The insurance companies were successful in lobbying any kind of public option out of the national health care law and they will fight every local public option to the death. For if it works anywhere, it offers Obamacare a way to evolve, state by state, into "Medicare for all."
Private health insurance companies can only survive if people throw their hands up in horror at the thought of an incompetent and intrusive government. Expect, then, that the untimely requests for death certificates, the delayed payments to doctors, the arbitrary denials of coverage, and all the other slings and arrows that the insured already endure will be baroquely embellished and cynically blamed on "government."
If it was hard for underwater homeowners to distinguish between bankers and bureaucrats while they were losing their homes, it will be even harder for frustrated sick people to untangle the public and private strands so tightly braided into the Affordable Care Act. That, however, is what has to happen if Americans are to move toward a simpler, go-to-the-doctor-when-you're-sick healthcare system.
Barbara Garson is a TomDispatch regular and the author of the play MacBird . Her latest book, Down the Up Escalator: How the 99% Live, (the paperback version of which has just been published) contains the fuller stories of Alice Epps and Balty Alatas, including the O. Henry-style surprise ending to Balty's story.
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Copyright 2014 Barbara Garson
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