"Until we get a single payer not-for-profit universal health care system, the kind that Hillary abhors, we will not control medical costs and rationing will continue. This system, which feeds the corporations, is part of the Republican Lite version of the Democratic party Hillary and Bill are attempting to bring back."
The problem with the health care system is the cost which shuts people out and rations care.
The cost is so high because we have a private system that is inefficient. And it's inefficient because we support a parasitical insurance industry through our health care payments. Every other advanced industrialized country in the world does it a different way.
That way is single-payer health care. Eliminating costs by eliminating profits from the middle man.
Any attempt to graft universal coverage over the top of our present broken system will only dramatically increase costs and would be unsustainable.
Naturally, this is a political loser for everybody. Obama's coverage is NOT universal. Hillary's isn't really universal either. But, frankly universal health care will be WILDLY UNPOPULAR if it is put into place by mandates because you are forcing millions of people (the young and healthy) who don't currently pay for health care to purchase it.
Why? Because unless you eliminate runaway cost from the system, by getting the insurance industry out of it, you're forcing people to pay more for health care coverage, to cover the older and sicker.
Maybe that's sensible, even necessary, but it they won't like it. At all. And those are only the tip of the iceberg flaws with the way both plans are proposed.
I remember back in 1993 Bill Clinton talking up his health-care proposal at the time. He asked the audience what percentage of them liked their HMOs. He looked absolutely shocked that so many people HATED managed care (for reasons that everybody understands now).
Democrats need to avoid being chained to an albatross of "universal health care" that is neither universal, nor solves the problem of run-away cost, and is wildly unpopular to boot.
If we get caught in the trap of "doing what's possible" even though it won't work, we'll be crushed by the Republicans for years afterwards. The first failed attempt to introduce health care reform helped bring down the Democratic congress in 1993. We can't afford another mistake like that!
Keeping talking.
You put the problems with both the Hillary and Obama plans, which exceed their trivial differences, in a nutshell. They do not come close to the liberal social democratic systems in play in the EU and the English speaking countries.
