Perhaps the reason we could not (and will not) get a Public Option is...

[Bonobo]

because we had our legs chopped out from under us with the sell out to insurance companies.

We had a shot at it. We went for a sell-out to private insurance companies and spent all the capital we had on it.

We will not get another chance soon as a result because even such a corporate sell-out has now been revisionistically turned into a "socialist medicine" thing.

THAT was our chance. Obama used our bullet and shot it at the wrong target. There is no other bullet.

So if you are wondering why even VT could not get universal health care, look no further than being undermined from within our own ranks.

[Cleita]

1. I posted on this very board more than ten years ago that until

health care becomes unprofitable for the insurance companies and they bail out of their own violation, we will never see meaningful national health care. How do we make that happen? At the time the suggestion was a buy in into Medicare for those who chose to. It was agreed that to be competitive the insurance companies wouldn't be able to cut it. This was the public option and the insurance companies have shown us that they will never let that happen. So we need another way.

Any suggestions?

[Bonobo]

2. Govt. run health care done properly would crush the for-profit insurance companies.

We should not NEED to ask the permission of insurance companies.

[merrily]

7. The way it could have become unprofitable was insuring people over 50. The individual mandate for

young uns solved that very nicely.

Any suggestions?

For starters, work for Bernie Sanders.

[NJCher]

3. It's unsustainable, economically

It won't last.


Cher

[Hoyt]

4. I believe they are only ones who could assume risk and build networks, etc. Congress wasn't going

to appropriate money to do it. Besides, insurance companies administer Medicare and, in most states, Medicaid.

It would have taken our Congress years to write legislation where government took on those responsibilities.

Glad we got what we got. Now that its working, time to improve it.

A more cooperative Congress would have produced something better and provided the money to bypass insurance companies. But Obama took what he could get, rather than producing nothing of value for another generation.

[Bonobo]

5. I respectfully disagree.

We should not have settled with insurance company and given up a public option. Even if it would have taken years.

There is no shortage of models to look at in other countries for how to do it, but the entire premise of the system is fucked... namely that health care should be a profit creating business. That is beyond fucked and we should NEVER have ceded that issue because now we have nothing.

What is right is right and now our measly private insurance company alliance has been relegated to a position on the left when it is not even that.

Subsequently, the actual left, as a position, is not even on the board anymore.

That is a political reality that affects us far longer than the results of any particular election.

[Hoyt]

6. Wasn't going to happen, I applaud Obama for getting what he could.

Wish Congress had been more cooperative.

I agree your vision would have been better, if it had been doable at the time.