If I am reading this correctly we have already won regardless of how the Supreme Court rules on ACA

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle08.asp?xfile=/data/opinion/2012/April/opinion_April24.xml&section=opinion

Universal health coverage? David De Ferranti and Julio Frenk (ISSUES)

7 April 2012

<snip>Except for the US, the 25 wealthiest nations now have some form of it. Others are not far behind, including Brazil and Thailand. Even nations at lower income levels, such as the Philippines, Vietnam, Rwanda and Ghana are working toward it. Mexico has just crossed the goal line. Its reformers would be the first to say that many more improvements are needed, but their accomplishment is nonetheless noteworthy because they faced challenges no less daunting than the United States does today – and had fewer resources to draw on (Mexico’s economy is one tenth the size of the US). Special interests resisted change, dysfunctional fragmentation impeded progress, and poor, highly needy groups dispersed in remote locations had to be reached.

One of the hardest challenges was that many Mexicans – from top leaders to ordinary citizens – were sceptical that any solution would help. So the reformers had to find powerful evidence, which included pilot-testing of their proposals. Also key was a strategy that combined expansion of coverage with two other initiatives. A new means of paying doctors and hospitals ended incentives to provide as many services as possible. An emphasis on prevention helped avert illness and its high costs. All three were essential.

The United States now faces this same problem. If the Supreme Court strikes down the Obama law, there could still be a hefty expansion in coverage because much of that expansion has already happened, and voters would resist having it taken away. snip

Another lesson is that universal coverage cannot be achieved through employer plans alone, since they don’t reach the large numbers of self-employed, unemployed, retired people and those who work in small businesses. Still another lesson is that one size definitely does not fit all. A country’s culture and politics matters. Take, for instance, the roles of government and the private sector. The fears some Americans have about big government are not borne out by results in other countries, where the private sector continues to have a vibrant roles, especially in the provision of services, while the government concentrates more on financing, stewardship of the whole system and ensuring a level playing field.

David de Ferranti, a former vice president of the World Bank, is president of the Results for Development Institute in Washington. Julio Frenk, a former minister of health in Mexico, is dean of the Harvard School of Public Health

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Sounds like we are on our way to universal coverage about the same way Mexico ended up doing it.

[brewens]

1. The choice is between a bureaucracy that's mission is to maximize profits by denying

health care, or a bureaucracy that provides health care. Neither will be perfect but one will be much better at providing health care.

I work for a blood center. I just have an average Joe type job in the health care industry. All I care about is that people get health care they need, and we that do the work get paid. I'm not ever going to give a shit about the middlemen. That would include the people working for the health insurance companies.

If we can't have single payer, why not outsource health insurance? I bet some kid in India or China can do the job as well as people in this country, and for a lot cheaper. Start throwing that in their faces! I bet a lot of health insurance employees have been all for Republican policies that cost other people their jobs.

[Scuba]

2. As the old saw goes, "I'd much rather my healthcare decisions were made by a bureaucrat...

... who doesn't care if I die, than by a bureaucrat who's job depends on it.

[Lasher]

3. Yes, we can live just fine without the individual mandate.

Considerably better, as you have noted.

[provis99]

4. we have zero chance of universal government health insurance. Zero.

it would interfere with our freedumb, and freedumb is the most important thing to Americans.