Sorry, but I don't buy the "But we couldn't have gotten single-payer" defense

[Recursion]

88. So, again, you're making Rahm's argument

He didn't like the law and didn't want to give up the blue dog seats for it. You don't like the law, and think we shouldn't have given up the blue dog seats for it.

I don't think it's a bad position, mind you, I just originally wanted to point out it's the same calculation Rahm made in 2010 or so.

I don't think it's a bad position, but it's not mine. The money that gets funneled to private insurers who provision Medicare and Medicaid is pretty massive, but less visible; that's a bad thing, and it would only get worse with a nationwide single payer system (the "2% overhead" for Medicare only counts getting the money to the provisioner, not what happens after the provisioner gets it). The provisioning contracts Medicare and Medicaid sign with the large insurers do not have the profit caps that ACA does, and the insured person doesn't have any say on which provisioning insurer he or she gets -- which can make a lot of difference to the individual (particularly on Medicaid).

In fact, the entire law is dependent on corporations and it uses mandates and tax dollars to assert them over our lives.

The fact that Medicare's corporate provisioning is largely hidden from the public isn't any better. As I argue above, it's worse precisely because it's opaque.