Parents and lawmakers speak out against Obama's speech to students

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by MysticCat

I don't know whether we would or not (and I don't know whether, if we did, it would be any more effective than what we have now or not). But I agree -- no one has actually proposed single payer.

That's why the whole debate is so frustrating to me. Some are debating proposals that are on the table or could well be on the table. Others -- many more others, perhaps -- are debating (loudly) things that aren't likely to be on the table.

I think discussion about the sky falling in with single payer are a red herring. Aside from the fact that that's not being proposed and would never pass here, "single payer" alone isn't going to fix things or make them worse. If we look around we see plenty of other countries with a variety of ways of doing things, from Canada's and Britain's systems to Germany's universal coverage using only private insurers. The devil is, as always, in the details, not in "single payer" vs. free market private insurance.

Yep. And I think this is why the initial big push to pass something without careful review and discussion of the final bill was really odd and to me suspicious. Things have slowed down now, it seems, but do any of us really feel like we know what's going to get passed?

I think the fear about single payer is based on kind of a slippery slope thing as people reflected on how the public option would function. How do you keep that merely competitive when it is subsidized by the federal government? Well, one negative possibility is that you can't and it will drive private insurers out of the marker. What would be left? At that point, wouldn't it be easier to go to a single payer system? Seeing a lot of people in favor of single payer in the media while this was being discussed added to the perception that it might be deliberately where we were headed. Without a bill to look at and any provisions explaining how this would be prevented, I think it's easy to see why people got concerned.


I think Obama's rhetoric in the speech about the public option being self-funded is kind of delusional. If more people could have been insured at a low enough cost to break even, I suspect they would have been in the existing system, but I may be underestimating the value of the government forcing people to buy insurance. Again, I'd like to see the details (or actually I'd like to see a layman's summary of the details), wouldn't you?

ETA: http://energycommerce.house.gov/Pres...00_summary.pdf
I thought the second sentence under Coverage and Choice was interesting.

ETA: Here's the text: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h3200/text of the house bill. My impression was that changes had already been made. Does anyone know where you can review those?