Venezuela and Medicare for All: Don't forget who benefits!

The mainstream media is not an evil, liberal-to-radical behemoth by any means. It is, however, often a willing, and sometimes self-deluded, ally and shill for the interests of the well-to-do in society, as well as for many questionable government policies. The latter is particularly important in the drumbeat buildups to wars, and is recently apparent in the coverage of Venezuela in journals such as the NY Times. The US government is making the case not only that Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro is illegitimate because it has decided his election was “unfair” and “tainted”, as well as an evil and violent dictator, but that it will recognize unelected self-declared Juan Guaido as president. The Times has gone so far as to publish a self-congratulatory op-ed by Guaido, and it news coverage is typified by ‘Venezuelans Opposed to Maduro Pour Into Streets for Day of Protests’ and a Sunday Review piece by a Guaido supporter called ‘Venezuela’s Very Normal Revolution’.

I do not doubt that thousands marched against Maduro or that millions oppose him (or probably that millions support him). I certainly am not saying Maduro and his government is good, or that there is not justifiable opposition to his violent repression of opponents. I am not saying that revolutions are bad. I am saying that this one is funded and supported by the US government not because Maduro is bad -- the US has supported and continues to support dozens of brutal dictators around the world. It is because he is not ourdictator, not one who supports US policy, and this is critical because Venezuela is the country with the largest oil reserves in the world. As for the NY Times -- as with most leftist governments, the support for the one in Venezuela comes more from the poorest people, while those with access to the NY Times are among the most privileged.

And this is the connection to domestic health policy, and in particular coverage of the Democratic candidates for president’s positions on Medicare for All. The NY Times (and all mainstream media) is of course owned by the very wealthy, and as individuals they see the world as members of the class of which they are part. But, possibly more important, the editors and reporters are middle and often upper-middle class, and they see the world from this perspective, from that of their families, and friends, and neighbors who are – amazingly – also privileged! The people who have access to these editors and reporters are very skewed awayfrom the most needy, or indeed most people (who are not the same as most people in an upper middle class suburb).

In specific, we get essentially uncritical coverage of the statements of billionaires like Michael Bloomberg and Howard Schultz that “Medicare for All” is unaffordable, despite the clear fact that it is the current system that is unaffordable, and that a universal health system is going to cost less. One key part of this lower cost is the elimination of private health insurance companies’ profit, and their incentive to increase it by decreasing the availability of care. Yet the Times article covering Elizabeth Warren’s increasing iffiness on the issue contains phrases like ‘would people lose the choices offered by private insurance?’ That is, your ability to choose (maybe, depending upon what their employer offers) which overpriced-to-unaffordable policy, offered by which rapacious, obscenely-profit-making insurance company, to cover you so that, even after paying the premiums and co-pays and deductibles, you find out that, whoops, it doesn’t really cover what you thought it would or should, and you’re out of luck, and either have to pay out even more money you cannot afford or go without the health care you need. Wasn’t that what the insurance you bought supposed to get you?

Nope, not necessarily, and often not at all. The first goal of private insurance companies is to make a profit. That profit has to be maintained and expanded. The two major ways of doing so are 1) by raising the prices people (and their employers, if they are lucky enough to have employers who pay offer health insurance) pay, in premiums, deductibles, and co-pays, and 2) by denying coverage for care, or paying less for it, which often results in providers not, well, providing it to you. The insurers hire “pharmacy benefit managers” to get them the ‘best’ prices on drugs, often requiring your doctor to keep writing a different brand-name drug-of-the-month (again, see Danielle Ofri, “The Insulin Wars”), with the cost to you always going up.

What would Medicare for All offer? Or, more explicitly, Improved and Expanded Medicare for All, as in the House Bill that was H676 and will get a new number this year? First, everyone would be in the same program. No more shopping around for the least bad deal among the universe of bad insurance. Everyone would get the same benefits. The benefits would include all medically necessary health care: inpatient, outpatient, nursing home, home care, drugs, mental health, dental, eye care. Even hearing aids. Nothing excluded, except perhaps truly cosmetic surgery. Providers could not refuse to accept this insurance because they would have no business. Oh, maybe some doctors and hospitals could make a living caring for Howard Schultz and Michael Bloomberg and Saudi sheikhs who pay in cash, but there aren't very many of them, and so even the supplemental insurance we now buy would be unnecessary. There would be, you see, no deductibles or co-pays. Everything would be 100% covered. It sounds good. It would be good.

