Single-payer is an entirely different step than anything anyone’s discussing right now, unfortunately. It will take a whole new act of political will.

Barney Frank

“I think that if we get a good public option it could lead to single payer and that is the best way to reach single payer.”

It leaves me skeptical that I will have those options you seem to promise me. Besides, if my employer decides to drop their health plan and just pay into the public plan…well…I really can’t keep it can I?

The end goal here for your side is a single payer system.

Just because some of the country is insane doesn’t mean we all want to be.

I’m sorry, that was too harsh wasn’t it? Just because you like your health insurance company and enjoy paying for corporate jets for their executives doesn’t mean we all do. It was made quite clear that even the public option would be just that… AN OPTION. No one is going to force you to give up your private health insurance the same way that no one MAKES you send your letters through the post office instead of FedEx, UPS or DHL.

As for the presidents comments about FedEX and UPS, he was only making the point that while there is a public alternative, the private companies still made a pretty good business doing basically the same thing.

As for paying for things… when did you conservatives suddenly get so concerned about paying for anything? Where was the discussion about how we will pay for the war in Iraq? That fiasco has already cost us 680 billion in 7 years and didn’t produce a single WMD. How about you go complain about that for a while instead.

This could be whole new routine for an up and coming Minnesotan comic.

Secondly..I wasn’t the one who made the Fed-EX versus the Post Office comparison. It was the President of the United States. I suggest you vent your anger at him or call what he said “bullshit”. Wag your finger at him not me.

You guys may not realize it but…there are plenty of people who are very happy with their health care in this country. My father has CPOD and he gets the best care in the world. All paid through his various insurance policies. My friend who has no money was diagnosed with breast cancer. She got full treatment at one of the best cancer centers in the world. It did not cost her a penny. They even provided a breast replacement surgery.

The CBO totally disagrees with most of you that these ‘savings” will actually happen. You guys “think” they will. The CBO looked into and said these savings are not there. In the case of fraud and over-billing…. it begs the obvious question. Why haven’t they fixed this already? Why has it been allowed in the first place? ( the answer is that people don’t care about spending tax dollars. It’s like free money. Just about every government program is bloated in this manner. )

And you can’t save enough money to fill the gap anyway. Plain and simple.

As far as the 100 Billion per cost per year being out of date? So what’s the new number?
It’s an optimistic 700 Billion over 10 years. But this is with a scaled down plan. Why don’t we just wait and see. I’ll bet you it will creep back up to 100 + billion.

You guys can’t explain how you’ll pay for this. And seeing that Medicare will be broke in 10 years I don’t believe in the ability of the government to pull this off without sending us into huge debt. Here in California we are having to cut all kinds of services and reduce salaries to close the budget gap. This is where the country is headed is we don’t control spending.

This is why we need a single payer system, by the way, or if not, Ameri-choice.