That's the spirit! 🙄

Ok so single-payer doesn't reduce costs, just the incentives and policies that go along with it in just about every real world situation where its been tried. Distinction without a difference.

That all sounds great, but when you say that the payer isn't the issue, you dismiss the wealth of empirical data showing that single-payer systems do, in fact, "make health care more effective and efficient."

Honestly single-payer does pretty well at preventing that kind of thing. I understand your position though, especially since so much of the research that is done is publicly funded. The way it is now is basically corporate welfare on the front and back end, while supplies of life-saving drugs are restricted by…

So what solution do you propose?

A good article which dramatically illustrates your point about unnecessary care:

I think single-payer takes care of that issue. No one becomes a debtor to get care.

I agree about the amount of unnecessary care and it's part of why I want single-payer. The incentives tend to be much better at preventing that. We spend twice as much per capita, have worse outcomes, and don't cover everyone. I think single payer addresses all three issues. You're absolutely right though to raise the…

PS - my autocorrect initially changed my first sentence from "I'd like a future with no health insurance at all" to "I'd like a future with no health insurance for all." A big difference! Just wanted to clarify my meaning, though I subsequently edited.

I'd like a future with no health insurance as well, and I agree that health-care-as-a-business has failed. So I think we are in complete agreement on quite a lot.

Ok, but that doesn't really mean anything with regards to whether existing private hospitals can remain that way. Unless I am missing something…

Can you clarify?

The risk pool in a national system would be something like 2-3 orders of magnitude larger than that for either of those states. Insurance works best when the risk pool is largest, and there is none larger than the whole country. (Not to mention the federal government has payment options, like printing money, that are…

You should read the articles. I don't think anyone is arguing against keeping hospitals private.

Some interesting reading about the public option. It seems it was and is basically a scam to get people to stop taking about single-payer, and, moreover, never intended by Obama to be in the final version (note - I posted this further down in the comments, but figured I'd put it in a reply to you since you mentioned).

It appears that the whole idea of a public option was and is a scam to get people to stop talking about single-payer.

'In short, if single payer was “politically infeasible” — the catchphrase of that time — that’s because Democrats set out to make it so, and succeeded.'

The ACA is already a shoddy Republican plan that has left 20 million people without coverage, so there are real political constraints on making it even worse.

This is great. I hope it draws attention to some of my favorite female-focused movies like Point Break and The Hurt Locker. Zero Dark Thirty is also not bad, though a bit of a chick-flick.

Synergy!