And it is not unaffordable. Currently, the government funds over half of health care (Medicare, Medicaid, government employees and retirees at all levels, military), and it is about 60% if you also count the revenue lost because employer contributions to health care premiums (unlike salary) are tax-deductible. The majority of the sickest and most needy (elderly, blind, and disabled) are already in Medicare. Most vulnerable children are in Medicaid or S-CHIP. To make up the additional cost, employers and individuals would continue to pay, but in taxes rather than premiums, co-pays, and deductibles, and for most (maybe not for Schultz and Bloomberg!) it would cost them a lot less. Most estimates of the excess costs in the US health care non-system are in the 30-35% range, for profits and administrative costs in the private sector (Medicare’s are in the 1-3% range). Administrative costs include insurance companies hiring armies of workers to deny claims, while providers have other armies to fight them, and demand more. This is money spent for no health benefit for the population, but it would be a mistake to minimize the extent to which those – insurers and providers and drug and device manufacturers – who are pocketing it would go to keep it coming.

Thus the role of the mainstream media, and the mainstream Democrats – to appeal to the needs (not desires, real needs!) of most of the people for health care and at the same time not threaten the wealthy and profitable sectors that can fund campaigns for or against them. Thus the concerns of “don’t people want to have their private insurance?” and even more ludicrous their choice of insurance company (“I’ve always been an Aetna man! So what if it costs a little more and I get just as little? I’m worth it!”). Thus the nonsensical pieces on how much a single payer Medicare for All program will cost, which ignore the cost of our current arrangement. And, somehow, manage to not address the fact that this current arrangement leaves concern for people’s health to last, and so doesn’t deliver it.

I understand that people are worried about change. But the cost, in dollars and health, of the current system has moved the majority of the population to want something different, something that meets their needs and costs less.  It is available, if we seek to do it, if we can resist the pressures from the industries and billionaires who profit from the current way of doing things.

When we read about the need to overthrow foreign dictators, or hang on to private insurance companies, we always must remember to ask: cui bono?

Health Insurance on Demand: radical idea or just another scam?

 “It’s a radical idea.”

I like that. Oooh, what? Radical ideas are often good, even necessary. What is this one?

“On-demand insurance that lets customers buy some of their coverage only if and when they need it, similar to how TV viewers might rent a new release from Amazon instead of paying every month for a pricey cable package they rarely use.”

Huh? Could this be real? If it is such a good idea, why did no one think of this before? Maybe it could be the solution to the problem of the “individual mandate” that has folks so worked up. The argument for that mandate to buy health insurance, a key part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA, also known as Obamacare), was that, to work, insurance requires a lot of people who are healthy have to pay in (via premiums) in order for those who have need to have their bills paid when they need it. This is the central principle of insurance underwriting. If not enough people who do not need to use the insurance buy coverage (in the case of health insurance, are healthy, at least that year), or if too many sick people buy it, rates have to be a lot higher. This is true for all types of insurance to work – car (most people have to not have accidents), homeowners (most people have to not have fires), life (most people have to not die in any given year). The practice of assessing risk, called underwriting, is very mathematically complex and there is an entire profession of actuaries who figure it down to the finest detail, but the general concept is simple: there needs to be enough money collected to pay the claims and pay the overhead costs of the insurance company – and, of course, in a for-profit system like the one we have -- make a healthy profit.

Health insurance on demand, buying insurance only once you get sick, is the subject of an Associated Press article that appeared in the NY Times on December 17, 2018. It sounds really exciting: ‘"It's the sort of thing we need entrepreneurs to be doing," said Robert Laszewski, a health care consultant and former insurance executive. "We haven't had a new idea in managed care in I don't know how long.”’ Yes! Finally a new idea! Based on the idea of picking the shows you want instead of subscribing to cable TV! Sort of the same thing. Except, really, not having TV doesn’t kill you.

Or maybe it’s not so new. After all, we have had something like this forever. It’s called “not buying insurance”. Then, when you get sick, you get billed for the whole thing. Of course, this is more than almost everyone but the richest people can afford, thus the key reason for health insurance. Back in the old days – before WW II – health insurance, or really illness insurance – was much less common. It was more like accident, or fire, or life insurance where you paid premiums in case something you really didn’t want to happen actually did happen. On the model of all insurance, you only “won” if you “lost” – if something bad happened to you. This “sickness insurance” came to be known as “major medical”; people paid for their doctor visits in cash (or chickens, or apple pies, or doing chores), but when they got really sick and needed surgery, needed to be hospitalized, then insurance kicked in.

