Y’know, if we had actually passed Obamacare, we could have tested the proposition that the government couldn’t possibly compete with private insurance. The insurance companies, however, seemed to hold the exact opposite opinion, as evidenced by how hard they fought to kill Obamacare.
You mean the public option?
[quote=“wolfpup, post:620, topic:718754”]
[li]A public health care system doesn’t reduce costs by “denying care”, it reduces costs by providing care under a cost-effective framework – specifically, by providing all medically necessary procedures under a uniform framework for everyone without question or adjudication, and without vast reams of paperwork, while managing provider costs. The cost benefits of single-payer are well established and not a matter of debate. Denying care is the specialty of profit-focused insurance businesses.[/li][/LIST]
[LIST]
[li]Neither unions nor anyone else would be “giving up” anything because the essential medical services that everyone unconditionally needs would be provided at a much lower cost, a fact which is well established around the world. In terms of “choice”, that’s all the choice anyone needs for basic care, and beyond that, every union or employer can offer supplemental insurance to cover all kinds of extra services, comforts. and amenities – no one is stopping them. If a union wants to provide its members with coverage for hospital accommodations resembling a five-star hotel, they can go right ahead. The only ground rule is no one should ever commercialize and fuck around with basic essential .[/li][/QUOTE]
What is the mechanism by which, under single-payer, providers (hospitals, doctors, etc.) would suddenly charge only a small fraction of what they do now?
I never said they would “suddenly charge only a small fraction of what they do now”. But the evidence from around the world – everywhere – is that the cost savings are there. And the mechanism is two powerful and interlinked factors.
One, talk to anyone who has in-depth experience with both the Canadian and US health care systems and they will tell you that the major difference they immediately see is the extraordinary burden of paperwork and interactions between doctors, patients, and insurance companies over payments, deductibles, conditions, approvals, co-pays, co-ordination with different payers and systems, etc. ad infinitum in the private system. The cost burden is immense. Doctors have staff whose sole purpose is bill collection. In the single-payer system, the patient walks in, gets treatment, walks out. Done.
The second interlinked factor is that with greatly reduced overhead and guaranteed full payment providers are willing to settle for lower base fees. As well, single-payer oversight prevents gouging by setting uniform base rates.
Lots of other cost-saving factors eventually work their way through the system, but briefly, those are the two major ones that result from treating coverage of medically necessary health care – not every aspect of health care, just the essential stuff – as an essential public service rather than a commercial appliance that you can only have if you can pay for it. For the superficial stuff and miscellaneous health-related comforts and amenities, knock yourself out – insure it privately if you or your employer can afford it. It’s no longer either a moral issue or a critical cost issue.
Ratification didn’t require supermajorities in state assemblies–just a supermajority of state assemblies–and the constitution was considered ratified when only nine states had signed on.
Also, Rhode Island was blatantly intimidated into it.
National Nurses United (the largest union and professional association of registered nurses in the United States) has endorsed Sanders, as has the American Postal Workers Union.
Bernie Goes Postal! 
As Mayor, Bernie Sanders Was More Pragmatist Than Socialist
Redacted
In May, it provided a picture-perfect backdrop for Mr. Sanders to announce that he was running for president.
reported - copyright
I linked it
Yes, and you also copied it.
BB, you’re new here so I’ll cut you a break. The SDMB aggressively respects copyright. Any further breaking of the rules may result in sanctions.
Tip, basque, from one who’s been there many times before: The Mods usually won’t spank you or touch your post if you just C&P a few paragraphs of an article. But a whole article will always get deleted, and anything approaching half or even a third of the whole article is risky. (Legal considerations of copyright do not apply to “copyleft” sources such as Wikipedia, but the Mods might still delete a whole Wiki article just for filling up too much of the screen. They consider a link usually sufficient and want nobody to have grounds for the “TL,DR” complaint.)
This applies in Cafe Society too, BTW. Never post the whole lyrics of a copyrighted song. (Any song or poem more than 100 years old is probably safe.)
The same mechanism that allows insurance companies to write off the vast majority of your medical bill?
I had a procedure last year. Got the statement. The office billed ~$8000. The insurance company wrote off ~$7400, paid $480, and billed me $50. Without insurance, I would have owed the whole $8 grand.