I'm Not Bored With HealthCare Reform In The USA!

InALongMarchEvenBabyStepsCount
PublicOptionVille

The best rationale I've read so far for not going for the whole single-payer enchilada right out of the gate comes from Kirk James Murphy, one of the denizens of the FeverSwamps/Firedoglake:

Over the last six years I've evaluated and treated hundreds of patients who have very little access to health care. These patients qualified for mental health care, but a great many didn't qualify for access to Medicare or Medicaid (which Californians know as Medi-Cal). For these folks, I've been able to diagnose severe medical illnesses simply using lab results and clinical history - and for most of them, I could offer no treatment. We all need health care - and folks with serious psychiatric disorders, the need is even greater: as a group, they have far more physical illness and die far earlier than those without such burdens. This year's fight for public health care could solve this problem - if the fight succeeds. If the fight fails, the patients I've served will keep suffering and dying from avoidable causes. Should progressives continue a circular firing squad over the mechanism for universal public access, I fear that's exactly what will happen......."


Obviously, Kirk really is a real doctor.

And, to the best of my knowledge, he has never played one on TeeVee.

Which is very likely why the things he has to say actually make sense.


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And before anybody starts screaming at me....As a Canuckistanian who started his family in the States (ie. C. and I had Bigger E. down there), the US system scared the bejeebuz out of me.....Oh, ya....And just so you know, we were never, ever able to choose our own doctor and, despite the fact that we were with one of the 'best' HMO's in the country (the one that was willing to, apparently, pay the WaPo big money to hook-up their lobbyists with lawmakers over dinner at the publisher's office), we still had to lay out for user fees and co-pays up the whazoo.....

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