Zaid Jilani — Single Payer Opponents Say The Transition Process Would Be Too Difficult. But 10,000 People Do It Every Day.

Opponents of single payer health care frequently claim that such a system might be wonderful in theory, but getting there would be too disruptive. Many Americans, the argument goes, have private health insurance coverage and the transition to a government plan would be jarring.

“Half of America gets their health insurance coverage on the job,” American Hospital Association lobbyist and former Connecticut Democratic congressman Bruce Morrison told The Intercept last month. Single payer would replace coverage for some 150 million people, he noted. “If you just leaped to Medicare for All, you would totally disrupt the expectations of all those people. And that would not be a good idea.”

But roughly 10,000 Americans make that transition every single day. We call them seniors who are enrolling in Medicare for the first time....

“If you just leaped to Medicare for All, you would totally disrupt the expectations of all those people. And that would not be a good idea,” has to be one of the moronic statements I have ever encountered. Just about everyone would be delighted based on the experience of those already on Medicare that "graduated" from the private insurance market.

The Intercept
Single Payer Opponents Say The Transition Process Would Be Too Difficult. But 10,000 People Do It Every Day.
Zaid Jilani

Wendell Potter — Even Business Leaders Are Realizing Health Insurance Companies Serve No Purpose

Klepper wrote that this way of doing business has been "spectacularly successful" for the health insurance industry. As he noted, between May 2009 and May 2017, the stock prices of the five largest investor-owned health insurers -- Aetna, Anthem, Cigna, Humana and United -- increased between 387 percent and 748 percent, much more than the Dow Jones average.

The CEOs of those companies have become spectacularly wealthy as shareholder value has skyrocketed. They undoubtedly have to be concerned to hear that a growing number of business leaders are saying it's time to give serious thought to single-payer health care in the United States.

Not long before I left my job in the insurance industry in 2008, a coworker asked our CEO during a company leadership meeting what kept him up at night. He responded with a single word that most of us, I suspect, had to look up. That word was, you guessed it, "disintermediation."

He said he worried that someday a majority of Americans -- and more specifically, a majority of business leaders -- might begin to question the value proposition of insurance companies and reach the conclusion that they are little more than unnecessary middlemen....

Truthout
Even Business Leaders Are Realizing Health Insurance Companies Serve No Purpose
Wendell Potter, formerly vice president of communications for Cigna

Robert Waldmann — Bizarro World

Health insurers confess to be being held hostage by Wall Street against their will. Some GOP senators react.

Capitalism at its "finest."

Angry Bear

Bizarro World
Robert Waldmann