A stronger prescription for what ails health care

Our only choice is to try to hold the costs down. President Obama tried to make a start with a modest approach that works through the current system. If this doesnt pass constitutional muster, the obvious alternative is to emulate other industrialized nations that deliver equal or better health care outcomes for half the cost.

Im talking about a single-payer health care system. If the Supreme Court strikes down ObamaCare, a single-payer system will go from being politically impossible to being, in the long run, fiscally inevitable.

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My Mom, the Supreme Court, and the Affordable Care Act

My mom died before the Clintons attempted their push for reform, and before Obama came up with his intricate compromise. Before then, Mom’s old fashioned Medicare plan worked just fine.

So I know this crazy Supreme Court debate to overturn the Affordable Care Act would have surely given her chest pains.

She’d ask, “Why can’t the government just extend Medicare to all?” (Seniors have a way of getting to the point. Unlike lawyers.) Medicare is a single payer system that doesn’t have people crying “Socialism!” It doesn’t get conservatives’ dander up about individual liberty and the broad powers of the federal government.

And it works. Everyone gets the care they need.

Done.

If only mom were alive and in charge.

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Single-Payer or Bust

Striking down the individual mandate leaves only one of two options: adopt a system in which government pays for health care, or do nothing.

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What if Supreme Court strikes down Obama healthcare act?

(A Democrat strategist Ive spoken to) adds that defeat might make Democrats more radical and argue that what is called here a single payer system a tax-funded national health system as we have in the UK is the only real answer, rather than President Obamas market-sensitive half-way house.

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If Health Law Is Overturned, What Will Liberals Do?

If Democrats make little progress on alternatives, some purists might decide it’s best to just renew the case for a single-payer system in which all Americans receive health care paid for by the government.

Sidney M. Wolfe, the director of the Health Research Group at Public Citizen, an advocacy group, has been pushing for government-run health care for decades.

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After the Ruling

There is one easy solution to the issue—a single-payer health system that strictly controls costs and administrative fees, using evidence-based science to determine which interventions, drugs, and diagnostic tests are worth the money and effort.

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Experts: Medicaid Expansion Will Stand; Mandates Fate Unclear

Some see the potential for a quicker move toward single payer solutions if all or part of the ACA is ruled unconstitutional.

While he didnt go so far as to call for provisions of the ACA to be struck down, Bill Skeen, executive director of the California chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program, did see potential for progress in such a scenario.

If the ACA is dismantled, I dont predict there will be an easy road for single payer, but there is the sort of last-man-standing feeling that OK, the plan Congress put together isnt holding up. Single payer is the last best option.

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Growth & Justice lays out its case for Minnesota single-payer health care

What if single-payer were feasible?

On Wednesday, the St. Paul-based progressive-leaning think tank Growth & Justice made its case, releasing a first-of-its-kind analysis showing that a unified system of health care could provide all Minnesotans with guaranteed cradle-to-grave care at a projected savings of about $190 billion over 10 years. By 2023, overall savings could be 12 percent to 33 percent per year, it said.

During his gubernatorial campaign, Mark Dayton supported a single-payer system for Minnesota, Smith added. The advent of ACA presents a good opening to put the topic back in the public discourse.

“This option needs to stay on the table,” he said. “It is an attempt to change the conversation. … This is one of the last big hurdles for a fair and just society. You can’t just check out of the social contract.”

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If Health Care Reform Falls, Look in the Mirror

Candidate Barack Obama campaigned on universal coverage. He told would-be supporters that, if he were starting from scratch, single-payer would be ideal. Indeed, he even understood that the only true reform, that would sufficiently control costs and actually achieve universal coverage, was a single payer, government-sponsored health care system. The evidence is overwhelming that only such a system can achieve those goals.

Isnt it time to fight for Medicare for all?

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Single-Payer Briar Patch

The professional Obama-hater Dick Morris said today on Fox News that if President Obama is elected to a second term after the Supreme Court strikes down Obamacare (as is looking more likely) then he’ll move to a single payer system.

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Lawmakers Propose Single-Payer System For Mass.

A major national story is playing out in the halls of Beacon Hill: this week’s Supreme Court hearings on the national Affordable Health Care Act.

Some lawmakers want the state to push health care reform to the next level. Theyve introduced a bill that would bring a single-payer system to the Bay State.

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If the Mandate Fails, Single Payer Awaits

One obvious option, besides just doing nothing and allowing health care costs to continue their exponential growth while more people lose coverage, is a single-payer health insurance plan. There is no doubt about the constitutionality here — the government is clearly allowed to levy taxes to fund public benefits.

So if health care reform goes down, the next logical step may well be just extending Medicare to everyone.

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Health Care Jujitsu

But with a bit of political jujitsu, the president could turn any such defeat into a victory for a single-payer healthcare system Medicare for all.

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The Supreme Court and the National Conversation on Health Care Reform

Once again America is having one of its “national conversations” on health care reform. This time the buzz is over arguments before the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of certain provisions in the Affordable Care Act. The justices’ rulings will be landmark decisions, because they will indirectly go much beyond the act itself to our entire system of governance.

The two major substantive decisions the Supreme Court has to make are:

1. Whether Congress has the constitutional authority to mandate every legal resident in the United States to have insurance coverage for a specified package of health benefits (hereafter the “mandate”) or whether that is an issue for the states to decide.

2. Whether Congress has the constitutional authority to expand eligibility for Medicaid benefits from the highly varied income thresholds that currently define eligibility to anyone under 133 percent of the federal poverty level.

Reader Comment:

The intense attention being given to the constitutionality of the individual mandate and the severability of guaranteed issue and community rating and to the constitutionality of the Medicaid expansion superficially seems to have detracted from the fundamental issue of whether or not the Affordable Care Act itself should serve as a durable model for health care reform.

With the best possible outcome of the Supreme Court deliberations, well still be faced with uninsurance (at least 26 million uninsured), underinsurance (low actuarial value plans with spartan essential benefits) and unaffordability (lack of effective systemic cost containment).

Right now we are seeing a surge in commentaries declaring that we will end up with single payer (Medicare for all) if the mandate and guaranteed issue and community rating are struck down by the Supreme Court, simply because thats the only rational financing option left for us.

We will, in fact, end up with single payer, but not because of the pending Supreme Court decision. We will adopt a single payer system simply because we will not be able to continue to tolerate uninsurance, underinsurance and unaffordability.

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