The thing is that single payer is the worst of all possible health care schemes, except for all of the others. Only if we offer a “Medicare for All” kind of plan will the risk be spread evenly. My fear is that the “public option” likely to pass–if any–will become a dumping ground for all of the highest-cost, unhealthiest people, which will effectively be a subsidized giveaway to for-profit insurance companies who will be able to skim the cream and leave the dregs to the public dole.

I think it’s wrong that corporations make money off of denying people care when they need it. That’s inherent in the model of “managed care” brought to you by for-profit insurance companies. They’re happy to take my money when I and my family are healthy, but I live in fear that poor health might strike and I’ll learn that I might as well have stuffed all of the money I paid in insurance premiums in a mattress in my basement. At least then I’d have a wad of cash to start paying my bills.

My comment was partly an expression of my old libertarian tendencies. I’m not really a libertarian anymore, but I still tend to be automatically skeptical of the government handling anything beyond national defense and law enforcement, even though I’ve seen a lot of evidence that this can be beneficial.

He lost my vote as someone worthy of the Darwin Award — altruism keeps him alive, right down to the subsidy he still gets for anti-rejection drugs, but simply refuses to see that an extension of that altruism not tied to jobs or insurance companies could result in treatments and innovations that could make even his miserable life better.

I’m halfway to the conspiracy theory that this fucked-up legislation process has emerged in time for the next rearing of swine flu’s mucousy head. If people can’t go to work, they lose their jobs and health insurance, and the poor don’t have anything else to lose. Thus, a pandemic spreads that much faster. And if people finally lose faith in government to do anything big, then there’s goes attempting to enforce herd immunity through vaccinations — that’s already damaged due to the quacks on that issue.

This is a die-off in process. The only saving grace is that the Villlage idiots fostering this collapse could die first. They congregate in a Washington swamp, the airports will ground everyone if it gets bad enough, and they’ll be stuck with the people whose lives they endangered, just because they could stand one more year of record profits for the financiers behind the insurers.

Ian Welsh, “What’s More Important Than Saving American Lives? Almost Everything.”

To all of my friends and readers in Cali: I’m sorry. But, if it’s any consolation: as California goes, so goes the Nation?

Don’t insurance companies have other things to insure, like cars, houses, and other material goods? Can’t a large number of people who work for insurance companies shift into working for Medicare for All? There is too much evidence from around the world that shows that single-payer systems that cover everyone are the most cost-effective and the best for patients, too.

I’m just dispirited (to say the least) about the lack of real creativity in solving our problems, which leads me to suspect that Taibbi is correct in saying that Congress doesn’t really think that there is a problem. (Or, at least not one for which they’re willing to put their butts on the line.)

Honestly: that guy’s transplant was incomplete. He needs a new heart and a new brain, too (compassionate versions of both, that is.)

And, p.s.: I found a link to the story I think you’re referencing.