Question about the 10% of people who still don't have health insurance

[apples and oranges]

Are the remaining uninsured uninsured because they don't want to (or don't think they can afford to) spend any money on insurance, whether through the exchange or elsewhere? If that's the case, wouldn't they also refuse to pay any additional taxes under single payer?

With 90% already insured, I don't think we need single payer. We can get the same result as single payer by doing the following:

1) Create a public option for people to buy into medicare. It would increase competition while giving people a choice. Over time, I think we'd see most Americans going with the public option, but the difference is that it would be by choice.

2) Cut medical care costs, place limits on pricing for services and drugs, and stop hospitals and physicians from price gouging. Pass the savings on to customers.

[valerief]

1. People are underinsured. The deductibles and copays are exhorbitant. Single payer is the only option

to comprehensively negotiate drug prices (like the rest of the world gets to do) and to get necessary affordable medical service.

[kcjohn1]

2. You realize

Even those with insurance, they have high deductible. The average deductible is $1,000. Majority of Americans don't have emergency funds to even cover the deductible.

That is not healthcare.

[Jarqui]

3. Public option is not the same thing

Public option does not get rid of
1. the thousands in deductibles you don't have with single payer
2. the higher administration costs
3. the corporate profits Americans have to pay
4. Some folks still wouldn't have coverage and 0.1% of them as result would die annually (roughly)

As a result, American will continue to pay more for healthcare. When that happens, American jobs cost more and therefore, more wind up overseas or product costs for American made products are higher so not as many sell. And there is less disposable income for the economy.

It's long overdue to put the American worker on a fairer footing compared with the rest of the world when it comes to competing for jobs. It's long overdue to put the American manufacturer on a fairer footing compare with the rest of the world when it comes having it's products compete.

It's long overdue that Americans get a better bang for it's healthcare buck.

It's long overdue every single American had healthcare coverage so no more Americans die from the lack of it.

Remember the saying "if you want to do something, do it right". Single payer is harder to obtain but it's the right thing to do. Everybody but the health insurance companies win.

[apples and oranges]

4. The problem is cost. It would be far easier to unilaterally impose price controls on the healthcare

industry than to start over from scratch.

Make high deductibles illegal. Make prescription meds available at the same price that other countries pay. If the public option were deductible free, Americans would buy it.

[Jarqui]

6. Both are subject to some gamesmanship in pricing

but with single payer, you've really got a hammer with negotiations.

Americans are paying close to twice as much as anyone else and are about 36th in life expectancy so they've got little to lose. There's no place to go but up. Haggling a little here and there with public options and whatnot - it's a bureaucratic mess.

The present system should be burned to the stake. Get all the medical parasites, administrators who add no value and Wall Street profiteers from the misfortune of their fellow Americans off the backs of Americans.

And when you do that, you get a bunch of the financial benefits I wrote about, jobs, economy, etc. If you don't, and do public option, you don't get those benefits.

Trying to impose price controls on a fractured system would be a nightmare and a constant battle with the GOP "Oh if medical company X doesn't get a 1000 percent price increase, we'll shut the country down" That BS needs to go.

Single payer. F**k off Republicans. Live happily ever after. End of story.

I'm tired of the screwing around. 70 years of this nonsense is enough. The country needs to get this behind it so it can focus on more important issues it must face this century. Too much hot air has been expended already. And the Republicans continue to offer no solution. Let's have Bernie's revolution and be done with this.

[kiva]

5. Health insurance is not health care.

Ask one of the thousands of people who can't afford the deductibles of the lower tier plan.

[truebluegreen]

7. Better question is to ask how many of the 10%

are un-insured because their states did not expand Medicaid? What is the insured rate in Massachusetts right now? 5%? I think that is right...so maybe the additional 5% is because of that lack of expansion elsewhere.

And yes, we do need single payer. Health insurance is not health care. Health insurance is allowing the survival of vampire fucking bats leaching off of Americans: we are not citizens, we are commodities to be exploited.

[Snobblevitch]

8. The current ACA needs some revisions.

My brother's family was insured through his wife's employer. They dropped coverage for their employees. Because of the huge increase in costs. He is now paying four times as much for less coverage and a much higher deductable.

[JEB]

9. Get the insurance maggots out of the gaping wound

that is our healthcare system. eom