--we can pivot to single payer with the cost controls of global budgeting.

it has the potential to be a disaster for the public.

Why would you think that Congress would be more willing to provide money for single payer?

The Defense Department Budget is about $700 billion, while our healthcare spending is around $2.8 trillion, and for that amount millions of Americans don't have access to the healthcare they need. The government already spends about $1 trillion of the $2.8 trillion, so it would have to come up with almost $2 trillion more to cover the rest of us. That could be from some combination of taxes, borrowing, and premiums, but the providers would still have to be paid.

This solution eliminates the insurance companies and all their annual profits, seizing them if necessary, and assuming they are put out of business, excepting electives, which would be all they would be legally allowed to provide. I didn't make that clear.

still would need to come up with the money to pay the bills. If you eliminate the insurance companies, the government will have to hire undreds of thousands of people to process claims. Actually, insurance company profits make up less than 1% of US healthcare costs. If you want to save big money, you have to look at providers, including drug companies, medical equipment manufacturers, and home healthcare providers. Then maybe we could do something about the exorbitant cost of medical school education, which require doctors to charge excessive fees to have any hope of erasing their educational debt. There are plenty of arguments that can be made for single payer, but it's not a magic elixir that will cure all the ills of our bizarrely contorted healthcare system. To get back to the original point, the Republican Congress wouldn't provide funding for single payer either.

math challenged much?

Dependency upon for-profit insurers contributes to the U.S. having the most expensive health care system in the world, consuming nearly 20% of the nation's GDP

http://healthcareprovider.info/forprofit/

Not one single dime of that is being spent on actual health care. Single payer funding assumes that all premiums now going to insurance companies would be diverted to health care expenditures. We pay twice per capita what other industrialized countries pay for worse outcomes. As Kucinich once said "We are already paying for universal health care. We just aren't getting it."

given a choice- i'd buy-in to Medicare in a heartbeat.

That's about what Medicare costs per enrollee. Of course, if you wanted to have a limit on out of pocket costs, you'd have to pay about $200 more each month for a Medigap plan. Surely you don't think that "buying in to Medicare" means geting in for the 13% of total cost which most seniors have to pay.

how do they eat?

person on huffpo last night saying his company was offered lower health plan premiums by two insurers. He used that to negotiate with his current carrier and was saved 58k. The problem is the message. Congress is killing this the same way they're killing the economy and we can't let it happen. If the average American knew how much they'd be saving, they'd get motivated. Not only that, if we lay down on this can you imagine what else the health industry will come up with?

The center left opposition proposed a single payer plan that got very popular, so the conservatives stole a march on them and implemented it first.

I doubt very much that the Repukes here have that much common sense.

I think about half the political stories on DU make me want to say "No one could have predicted" in an ironic way because so many of them are as predictable as gravity if you have been paying attention to politics for a while.

I like a term I first read on Krugman's blog: Hoocoodanode?

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hoocoodanode

I thought that was Republican propaganda..

--that could better be spent on real health care instead. One billion dollars in the state of California alone. In MA, health care bankruptcies are still 50% of all bankruptcies. Why would anyone think that's a good thing?