Then, over the next couple of decades, several things happened that together made health insurance, not just “major medical”, a virtual necessity for everyone. More treatments became available for diseases that used to be untreatable; often these were very costly to treat, and required hospitalization and expensive drugs, imaging, and surgery. The causes of many diseases began to be elucidated; perhaps the most significant was the impact of smoking. The first paper identifying smoking as a cause of lung cancer appeared in 1950; in 1964 the Surgeon General’s report made this connection, and warning labels began appearing on cigarette packages in 1965, becoming Surgeon General’s warnings in 1970. High blood pressure (hypertension) only became identified as a disease, a risk factor for heart attack and stroke, in the late 1950s and 1960s. Remember that President Franklin Roosevelt died as a result of a stroke caused, we now understand, by his extremely high blood pressure – but in those days even the President didn’t get treated for hypertension, because it wasn’t recognized as a disease (and there weren’t any drugs for it).

People began to want not only the treatment for diseases that were formerly untreatable but also for early diagnosis of, and treatment of, conditions (like hypertension) that might be asymptomatic but might put them at risk for “the big one”. New diseases, and treatments for them, began to be discovered; indeed, a cynic (me) might say that yesterday’s ‘crock’ (medical slang for a person with imagined symptoms) became today’s sick person once their symptoms were associated with a disease – usually because someone found a diagnostic test for it or drug to treat it, and now could make money selling it.

On July 30, 1965, President Johnson signed the Medicare Act, providing health insurance to those over 65 and the blind and disabled; Medicaid, providing (limited) insurance to a (limited number of) poor people soon followed. Despite vigorous opposition to Medicare by the AMA before it was passed, doctors quickly warmed to this program, since a large portion of the sickest (because of being oldest) population now had health insurance, and they (and their hospitals) could get paid for providing care. Costs skyrocketed. In 1972, Congress declared end-stage renal (kidney) disease to be a Medicare-qualifying condition.Renal dialysis went from being an uncommon intervention (which required consensus of nephrologists, psychologists, ethicists, etc., to determine that an individual’s future prospects made them deserving of it) to available – and paid for – for everyone with kidney failure. It turned dialysis centers into money machines, and nephrologists (who ran and owned many of them) from esoteric specialists to among the highest-earning physicians. It now costs Medicare over $30 billion a year, and some are questioning its ubiquity.

Let me be clear: Access to medical care, particularly prevention, early diagnosis and treatment, as well as kidney dialysis, is a good thing. People should have it. This includes the people who resist the most valuable of medical interventions such as not smoking and getting vaccines. The problem with medical care is the incredible cost, because no one who is making money on it is cutting prices, and the cost of insurance to employers and individuals (including premiums, copays, deductibles) is out of the reach of many. So now we have suggestions like “insurance on demand”, kind of a retro-solution. If it is a solution.

So how does Bind Benefits, the company featured in the article, do it? I don’t know – maybe they can do enough volume of business that they can negotiate lower rates with health care providers, thus meaning the customer pays less. But, then, this is how the insurance market already works – insurance companies work out deals with providers to pay less than the ostensible price. Only the poorest, without insurance, actually get billed the full retail price. And then, unsurprisingly, they can’t pay it, even with repayment plans. Many of their bills get sent to collection agencies that pay cents on the dollar to the original creditor for the opportunity to ceaselessly harass those with the greatest need.

Maybe it is a gimmick to attract the relatively healthy younger crowd. But it will still leave out the most vulnerable, the sickest, oldest and poorest, and the people who need it the most. This has always been the American way, sadly.

Here’s an idea: How about we put EVERYONE in the US on Medicare, and then fund it adequately? It costs more (but not as much more as you might think since the oldest and sickest are already in it), but we STOP paying insurance premiums, copays, deductibles. We limit the profit for the biggest parasites – drug companies, insurance companies (which might administer aspects of Medicare as they do now), health systems, some physicians? We stop pretending health care is like a fire in your house, something you want to be protected against but hope doesn’t happen, and recognize that it is something everyone needs. Not partial measures, like lowering the age for Medicare to 55, or asking people to buy in, or such. Just everyone in the same system, funded by our tax dollars (and a lot less of them than we are spending now). THAT would be an idea.

