 years or so he has been using the VA and he quickly changed his tune on that one political issue and now thinks we should socialize.

Healthcare absolutely should be socialized, available equally to all regardless of economic status. Not just because it is right or moral, but because it is also advantageous to society. A healthy population is a productive population.

@JLeslie Just remember the devil’s in the details. That is why Hillary considered socializing medicine in the early 90s and gave up. And why Obama,a settled for just a minor tweak.

Not only are there a lot of details, but also, there are fully entrenched special interests guarding every bit of their share of the humongous pie.

I think the +only_ way is to chip away at some of the excesses. Big Pharma is a good starting point, but remember big Pharma gives a lot of political donations.