When will the US have single-payer, universal health care?

[branders seine]

Poll question: When will the US have single-payer, universal health care?

like the rest of the civilized world?

[Unvanguard]

1. Never, probably, but there will probably be expanded public control over time.

The political pressure to control the price of premiums will be intense.

[KILL THE WISE ONE]

2. for me when I turn 65

[Tesha]

3. I think there's at least a 50% probability that you'll see the break-up of the United States...

...before you see true universal, single-payer health care. Of course,
once Dixie secedes again to form their theocratic "heaven", universal
health care will come to the other regions of the former country almost
immediately. Quite a few other "intractable" problems will also suddenly
be resolvable as well.

Tesha

[branders seine]

4. :-)

[Umbral]

5. Not in my lifetime, but it will happen. nt

[stray cat]

6. Switzerland does ok without it

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92106731

[Sebastian Doyle]

8. Switzerland also does OK with hiding money away for rich criminals

so they can dodge taxes.

Hell of an example to follow. Though it doesn't even apply here, because at least when it comes to the Swiss insurance industry, it's non-profit and tightly regulated. Neither of which will happen with a DLC corporate prostitute congress.

[kenny blankenship]

25. Switzerland does OK by banning profit from basic health insurance

When you are proposing that, or something better, you can talk like Switzerland is your pal and their how system justifies ours.

Until then you are just lying to people.

[laughingliberal]

27. That and air tight regulations on the industry...+1000 nt

[Sebastian Doyle]

7. The odds just went down

Or should I say, they will when the President signs this Insurance Corporate Bailout Act.

The official DLC party line will then be "Everyone is covered by our donors corporate insurance. No actual reform is necessary. Now let's privatize social security....."

[branders seine]

10. if they can successfully sell this crap as "reform,"

then they can sell the "no reform needed" crap indefinitely.

I think we're screwed for at least three generations, and I'm not sure if the country, as currently constituted, will last that long.

[SocialistLez]

9. I said 50 years

A lot of people my age (I'm 19) want it and I think over time my generation will be the one to get it done.

[Uncle Joe]

11. I believe it will be when all but a handful of the baby boomers have died off.

The almighty dollar is the preeminent consideration in the U.S. so even though single-payer would save the nation great sums of cash over any other system, they will wait until we have a relatively low number of middle aged - elderly to "soften" the transition.

Anything before that would require great and bold leadership combined with an across the board, aggressive, mass national enlightenment movement, at this point I'm not optimistic that will take place within the next 25 years.

Thanks for the thread, branders seine.

[shockra]

12. The question is flawed.

We're not part of the civilized world.

[branders seine]

14. well there is that

gullibility is taking on ever newer, ever more awe-inspiring dimensions

[Maru Kitteh]

13. about 20 years I think

[spoony]

22. Agreed. nt

[county worker]

15. Our whole relationship with corporations would have to change first.

In this country it is OK for people to die rather then break the hold corporations have on our politics and thinking.

[branders seine]

16. +1

and neither party offers any path toward that end. Quite the contrary.

[guitar man]

17. When the last corporatist

Is strangled with the entrails of the last televangelist

[frebrd]

18. Never happen......

not in this terminally capitalist country!

:banghead:

[Jkid]

19. It will never happen.

The day the single-payer health care is implemented is the day that the conservatives want blood.

[flvegan]

20. When money doesn't control Congress.

So...never.

[inna]

21. Never?? Really?? Everyone is *that* doom-and-gloomy??

Wow. That's just learned helplessness, and IMO part of the problem.

I say, Universal Health Care is inevitable, it's only a question of when, not if (unless we undergo a complete collapse as a country in the next decade or two).

Our health care system is an aberration; it is bankrupt on all levels, and it is only a question of time when we're going to join the rest of the civilized world.

[jesus_of_suburbia]

23. 30 years

[salguine]

24. When all the health care CEOs have been kilt off or runned off into the hills. Not before.

[MellowDem]

26. People who selected "never"...

have short memories. Hmm, let's see, 50 years ago how many Americans would say we would have a black president by now? I think the answer would be "never". But things change fast, and it's not at all out of possibility that we will indeed have single payer healthcare one day. In our lifetime? Well, depending on your age, maybe.