Here's the problem, is that the way our health care system evolved in the United States, it evolved based on employers providing health insurance to their employees through private insurers. And so that's still the way that the vast majority of you get your insurance. And for us to transition completely from an employer-based system of private insurance to a single-payer system could be hugely disruptive. And my attitude has been that we should be able to find a way to create a uniquely American solution to this problem that controls costs but preserves the innovation that is introduced in part with a free market system.He's actually right about "disruption," but there's something he doesn't explain. That is, a transition to single payer would disrupt the flow of health premium cash onto corporate balance sheets thereby massively undermining the positions of a very small population of very rich players vested in financial markets on the basis of the flow of those premiums.
I think that we can regulate the insurance companies effectively; make sure that they're not playing games with people because of preexisting conditions; that they're not charging wildly different rates to people based on where they live or what their age is; that they're not dropping people for coverage unnecessarily; that we have a public option that's available to provide competition and choice to the American people, and to keep the insurers honest; and that we can provide a system in which we are, over the long term, driving down administrative costs, and making sure that people are getting the best possible care at a lower price.
But I recognize that there are lot of people who are passionate -- they look at France or some of these other systems and they say, well, why can't we just do that? Well, the answer is, is that this is one-sixth of our economy, and we're not suddenly just going to completely upend the system. We want to build on what works about the system and fix what's broken about the system. And that's what I think Congress is committed to doing, and I'm committed to working with them to make it happen. Okay?
There is no reason at all Medicare can't just be opened to everyone. All the mechanisms are already in place, including the tax structure. There's not a wage earner in this country that wouldn't trade their large insurance deduction for a smaller amount that would appear as an increase in the Medicare portion of the payroll tax. It's asinine for President Obama to be swatting down this question with such a slippery, dishonest answer.
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