I'm not so sure its all that far. Sure, it would be nuts for Obama to start bashing the system he set up and move to another idea, but when I see some liberals arguing online how "Obama was crazy to listen to conservatives" and how cooperative he was setting up a conservative health care system designed by Mitt Romney and the Heritage foundation rather than the single payer Canadian model he wanted I can see how such a move is possible. You also have a bit more confidence in the people than me. Have you see some recent man in the street style interviews lately? Its absolutely amazing how clueless and devoid of knowledge the people are after watching reality shows and discussing the latest scandal like the Miley Cyrus twerking or whatever they call it. Its more important for the people to discuss Cyrus sticking out her tongue like a basset hound than it is to be concerned about issues that really matter.

Make no mistake, I have no faith in the common sense of the American public as a group.  I do however have faith in their self-interested nature.  I don't mean that to disparage people at large.  Quite the contrary.  I think the predictable self-interested behavior of people is generally a good thing.  

It takes some huge and obvious problem for that nature to kick in and actually motivate citizens to impact policy and/or elections but this issue is just such a thing.  

What's going to cause people to recoil from this, or at least away from single-payer alternatives, are the things that mostly haven't kicked in yet.  Insurance companies are canceling plans by the hundreds of thousands.  The premiums that were supposed to go down, or at worst stay the same, for those who already had insurance are actually going up.  In some cases dramatically.  Those who have to sign up or who want to sign up, generally can't still.  

These are the big obvious things that will actually draw people's ire.  Whatever your position on this Presidency, most of its issues so far (the various scandals, the foreign policy blunders) have been arcane issues that don't hit citizens' personal self interest.  Not so with this.  

If they can get it fixed in a hurry and the early indications about the structural issues with the demographics of the population who are actually signing up turn out to be wrong, they'll be able to fix this and in the long run it probably won't be that big of a deal politically.  But those are two GIANT ifs.  Most indications are that it won't be fixed quickly (meaning they'll have to take some action to avoid penalizing people early next year for not using a system that doesn't work) and, the bigger problem that isn't getting much attention yet, is that the demographic issues of those signing up put this thing on a path to collapsing.  They are massively behind where they need to be on signups and what information there is so far says that the majority of people who are signing up are either Medicare recipients (who are essentially being directed right back onto Medicare) or are those who can't get a policy anywhere else because of medical history or pre-existing conditions.  

In other words, the expensive side of the population is signing up in droves.  The profitable side of the system is NOT signing up at all which, if not corrected, will cause this thing to fall apart under a wave of skyrocketing premiums that, and this is key, will be passed on to everyone with an insurance policy, not just those who get their insurance through the exchanges.  The entirety of the individual mandate was to give insurance companies a way to avoid losing money in the face of all the new coverage requirements (particular treatments, no denying pre-existing conditions, etc).  If the individual mandate is ignored by those whom it applies to, ACA explodes.  

These are the things that make the switch to single payer a bridge too far.  This is doubly true when you compare the results that people will feel with the very well known and well publicized statements about the impact of Obamacare on the healthcare market.  

• If you like your insurance, you can keep it.
• If you like your doctor, you can keep him.
• We will lower premiums for the average family by $2,500 a year.

It's just possible that while you both appear to disagree and even though you're probably talking about the same coin, there are two different sides.

One is that contractors are necessary to support the myriad of government activities and the second is those in government funneling of public funds into private business hands. School vouchers are a good example of the second part. IMHO, those that choose other than public education can probably afford to send their children to private schools and should not have access to public funds to do so.

I couldn't agree more. Why should anyone have health care coverage. Why shouldn't  health insurance companies be able to reject applicants with preexisting health problems. Hospitals should be able to charge any amount of money for procedures not given (oh, they already do?). Doctors need to give more referrals to other unnecessary tests in order to support the health care conglomerates. More companies should increase profits by denying spousal health care coverage and blame it on Obamacare (i.e. UPS).

There's enough bad things going now a days. Ensuring that all people have affordable health care coverage (even if they don't want it) is not one of them.

This is going pretty far afield of the original topic, but school vouchers DON'T benefit those who could afford to send their kids to private school already.  There are economic caps on who is eligible (just like any other form of welfare).  Voucher programs are entirely directed at the poorest echelon of society so that they can choose to get their kid out of schools in poor neighborhoods, which are generally terrible schools, and send them somewhere where they will receive a more competitive education.  A good example of the positive impact this has can be seen in the Louisiana voucher program that the President's administration is suing to put an end to for a bunch of nonsense reasons (really because successful voucher programs are a threat to the government monopoly on education, which means its a threat to teachers' unions, which are a core constituency of the party). 

Except that this isn't making healthcare more affordable.  It's going to make it more expensive.  As time goes on, it will compound until the system collapses.  That's the whole point I was making about the demographics of the people signing up so far.  If the young and healthy don't sign up and opt to pay the fine instead then the system becomes financially not-viable.  Even with those people most plans, including those not on exchanges, were going to get more expensive as insurance companies sought to subsidize the cost of the new high risk plans they are forced by law to offer.  Without those people insurance companies will HAVE to raise rates on everyone in order to pay for the mandated coverage of those who have pre-existing conditions or health problems in their history. 

