Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Yeah, we should be so lucky.

Matt Miller sees an upside to the mandate going down:
...conservatives need to be careful what they wish for. If the mandate is struck down, mark my words, we’ll end up with Medicare for all before long — once the ranks of the uninsured swell to 60 or 70 million and people are fed up. No one doubts that single payer is constitutional. As I and others have pointed out many times, the only way to push toward universal coverage via private health plans is to have a mandate that gets everyone in the pool (along with subsidies for those who need help buying basic coverage). If healthier people opt out or delay buying coverage until they are sick, premiums skyrocket because only less healthy people are buying insurance. Eventually the system implodes in a spiral of accelerating premiums. This is Insurance 101.
"Before long"? "Fed up"?

I'm skeptical. The GOP will just fire up the outrage Wurlitzer, and the Kochs will spend tens of millions running national TV ads about "Death Panels" and convincing pretty much everyone who's not a partisan Democrat that the gubmint is going to pull the plug on granny.

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