Everybody in, nobody out!

President Obama on the ACA and next steps: what do we really need to improve our health?

On July 16, 2016, the JAMA took the unusual step of publishing an article by the President of the United States. “United States Health Care Reform: Progress to date and next steps”, by Barack Obama, JD, is by definition “political” and a defense of his administration’s health care policy and achievements, but it is also a well-documented piece of policy research. In it, the President details the improvements in both health care access and actual health status achieved by Americans since the passage (in 2010) and largely-full implementation (in 2014) of the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”), and provides evidence to support the central role of the ACA in creating those positive changes. He particularly notes that this improvement is not simply a result of improvement in the economy recovering from the Great Recession of 2008; this is supported by the fact that many indicators of breadth of coverage (what percent of people had health insurance), quality of coverage (how good was it), cost of coverage, and quality of care were getting worse for a long time before 2008.

The President provides data to demonstrate the increase in the number of insured people, especially in the 31 states that have expanded Medicaid. But coverage has expanded even in the others, due mainly to the availability of coverage on the Health Insurance Exchanges, the decrease in cost despite dire predictions for rate increases by insurers, the move (seen variably across the country) away from fee-for-service and towards comprehensive care reimbursement for health care providers, the decrease in the Medicare drug coverage (Part D) “donut hole”, the improvement in health status and quality outcomes from greater tobacco control, and many other positive results of ACA.

President Obama also bemoans the changes that the ACA was unable to achieve because of Republican opposition (while this could be perceived as partisan, it is fact, and fact strongly acknowledged by the Republican Party which has voted to repeal ACA dozens of times). He ends with a lengthy plan for the future, a future in which he will not be President, and what yet needs to happen to improve health and health care in the US. This includes the expansion of Medicaid to all 50 states, increasing competition in the marketplace so all Americans have access to a choice of plans, and limiting the control of special interests, especially drug companies:

The second lesson is that special interests pose a continued obstacle to change. We worked successfully with some health care organizations and groups, such as major hospital associations, to redirect excessive Medicare payments to federal subsidies for the uninsured. Yet others, like the pharmaceutical industry, oppose any change to drug pricing, no matter how justifiable and modest, because they believe it threatens their profits.

While the President does not call out the insurance industry as he does the pharmaceutical industry, he renews the call for a “public option” to compete with private insurance companies. He stops short of supporting a single-payer system, invoking “pragmatism” (defined as “we have to find something palatable to those who oppose change because they are doing so well now") “Simpler  approaches to addressing our health care problems exist at both ends of the political spectrum: the single-payer model vs government vouchers for all.”

When I am confronted by this pragmatism argument, I am somewhat sympathetic. Given the opposition both from Republicans in Congress and entrenched, wealthy and powerful industries (not only pharmaceutical and insurance, but also providers), the passage and implementation of the ACA was a formidable victory. All of the data cited by the President is true, and almost all of it is good. More people ARE covered, the quality of their coverage has improved, the cost to the system (and in most cases to individuals) has gone down, and there have been positive developments in the areas of quality improvement, fraud, and value, and moves away from fee-for-service to comprehensive care. The President led this effort and has the right to be proud, but the holes in the health system that remain are still very large.

For many people, good health insurance coverage is unaffordable; they buy policies on the exchanges that do not cover their needs when they get sick. For many others, there is still no coverage – most of those below 137% of poverty in states that have not expanded Medicaid, those without legal documentation, and some others. The powerful provider, insurance, and pharmaceutical industries have an outsized voice in determining health policy. The disorganized and fragmented nature of our health system and piecemeal nature of coverage and incentives for coordination of care, even with the ACA, lend themselves to healthcare industries (including doctors and hospitals) finding “work-arounds”, or “gaming the system”, for their self-interest.

The key, essential issue in considering past, present and future healthcare and health insurance reform is whether the goal is to maximize the health of the American people or something else (mainly, as I have suggested before, industry profit). There is a cohort of politicians, pundits, and commentators, who are ideological devotees of the unfettered market (and of Ayn Rand novels) who actually are against maximizing health for all; they may be unusually influential, but they are few. There is a larger group, the corporations who are believers only in their making profit, which means the free market only when it advantages them and government support of their industries when that advantages them. And, of course, there are the many politicians and pundits who are on their payrolls, direct or indirect (e.g., campaign contributions). Their role has always been powerful and is greater since the Citizens United Supreme Court decision that said corporations are people and money is speech.

