Here’s a Big Problem With Sanders' Health care plan: It sounds great, there's no way he can deliver
Here’s One Big Problem With The Bernie Sanders Plan For Health Care Utopia
It sounds great, but there's no way he can deliver.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-health-plan_us_569ff110e4b076aadcc50807
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To help pay for his plan’s unprecedented benefits, Sanders proposes to extract unprecedented savings from the health care system. Here is where the details get fuzzy and hard to accept at face value, even beyond the usual optimistic assumptions that figure into campaign proposals. Sanders expects a large portion of the savings to come from reductions in administrative waste, because insurance billing would basically end. Another big chunk would come from squeezing the industries that produce health care services and supplies -- and squeezing those industries hard.
That last part should set off alarm bells for anybody who remembers the fight to pass the Affordable Care Act. Two particular episodes from 2009 -- one widely publicized, one barely noticed -- are a reminder of how much power those groups wield in Washington. For Sanders to realize his vision for single-payer health care, he’d have to overcome even greater resistance than Obamacare’s architects faced. And Sanders has offered no reason to think he could do that, which is something Democratic voters might want to keep in mind.
Two Lessons from Obamacare
The first and better-known episode from 2009 was the battle over the “public option” -- a proposal, crafted by Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker, to create a government-run insurance plan that would compete with private insurers for customers. Hacker and others figured the public option could dictate lower payment rates to suppliers and providers of medical care, just like Medicare does, thereby keeping premiums low and forcing private insurers to match them.
Voters liked the idea, according to polls, and experts had certified that it would save the government money. But it ran into huge opposition -- not just from insurers, who didn’t want the competition, but from doctors, makers of drugs and medical devices, and hospitals, all of whom understood the proposal would cut into their revenue.
House Democratic leaders had to weaken the proposal significantly, reducing the public option’s ability to force down health care prices, in order to pass it. Even that compromise couldn’t get it through the Senate, where Joe Lieberman, then an independent senator from Connecticut, spoke out against the public option and many Democrats, including a few liberals, quietly cheered him on.
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... the only way we could get single payer passed is if we had control of BOTH the House and the SEnate. That would be quite a feat to pull-off.
= new reply since forum marked as read
It's actually pretty smart if you're an alert stalker, alert on enough posts and eventually you get lucky.
Unfortunately that one didn't choose wisely.
Second 7-0 result on one of my posts today.
Thanks jury!
Thank you for that.
Say it ain't so PUMAs!
Send us your money and just get over it.
What's not to get excited about?
Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah.... They don't wish to hear it.
This won't help, either.... 
Or, this.... 
So, I'm done with the willful ignorance and nasty responses. They should just admit they DON'T WISH TO KNOW.
Until they need to know, that is.
It is getting soooooooooooo predictable.
... If facts didn't get in the way then, why should they now with this hit piece?
It's poorly referenced. If you're going to write about the healthcare delivery system, then you should understand how it has performed from the inception of fee-for-service models of the 1960's, prospective payment system of the 1980's and capitative per-member managed care "evolution" that led us to non-negotiated insurance and pharmaceutical coverage as outlined in their presently fucked-up tier system, especially after Medicare's Part D that left so many people in the donut hole.
The cost of this "evolved" system will increase another 6 trillion dollars over the next 10 years. I don't think the job market and bad health outcomes that prevail in our working population can sustain that, nor the 29 million people who still have NO health care insurance. We need a system that covers everybody.
The numbers outlined in Sander's Medicare for All SAVE lives and improve outcomes. The working class is not able to save a dime under this current "evolution", even after ACA, which is better for some people, but still give you the scenario above.
So, who the hell is this shill kidding? 
And then compromise it away.
Good plan.
Whereby very liberal Democrats are going to become the majority in Congress and pass Sanders' agenda.