Single payer under Obamacare? You betcha!
by digby
This is why I supported Obamacare:
Today it’s a few hundred thousand people. By next year, it will be at least a few million. Their health insurance status is changing dramatically: What they have in 2014 and beyond will look nothing like what they had in 2013 and before. For many of these people, the difference will be hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year. In a few cases, it may be the difference between life and death.
You probably think I’m talking about the people getting cancellation notices about their private insurance policies. I’m not. I’m talking about the people getting Medicaid. Both stories are consequences of the Affordable Care Act. But one is getting way, way more attention than the other.
No, we didn’t get universal single payer, which is what we all wanted. We got a Rube Goldberg contraption that’s going to take some time to get working and extreme vigilence to keep working. But millions of our fellow Americans did get single payer in Obamacare. It’s called Medicaid and it’s expansion is the most progressive piece of legislation we’ve seen in decades.
Read the whole article by Jonathan Cohn. It will make your progressive heart feel a little bit better about this whole thing.
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