But the largest group is regular people, trying to get by and trying to make sense out of these purposely-obfuscated policy issues. They include folks with and without insurance, like those who are interviewed by Dr. Paul Gordon on his Bike Listening Tour across America, who say things like “Obama Care helped the poor, but now the working class is struggling”. People who are trying to figure out what kind of insurance to purchase on an exchange, and very often opt for the plan with the lowest premiums that will take the least out of their monthly income so that they have more for food, housing, and other necessities as well as some entertainment or relative “luxuries”. And who only find out when they get sick how bad that coverage is, and how much debt they are going to be in, because they lost that gamble.

The reason for this is that, as I have often discussed (perhaps first in “Red, Blue, and Purple: The Math of Health Care Spending”, October 20, 2009), most people are, at any given time, not sick. Most people, especially younger people, will not be sick at any time for the whole year, or a number of years. Thus spending high monthly premiums for good (or better) coverage seems like a burden, and it is. Until, of course, they get sick. Until they get cancer, or get in a car wreck, or have a premature baby, or find their hitherto pretty-well-controlled chronic diseases spiraling downhill. Advocates of consumer choice may say “tough luck, that’s the market”, but this is people’s health. Consistently, surveys of the American (and most other) people find that the vast majority want everyone to have access to high-quality care when they need it – and even want it for “other people” that they don’t know. But the solution, even with ACA, forces them to gamble on their future health while ensuring that insurers and drug makers and the biggest healthcare providers make money. It is a plan to create fear and anxiety and insecurity, despite the accuracy of the overall improved health, and financial, picture that the President paints in his article.

There is a solution. It is indeed a single-payer system. One where everyone is covered, and pays what their incomes can reasonably afford, where the whole society is the risk pool rather than the individual, and people don’t have to gamble with their future health. We could have that, and most of us would relish it (like the vast majority of citizens of other developed countries who have it), and it would provide our only reasonable hope of truly controlling cost and improving quality.

But we are going to have to fight for it. Power does not relinquish control and money easily.

President Obama on the ACA and next steps: what do we really need to improve our health?

On July 16, 2016, the JAMA took the unusual step of publishing an article by the President of the United States. “United States Health Care Reform: Progress to date and next steps”, by Barack Obama, JD, is by definition “political” and a defense of his administration’s health care policy and achievements, but it is also a well-documented piece of policy research. In it, the President details the improvements in both health care access and actual health status achieved by Americans since the passage (in 2010) and largely-full implementation (in 2014) of the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”), and provides evidence to support the central role of the ACA in creating those positive changes. He particularly notes that this improvement is not simply a result of improvement in the economy recovering from the Great Recession of 2008; this is supported by the fact that many indicators of breadth of coverage (what percent of people had health insurance), quality of coverage (how good was it), cost of coverage, and quality of care were getting worse for a long time before 2008.

The President provides data to demonstrate the increase in the number of insured people, especially in the 31 states that have expanded Medicaid. But coverage has expanded even in the others, due mainly to the availability of coverage on the Health Insurance Exchanges, the decrease in cost despite dire predictions for rate increases by insurers, the move (seen variably across the country) away from fee-for-service and towards comprehensive care reimbursement for health care providers, the decrease in the Medicare drug coverage (Part D) “donut hole”, the improvement in health status and quality outcomes from greater tobacco control, and many other positive results of ACA.

President Obama also bemoans the changes that the ACA was unable to achieve because of Republican opposition (while this could be perceived as partisan, it is fact, and fact strongly acknowledged by the Republican Party which has voted to repeal ACA dozens of times). He ends with a lengthy plan for the future, a future in which he will not be President, and what yet needs to happen to improve health and health care in the US. This includes the expansion of Medicaid to all 50 states, increasing competition in the marketplace so all Americans have access to a choice of plans, and limiting the control of special interests, especially drug companies:

The second lesson is that special interests pose a continued obstacle to change. We worked successfully with some health care organizations and groups, such as major hospital associations, to redirect excessive Medicare payments to federal subsidies for the uninsured. Yet others, like the pharmaceutical industry, oppose any change to drug pricing, no matter how justifiable and modest, because they believe it threatens their profits.

