Republicans May Be Doing Single-Payer Advocates Across the Country a Favor...

I have to agree with Republicans on this issue that the ACA has to go, but not for the same reasons. The ACA is not "Socialized Medicine" and it is not "social insurance". Social insurance is society paying into a system that provides immediate benefit to the public without the technicalities associated with the pro-profit insurance product.

The models of single-payer healthcare schemes in Canada, and a lot of the civilized world, is a model based on an immediate care, not-for-profit model, free of privateering. For example, with single payer there is no deductible to be met before benefits kick in. Under a single-payer system, one wouldn't have to pay out of pocket until a spending requirement is met: benefits are immediately payable as care is needed. Cost of coverage is not dictated by the balance sheet of an insurance corporation. If a corporation is not deriving enough money to satisfy shareholders, prices will not rise but will ebb and flow with demand as needed by the people. The price system will be stabilized by a checks-and-balances system negotiated by civil servants, acting as public advocates rather than being dictated by a corporate bureaucracy only interested in inflating price for their own benefit. Under a not-for-profit, single-payer health-insurance scheme, funded by the public, for every dollar paid for care the value is returned without exception.

The for-profit health model in America is set up to place emphasis on "sick care" and not preventative care. "Sick care" is more profitable all along the healthcare-industry supply chain. Initially a single-payer system in America would have costs in dealing with the results of decades of this flawed thinking, but over time would recover as the changing of emphasis takes hold. As a result cost would come down as evidence in the first five years after the creation of Britian's National Health Service under Ney Bevan. Initial costs exceeded the cost of defense due mainly to having to deal with decades of societal neglect of health because of cost. But, as the national health got better, costs stabilized and only became an issue again in the eighties when Margaret Thatcher weakened the program through trying to install austerity.

The GOP in attempting to rollback the ACA is only doing one thing that makes sense; they are trying to get rid of forced participation in an immoral market that profits off of the misery of people. They want to believe that what they're doing is protecting liberty but that is not the case. They're simply wanting to return to the same for-profit system with the exchanges set up by profiteers (insurance salespeople) that can be opted out of. The idea that someone can opt-out of paying for their own care is, to a certain extent, the freedom to be irresponsible. Basically it allows for people to visit doctors and hospitals and receive care with the prospect of leaving an IOU as the amount of unpaid medical bills that end up on many credit reports will attest. It is a cost that is rolled towards paying customers who provide charity, in a roundabout way, for emergency room and doctor's visits by the uninsured. So the argument of, "Why should I pay for someone else's care?", is largely a moot point, only rendered even sillier by another argument: "Why should I be forced to participate in something against my own will?" One could almost mirror the question, "Why should society be forced to provide charity for you at as the result of a hospital, doctor, or health-insurance corporation attempting to recuperate the cost associated with providing you free healthcare?"

Single payer is the way the country should have gone in 2009. So losing the ACA is not such a big loss for the American public. Protecting one President's legacy over providing care for the people as a right - over the right to profit - is a far more noble cause, and if a few misinformed Tea Party Republicans can assist in getting rid of this fraud quickly, so be it. It will only necessitate the true battle to liberate every American from needless suffering and expense through better health.