But against a mandate that dictates we purchase a for profit product at the sole discretion of our employers. AKA, being made to purchase at the company store.
A mandate where we as individuals, regardless of employer or employment status, could go onto an exchange and at least select our own mandated plan could be acceptable to me.
What I was arguing for was more of ending the employer based system than single payer, though I do favor single payer.
The current "reform" as you pointed out is a life preserver for the insurance cartel and keeps the current system in place far longer than it could sustain it's self. Without the mandate and lots of government money the current mess was on a sure path to suicide. 40% without coverage would likely collapse the present and now extended self same system.
Regardless, there are several other effective systems around the globe other than single payer, some that even use private insurance and mandates that can take various forms and structures that we not only never considered and evaluated but worse now have most people stuck in very uncreative little boxes to where they can hardly imagine any nuance in how to structure even market based reform. We certainly could have a market based reform that is very similar to what came out but remove employers as the middle man/gatekeeper for access.
The company store factor is a severe distortion and to get there one has to make the commerce clause so absolute that we are closer to slaves than citizens and employees.
The present law was designed from the root to prevent single payer or any serious reform. We have built a house on a foundation of corruption and have spread the corruption by advancing an unlimited financial authority doctrine to pass a "reform" law that leaves every existing profit center and piece of a brutally failed system in place in exchange for a handful of pay for play features that will not impact most people, as much good they do for those that are helped.
Framing this particular version of a mandate as the only possibility other than Single Payer is simplistic, dishonest, ignorant, or a mix of them all.
An easy fix would be to open the exchanges to one and all rather than insisting employers be the access point. It is one thing to dictate my commerce, it is another to say I must spend my money as my employer elects. The precedent is unacceptably dangerous to me, you are supporting an unbounded power to compel commerce and worse taking about 85% of Americans from the ability to choose how the compelled dollars are spent.
It is because smart people refuse to admit this is not the only way to structure this, even within a private model that I am forced to believe many of those that support this mess are wilfully dishonest and/or acting as useful idiots for those who profit from and gain contol under both the present and coming systems.
Only by actually increasing the systemic entropy can one essentially leave almost every piece of the existing system in place and call it reform.
I also object to the everyone in the pool language when there is no such thing. There are hundreds of pools, each with thousands of mini pools. Market fragmentation was not even addressed, much less solved. The fragmentation places severe limits on the consumer advantage to everyone being in the system. Everyone in is mostly an effort to force people to make the cartel profitable no matter how little value their "product" is to them individually and the subsidies to make sure that after the individual is squeezed for every copper that their profits are unaffected.
Amend to a national pool with individual choice going hand in hand with individual responsibility and I could be an ally but as constructed we have fascism combined with an unlimited government with a duty to protect and insure profit for it's "private partners".
I think this paradigm is only embraced out of a great desperation to pass something called "healthcare reform", rather than on the merits, precedents set, and even how the bill will actually play out.
There is nothing to fix, any improvements will require scrapping this mess and starting again and by your own estimation we were at least a decade closer to the system and the predatory cartel collapsing than we are now. We'll have what we have for at least 20 years, by design.
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