To address some of your earlier comment: if we merely socialized the INSURANCE, which is how Medicare works for people over 65, it wouldn’t be that big a departure. Yes, it would put some private insurers out of business, and that would mean some jobs, but how many of those jobs are actually in the US? And in the long run, would it be worth it? It’s worth discussing. Perhaps the government could hire a lot of those people to work in the new administration it would have to set up to handle nationalized insurance.

So there are ways to make this work, I think. They were just, curiously, never on the table. What was on the table was: we force people to subsidize insurance by buying it, and then the insurers can raise premiums sky-high (they’re already outrageous, which is why so many people can’t afford insurance), and fine people if they don’t sacrifice one of their kids in order to pay the even-more-outrageous new premiums. I don’t see a win for the people of the US here anywhere.

I’m fairly sure that the original aim of the health care bill was to provide something like that for the US. But you have my hopes that it will get better over time.

Many workers have nothing, unless they buy it themselves, which can easily cost $150-500 for a single individual, depending not on health status, but on gender and age.

We’re already seeing premiums skyrocket, as I predicted. This is nothing but a bailout for the insurance companies. I’d like to see what you’re talking about too, but that’s so not what’s happening. Probably never will be in a country so propagandized to think your UK NHS system is COMMIE PINKO BULLSHIT OH NOES.

Realistically, how many people in the US would actually be able to swallow that one overnight? How many people would be made unemployed by the health insurance industry? How many would shout about it being a stealth tax by the back door? Or how about the drugs companies that would suddenly be dealing with a multi trillion $ organisation instead of lots of little hospitals?

Yes it’s not the ideal way for the health care bill to come into being, but unlike the UK or other countries with national health care. The US already has a fully fledged private health care system in place that serves a large % of the population.

Personally I’m hoping that over a period of years the current health care bill will keep being amended to make it more and more nationalised, and that ultimately you do end up with the universal health care system that you need rather than the one that currently seems to be taking shape.

From what I understand anyone 133% of the poverty rate can get Medicaid. I’m glad that it is, at least, including some people above the poverty rate, especially as the poverty rate is so incredible flawed as an indicator of an individual or family’s ability to make ends meet.

I totally agree that a public option, be it through Medicaid, Medicare or a new department, that citizens will be able to opt into would be the ideal situation. It was what I was hoping for. I’m so incredibly frustrated that it was scrapped and by all the absurd rallying against it. I just hope that the problems this current bill creates will be recognized and will cause it to be fixed in the future with a viable public option instead of health reform scrapped altogether.

Read Emma’s links for some more probing thought on the reasons.

And at the end of the day, I really don’t give a shit what the reason is: I categorically disagree with forcing Americans to buy something from private business people just because they live in the US.