Today’s New York Times outlines the problem — though, it doesn’t portray it as a problem, but as an inevitable outcome of the debate. The problem with this, however, as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) pointed out recently on Air America’s “Ring of Fire” radio program, is that it assumes that new money needs to be raised to cover Americans.
The reality, as Sanders said, is that there is plenty of money in the current system. We pay it now in insurance premiums and copays and other out-of-pocket expenses. A single-payer system would just redirect the money from the inefficient for-profit system now in place to a government-sponsored non-profit system.
The money is there already. I think what we’re dealing with here again is this mythology that people love, you know, everybody tells me, “Bernie, I just love paying 12, 13 thousand dollars a year to a private health insurance company for my family’s health insurance. I just get a great joy writing out that check to Blue Cross Blue Shield or Connecticut General. That just makes me feel great, but I hate to pay taxes.”
So what our Republican friends say is that your taxes are going to go up under a single-payer. True. They will. What they are forgetting? They’re forgetting that you’re not going to pay for private health insurance. They are forgetting that your employer is not going to have to pay a significant amount of money that should be reinvested in their business needs into health care.
They are forgetting that General Motors right now puts more money into health care per car than you do into steel.
So the answer is that health care is going to cost money. Under a single-payer, it is publicly funded, but you’re not going to have to pay private health insurance. And at the end of the day, that is a much more cost-effective way of delivery quality, comprehensive care.
That, of course, should be the goal — not just plugging the holes in the current system and driving down cost, but providing every American with affordable health care.
Too bad the big money flowing from the corporate sector is against it.
Hank Kalet 
Plus there is a lot of hospital cost being borne indirectly by everyone b/c hospitals have to provide care to any one who shows up at the emergency room. Hospitals are reimbursed thru Medicaid for that but for just a few cents on the dollar. (DSH). That money would go alot further for the same people if they could get timely appropriate care from general practice mds.Also single payor would mean that money spent on claims and marketing could also be spent on medical care. It really is just a collective issue with \”reds\” that keeps it from happening.
It is just insane, it is just criminal that we have been having this same \”debate\” about health care in this country for more than 60 years while all, ALL the other industrialized democracies have universal health care of one variety or another. However, the medical industrial complex, the AMA, the insurance companies, the drug companies, the CEOs and Wall Street have a vested interest in denying us single payer or universal health care.We do have universal health care for folks 65 and older (Medicare), Medicaid, S-CHIP and the VA. Let's at the least have Medicare for all. Will it ever happen? The medical industrial complex is spending more than a million dollars a day lobbying Congress to make sure that we don't even have the public option which is already a big compromise but better than nothing.Face it folks, the obscene salaries of insurance CEOs is much more important than the health and welfare of MILLIONS of ordinary Americans. It will take massive peaceful marches of millions of Americans on state capitals or on DC to wake up out gutless bought off legislators. Of course the media will not cover it since they have been bought off by the same medical industrial complex as our legislators.