It's also worth noting that your second paragraph sets up a classical ACA-supporter (or generally progressive) false choice.  You're saying that failure to support the ACA is akin to wanting healthcare to be more expensive, less available and generally wanting people to be sick and die (if you extrapolate your argument to its logical conclusion).  Of course, this is bullshit.  You can be against the ACA, think it is bad for the healthcare industry, bad for the health of the American people and bad for the economy and STILL support alternatives that will guarantee coverage of pre-existing conditions and will expand coverage and bring down rates.  The ACA isn't the only possible idea out there and to imply otherwise is typical progressive response to make it look like those who disagree are greedy, evil mustache twirling assholes who just want people to die in exchange for profits. 

It's dishonest crap and it's a big part of the reason we can no longer have real conversation about issues in this country.  Opponents can't possibly honestly disagree on the best way to solve a problem.  No, if they don't agree with my personal favorite solution they are clearly evil baby eaters.  

Amen to that.  (Slightly) subtler version of Alan Grayson.

How do we know the republican billionaires aren't funding denial of service attacks and then walking to the pulpit and saying "lolz see I told ya Obamacare and abortion must be repealed!"

Seems a likely scenario to me.

Umm.. probably because DDoS attacks are easy to identify for a large organization with infrastructure like the US Governments and if they had been identified the Obama administration would be screaming it from the rooftops because it would be a legit and reasonable cause for all the systems problems that removes their culpability.  

if cisco employees can sort of ddos their own company via email reply-to-alls .. what do you expect would happen to any gov site? technical difficulties or disaster is par for the course of any IT project. especially public sector ones.

I think those teachers that support the Democratic Party do so because they believe that the Democratic Party supports them. I understand your desire to politicize this discussion since school vouchers are generally supported by the GOP (privatization) and not so much the DNC.

From what I understand the lawsuit deals with segregation issues. Seems that Louisiana has had some issues in the past and has been under Federal mandate for those discrepancies.

The issues that have been also raised indicate that private/charter schools fair no better in core curriculum subjects than public schools, lacks specific accountability and that public funds are being provided to schools with religious ties including religious curriculum teachings. What success you are referring to, I'm not sure.

I just don't think public educational funding should be used for for-profit schools or for schools that emphasize a religious education, it's about where my tax dollar goes.

So, Like, what's your solution to ensure that all people have affordable health insurance coverage and what protections are need so that insurance companies can't deny coverage on preexisting conditions? What is actually so bad about socialized medicine? (not advocating, just curious) We pay $2,200.00/mo for BC/BS coverage, is this reasonable?

.

I'd be happy to have a discussion on the merits and challenges of voucher programs and the horrendous state of public primary education in this country as well as the crap reasoning behind the DOJs lawsuit against Louisiana, but this thread isn't the place for it.  Start a new thread about it and I'll happy contribute.  

As for:

Here's one example of a solution, proposed by a former Democrat Congressman from GA.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/243434/real-health-care-reform-jim-marshall

That's just one example.  There are many more potential solutions.  My point wasn't to advocate for a particular one (though I like Jim Marshall's more than most) but to point out that your "we shouldn't have healthcare" shtick was dishonest nonsense.  It's possible to be against ACA and still be in favor of improving the American healthcare system.  But since the ACA is largely indefensible based on the President's promises it's easier to pretend anyone who opposes it eats babies with polar bear blood for ketchup while using a seal-skin napkin than it is to defend the law.

As for socialized medicine, the reasons it is bad are many.  Look at the NSA scandals and then tell me if your comfortable giving the government even more of your personal information.  Look at the rollout of ACA or the efficiency Medicare/Medicaid and tell me you're comfortable with them having complete control over the healthcare industry and, more importantly, what you are or are not allowed access to within that industry. Look at studies about the shortage of GPs in this country and realize that Medicare is widely considered by many parties to be the primary cause of it (making it harder for GPs to make money) and then imagine that writ large.  

Those are all good reasons it is bad, but my problem with government run healthcare largely stems from my own experience.  You know what the government does well?  What it does better than private enterprise?  

Nothing.  

Now that's not to say there aren't things the government should do.  Of course there are.  But they should be limited to the things that private enterprise or the states can't reasonably accomplish.  The common defense, collection of taxes to support the government, everything foreign relations related, etc.  I spent a decade working for the government in various roles and had a successful career at it.  Public servants are generally normal people looking for a paycheck with the occasional civic minded person thrown in (or realistically, it's a combination of the two).  But as an organization, the government is inefficient to a fault and has accountability to no one.  At least private enterprise is accountable to share holders.  There is no incentive to improve within the permanent bureaucracy, because there are no shareholders capable of firing everyone.  

Simply put, I don't trust them to make medical decisions for my family and no matter how you spin it, socialized medicine puts the government in the middle of my family's medical decisions.

Well, there is certainly evidence that some of the American public are dumb.

I saw that article you linked earlier today. This is pathetic ( the bullying accusation ). Heaven forbid that someone win a football game by a landslide. Nooooooo, we might "hurt someone's feeeeelings"....