While the President does not call out the insurance industry as he does the pharmaceutical industry, he renews the call for a “public option” to compete with private insurance companies. He stops short of supporting a single-payer system, invoking “pragmatism” (defined as “we have to find something palatable to those who oppose change because they are doing so well now) “Simpler  approaches to addressing our health care problems exist at both ends of the political spectrum: the single-payer model vs government vouchers for all.”

When I am confronted by this pragmatism argument, I am somewhat sympathetic. Given the opposition both from Republicans in Congress and entrenched, wealthy and powerful industries (not only pharmaceutical and insurance, but also providers), the passage and implementation of the ACA was a formidable victory. All of the data cited by the President is true, and almost all of it is good. More people ARE covered, the quality of their coverage has improved, the cost to the system (and in most cases to individuals) has gone down, and there have been positive developments in the areas of quality improvement, fraud, value, and moves away from fee-for-service to comprehensive care. The President led this effort and has the right to be proud, but the holes in the health system that remain are still very large.

For many people, good health insurance coverage is unaffordable; they buy policies on the exchanges that do not cover their needs when they get sick. For many others, there is still no coverage – most of those below 137% of poverty in states that have not expanded Medicaid, those without legal documentation, and some others. The powerful provider, insurance, and pharmaceutical industries have an outsized voice in determining health policy. The disorganized and fragmented nature of our health system and piecemeal nature of coverage and incentives for coordination of care, even with the ACA, lend themselves to healthcare industries (including doctors and hospitals) finding “work-arounds”, or “gaming the system”, for their self-interest.

The key, essential issue in considering past, present and future healthcare and health insurance reform is whether the goal is to maximize the health of the American people or something else (mainly, as I have suggested before, industry profit). There is a cohort of politicians, pundits, and commentators, who are ideological devotees of the unfettered market (and of Ayn Rand novels) who actually are against maximizing health for all; they may be unusually influential, but they are few. There is a larger group, the corporations who are believers only in their making profit, which means the free market only when it advantages them and government support of their industries when that advantages them. And, of course, there are the many politicians and pundits who are on their payrolls, direct or indirect (e.g., campaign contributions). Their role has always been powerful and is greater since the Citizens United Supreme Court decision that said corporations are people and money is speech.

But the largest group is regular people, trying to get by and trying to make sense out of these purposely-obfuscated policy issues. They include those with and without insurance, like those who are interviewed by Dr. Paul Gordon on his Bike Listening Tour across America, who say things like “Obama Care helped the poor, but now the working class is struggling”. People who are trying to figure out what kind of insurance to purchase on an exchange, and very often opt for the plan with the lowest premiums that will take the least out of their monthly income so that they have more for food, housing, and other necessities as well as some entertainment or relative “luxuries”. And who only find out when they get sick how bad that coverage is, and how much debt they are going to be in, because they lost that gamble.

The reason for this is that, as I have often discussed (perhaps first in “Red, Blue, and Purple: The Math of Health Care Spending”, October 20, 2009), most people are, at any given time, not sick. Most people, especially younger people, will not be sick at any time for the whole year, or a number of years. Thus spending high monthly premiums for good (or better) coverage seems like a burden, and it is. Until, of course, they get sick. Until they get cancer, or get in a car wreck, or have a premature baby, or find their hitherto pretty-well-controlled chronic diseases spiraling downhill. Advocates of consumer choice may say “tough luck, that’s the market”, but this is people’s health. Consistently, surveys of the American (and most other) people find that the vast majority want everyone to have access to high-quality care when they need it – and even want it for “other people” that they don’t know. But the solution, even with ACA, forces them to gamble on their future health while ensuring that insurers and drug makers and the biggest healthcare providers make money. It is a plan to create fear and anxiety and insecurity, despite the accuracy of the overall improved health, and financial, picture that the President paints in his article.

There is a solution. It is indeed a single-payer system. One where everyone is covered, and pays what their incomes can reasonably afford, where the whole society is the risk pool rather than the individual, and people don’t have to gamble with their future health. We could have that, and most of us would relish it (like the vast majority of citizens of other developed countries who have it), and it would provide our only reasonable hope of truly controlling cost and improving quality.

But we are going to have to fight for it. Power does not relinquish control and money easily.