the most likely scenario that would get us to a single payer system is if the supreme court strikes down the ACA.
it's never made sense to me why insurance companies didn't get behind and lobby hard for the act. obama's strategy from the beginning was to try to bring the industry on board with reform, and an ACA-type reform, which requires millions of americans to become new customers for the industry, is clearly more in the company's interest than just about every alternative reform proposal, including no reform. obama's efforts to win over the insurance industry didn't work. i think it failure purely for cultural issues. for the same reason fortune 500 companies (that aren't health insurance companies) didn't get behind single payer, even though if single payer were enacted it would end up externalizing a large portion of their personnel costs. the people who run big influential companies tend to be laissez-faire types. that, it seems, trumps the interests of their shareholders.
it's never made sense to me why insurance companies didn't get behind and lobby hard for the act. obama's strategy from the beginning was to try to bring the industry on board with reform, and an ACA-type reform, which requires millions of americans to become new customers for the industry, is clearly more in the company's interest than just about every alternative reform proposal, including no reform. obama's efforts to win over the insurance industry didn't work. i think it failure purely for cultural issues. for the same reason fortune 500 companies (that aren't health insurance companies) didn't get behind single payer, even though if single payer were enacted it would end up externalizing a large portion of their personnel costs. the people who run big influential companies tend to be laissez-faire types. that, it seems, trumps the interests of their shareholders.
