Also, Carol, here’s how expanding coverage reduces costs: people without health insurance don’t go to the doctor when they should, and preventative care becomes much more expense curative case. Covering them makes their treatment much cheaper, and keeps them from losing their jobs due to illness.
Oh, stop that bullshit. Nobody thinks of him like that, and besides, what you want isn’t always the same as what you can accomplish.
Tsk tsk tsk – perhaps you didn’t notice that your smashingly powerful rebuttal is a clip from a comment in 2003? Six years ago? Come back with evidence, any evidence, that he promoted single payer during the campaign, as you allege, sweetie.
I’ll be over here, not holding my breath.
If it makes you feel better, you can decide he’s been lying the whole time.
That won’t change anything, but if it makes you able to get up in the morning, go for it.
He never said he’d try for a single-payer system during the campaign.
Watch the whole video, you stupid cretin. March 2007 is six years ago? When he says he wants to eliminate employer insurance, but it’s going to take a decade, or 15 or 20 years?
Where is the choice or competition in THAT?
You said “during the campaign” – put up or shut up.
He announced his candidacy in Feb 2007. His remarks about dumping employer insurance, even if it takes 10-20 years, were made in Mar 2007. How is that not during the campaign? Why are you lying?
See post #147. Are you a liar, too?
Ah, right. A video that takes a couple of out-of-context snippets from President Obama, interleaves them with statements from other people, and attempts to impute the opinions of those other people to President Obama. Right. How overwhelmingly persuasive.
Not.
OK NOW YOU ARE LYING. It’s in the video, in Obama’s own words, at 2:16 in the video. In March 2007, which is during the campaign.
So he said he didn’t think it could be done immediately. How does that translate into “I don’t want to do it immediately?”
Here’s how it works. Insurance companies have underwriters, statisticians who compute the probability that they will have to pay a claim of various types. The more people in the pool, the better they can estimate this, and the less chance that an anomalous claim will wipe you out. That’s why a public plan with a big pool would do better.
In a not for profit situation, that will be fine, and the insurance company who can predict the best will win. You’ll also win by reducing claims honestly, say by paying for preventative medicine which can reduce big costs, if done well.
But if you want to do better than this, clearly you will make more money by denying real claims while maintaining rates, by refusing to cover people with a higher chance of getting ill, by making the process of getting money back painful, or by taking longer to pay claims. If company A does this and gets away with it, it is going to be hard for company B to resist - unless there is regulation, which makes for a level playing field without screwing the customers. The industry will whine about how you are killing their profits, of course.
The claim was that he didn’t advocate single payer during the campaign, which he most clearly did. Are you joining the SDMB Liar’s Club, too?
What he’s doing now is the start of dumping employer insurance, it will take another decade or two.
Which makes your statement “He never said he’d try for a single-payer system during the campaign” a bald-faced lie. You’re not even good at lying, it’s so obvious.
He didn’t say he would, his healthcare plan was always about altering insurance so that as many people as possible could be covered. He took a lot of criticism from liberals for his healthcare plan not being an attempt to bring in single payer. Obama’s response was that it would have to be incremental, with single payer as the ultimate goal, and that he’d get as far as he could down that road. What part of this don’t you understand?
The claim was:
…or possibly:
I don’t see a claim that Obama didn’t advocate a single payor system. If that makes me a member of your “liar’s club” just show me where I get my decoder ring.
In any case, it’s immaterial what he thinks will happen in 15 or 20 years, because *he won’t be in office then. *
With regard to the more general question of whether a single payor system will create competition, obviously it won’t. Whatever plan Obama implements probably will, and if the private insurers are reduced to offering supplemental plans, I have no problem with that. The system in place is not sustainable.
Why you are lying about it, is what I don’t understand.
Fact: Obama wants single payer.
Fact: He said so during the campaign, with the caveat that it would longer than his administration.
Your post that he never said he advocated single payer during the campaign is simply not true.
Well, give that girl a gold star! And a participation ribbon!
She’s coming along nicely! See, I told you guys adopting a troll for a pet could work out!
He ran on a campaign platform of extending health insurance to as many people as possible. His healthcare plan didn’t mention a single payer system. If you want to play semantics about campaigns and future goals versus actual policy statements, I’m afraid you’re going to have to play with yourself. 