Let's raise a larger generation of wussies shall we!!!

 It also ties in to the OP... Why the FUCK is it so unreasonable that we DEMAND people ( and politicians ) be accountable for their own actions instead of blaming someone else.

The problem with healthcare costs isn't the insurance companies and what they allow or disallow, it's with the doctors and hospitals.

Without going into detail, I have personally been given unnecessary test and asked to come back repeatedly for what where unecessary visits. I have gone for standard annual visit and have seen addional charges on my bill that had nothing to do with the visit. (they insisted it wasn't a billing error). Multiply these slimy practices 300 million times, and the cost becomes substatial.

It should be up to a patient and a doctor to decide the treatment, but all too often, the doctors and hosptals take advantage of the patients reliance on them. "they must know what they are doing".

If there was some way to actively monitor these dishonest practices, it would go a long way to reducing costs.

WOW ... THIS  VERY  WEB SITE HAD  A ISSUES ... JUST  LAST  MONTH  ??? AND  HAS  BEEN  OPERATIONAL& TAKING   REVENUE  FOR  HOW  LONG NOW ???  ANY  SITE  RELEASED WITHOUT   A BETA  TESTING  WILL  HAVE   GLITCHES ... REMEMBER  AMAZON???   YOU  SHEEPLE  ARE SO  QUICK TO PASS  JUDGMENT ... WHEN  UR  LIL  IPHONE  HAD ANTENA ISSUES .. DID U  TAKE  IT  BACK  TO APPLE  ???   NO U DIDNT !! U ALLOWED   THEM  TO  MAKE THE  ADJUSTMENTS    ... EVERY  WEBSITE HAS  ITS  ISSUES ... HOW SOON DID  WE  FORGET  THE   ISSUES  OR  TWITTER ....HELL  FACEBOOK  FOR THAT  MATTER    .....

Tempting to lay the blame at the feet of one or two culprits, but it ain't that simple.  The healthcare environment of today is the result of a very complex ecosystem evolving over a long period of time, influenced by too many variables, the unintended consequences of which may not have appeared for decades after the variables kicked in, for any one or two actors to be assigned 'blame'.  Oversimplifying it won't help fix it.  The vast majority of physicians and hospitals, I'd venture to say 95% or more, do what they do every day in good faith, attempting their best to do what's right by patients within the confines of the system in which they find themselves working.

Mind you, there are dishonest actors among physicians and hospitals, but to contend that they aren't 'actively monitored' is an indication of lack of knowledge.  Even if there were a way to do so, completely eliminating the truly bad actors, an exceedingly tiny fraction of physicians and hospitals at most, would have measurable but negligible impact on healthcare costs.  Not saying they should be ignored, but the ROI on increased 'active monitoring', beyond the scrutiny already in place, is not great. 

Defensive much?  LOL

For another 9 days yet I happen to work for the largest Hospital Corp in the US. Let me tell you, it isn't at ALL about what's best for the patient anymore. It is all about making windfall profits and pleasing the stockholders. PLAIN AND SIMPLE.

Top Corporate Management bring down millions per year in salary and bonuses, realize record profits and then over inflate their budget so they can justify cutting hours of the people in the trenches doing the REAL work. The Dr's are forced to meet "quotas" and see "x" number of patients per day. They don't have time to actually listen to the patients or become genuinely concerned about the personal aspects of the individual. 

Every year we take at 15% price increase every quarter. The profits just soar.

I've seen the corporation commit fraud with Medicare and just get a tiny slap on the wrist for it.

But alas.. the liberal media sure as hell isn't going to report that! 

You know after reading that article I think I may change my position on health care and opt for socialized medicine.

why not Phoon, everyone knows it's true but the liberals (such a term) don't control the enterprises, the corporations do.

If hospital costs were forced to be transparent and a real market existed this behavior wouldn't fly, because the hospital's prices would not be competitive.  Anyone who thinks that single-payer or greater government involvement in healthcare is going to have any positive affect on healthcare costs doesn't understand just how much Medicare fraud exists and how little it gets punished.  In this case "liberals" are relevant because they are the supporters of Medicare status quo.  Any attempts to reform the program are met with nonsense commercials of Paul Ryan look-a-likes pushing old women in wheelchairs off cliffs.  

It gets worse - http://dailycurrant.com/2013/10/21/obamacare-website-accidentally-enrolls-thousands-in-sex-offender-registry-2/

What!!!!

Gotta love satire.  

Just one of the reasons I'm not a fan of big hospital chains or big multi-state banks.  Too easy for HQ to lose sight of the 'mission' for which the individual hospital was built in the first place.  There is a whole 'nother argument about the benefits and disadvantages of for-profit vs. not-for-profit hospitals.

Having said that, success, when achieved legally and within the rules one is given, is not a 'windfall' no matter the amount of money involved.  When achieved illegally or in disregard of the rules of the game, it's fraud and you would stand to reap a sizable reward for whistleblowing on some of that fraud you've witnessed.

guess it's okay to bend the rules especially when it's in your favor. like the financial meltdown, remember that.