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Comment by otalp | Hacker News Reader

I like Sanders as much as anyone else, but can anyone who supports it explain how Single Payer is obviously better than expanding the current system to provide universal healthcare? It seems to me that single payer would require a radical overhaul(more than 100 million people leaving their employer given insurance) and huge tax increases that requires a level of political consensus among the public and Democrat majority in both houses not seen since The New Deal.

That's not even to mention the fact that more vulnerable Blue seats are up for grabs than Red in 2018. I just don't see the current roster of the GOP supporting anything the Democrats put forward, especially something as radical as medicare-for-all.

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I don't know if single-payer is the way to go, but I don't think that short-term disruption is a valid argument against almost anything, if there is evidence of mid-to-long-term benefit.

Separation of healthcare benefits from employment seems to have significant improvement in mobility for employees, overall. I think we (US citizens) need to have a serious, substantive discussion about how we get there. Actually doing that has been made incredibly difficult because of the way any government involvement in healthcare has been portrayed in the political arena for nearly 100 years.

... yet all of these concerns have been addressed by every other nation doing single-payer...

Your own research might be the best way to go - that way you can get the answer to your exact question.

People: We Americans think we are special - really we are just isolated and not exposed to other ideas directly.

There is a world of difference between reading about an idea, visiting a country's hotels, and really talking to the locals.

I see discussion time and time again:

* Healthcare * High-Speed Rail * Renewable Energy * Cities built for walking/biking instead of driving

All the above are solved problems for a generation in other parts of the world.

At some point, we owe it to ourselves to find out directly from the locals how things work.

What you list were solved by two things: the US providing the EU a military during the cold war and the fact that most of Europe was centered around dense cities since the Middle Ages.

You can't make high speed rail with stops in the US because our cities are spaced just far enough with low enough density to make the start stop process worthless. Walking cities are only possible if we force people into dense cities. As a country that does like freedom, you're going to start a civil war trying to relocate people through emanate domain into small apartments.

We need to learn what works for us. We have a different land useage pattern than Europe. We have a different approach the neighbors than The EU. Learn from them, but don't mindlessly copy.

>That's not even to mention the fact that more vulnerable Blue seats are up for grabs than Red in 2018. I just don't see the current roster of the GOP supporting anything the Democrats put forward, especially something as radical as medicare-for-all.

The GOP is going to oppose anything the democrats put forward, so it makes political sense for the democrats to aim for the most "left" solution possible so in case of compromise they can still get a lot. They learned from their mistake with Obamacare.

>I like Sanders as much as anyone else, but can anyone who supports it explain how Single Payer is obviously better than expanding the current system to provide universal healthcare?

It's cheaper. Taxes will go up, but bills will go down by more (for most people.) The political difficulties are actually part of the point, it allows the Sanders wing to set a litmus test for more traditional corporate dems. The Hillary-wing of the party is fighting a war on two fronts, single-payer and economic issues are what progressives are flanking them with.

Other countries usually control prices either through... well, price controls, or by establishing a monopsony on basic healthcare (single-payer). If we're not willing to create price controls (doubt it) then that leaves single payer.

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