Will the current HC bill, as it is now...

[SHRED]

...allow for States to adopt a single-payer system if they choose?

I'd think with this "mandate" clause it would not.

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[valerief]

1. That would help to hold down costs! How would UHC benefit from that?? nt

[cali]

2. yes for the Senate version, not sure about the House.

[SHRED]

4. they need to preserve that

[Neecy]

3. I think that provision was proposed....

And was knocked down by the Blue Dogs in the House.

[Laelth]

5. The Kucinich Amendment to the house bill would have allowed it.

It was stripped out in the House conference by Nancy Pelosi (who acted, almost certainly, on direct orders from the President).

cali, above, says the Senate bill allows it. I don't know for sure, but I very much doubt it.

One of the primary purposes of this bill is to prevent any state from ever enacting a single-payer system. At least three states have already applied for Federal ERISA law waivers so that they can reform health care on their own. California, for its part, has passed a law enacting a single-payer system twice. Both times the Governator vetoed it. If California gets a Democratic governor in 2010, it's very likely to pass a single-payer system, and that's why it's so important to the health insurance industry to pass this bill now.

The real purpose of the bill is to prevent single-payer systems from catching on and spreading from state to state (as happened in Canada).

Kill the bill.

Forcing people to buy insurance is no more the answer to a failed health care system than forcing people to buy houses is the solution to homelessness.

:dem:

-Laelth

[ThomWV]

6. If it does industrial-medicine will knock them off one by one - like ducks in a barrel.

They defeated a national plan, the states will be easy.

[Cleita]

7. Why can't the states go into the insurance business and offer

a non-profit comprehensive health package that people can buy into with a sliding scale of affordability? Apparently the bill says you have to have insurance. It's not telling you that you have to buy from Blue Cross or Aetna.