ObamaCare's Rollout Failures Hurts the Case for Single Payer

An often-expressed idea -- a fear on the right, a hope on the left -- is that the failure of ObamaCare will drive people towards the full leftist position, that of a Single Payer system, in which government completely, rather than 80%, takes over all health care.

Charles C. W. Cooke examines this idea and finds it unlikely. For obvious reasons.

[I]f Obamacare fails structurally, we will start to hear a drumbeat from the Left — and one based upon the argument that Americans can’t have workable universal healthcare while maintaining a diffuse system of private health insurance. Advocates will contend, I suspect, that the for-profit model simply cannot be reconciled with “fairness” and “social justice” and whatever other silly and vague words they choose, and that the government must take over the payment system in consequence. How much success this approach will have is anybody’s guess.

But if Obamacare fails technically, too, and the memories of trying for weeks just to create a government account linger in the minds of the public — perhaps even leading to an embarrassing delay – opponents will have been presented with a strong hammer with which to whack the single-payer mole for years to come. “The government couldn’t even run a website without it turning into the DMV,” they will be able to say. “Do you want them in charge of the whole damn thing?”

Just trying to pump out the Optimism on a day of defeat. Not to say this stuff isn't true, but I'm trying to accentuate the positive.

posted by Ace at 05:13 PM

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