What’s wrong with this? Nothing.
The insurance companies have spent over 375 million dollars blocking this with their Republican friends and their blue lap-dogs. At 300 million Americans, they could have given us each over one million dollars!
Here’s Matt Taibbi via Dr. Andrew Weil:
Heading into the health care debate, there was only ever one genuinely dangerous idea out there, and that was a single-payer system. Used by every single developed country outside the United States (with the partial exceptions of Holland and Switzerland, which offer limited and highly regulated private-insurance options), single-payer allows doctors and hospitals to bill and be reimbursed by a single government entity. In America, the system would eliminate private insurance, while allowing doctors to continue operating privately.
In the real world, nothing except a single-payer system makes any sense. There are currently more than 1,300 private insurers in this country, forcing doctors to fill out different forms and follow different reimbursement procedures for each and every one. This drowns medical facilities in idiotic paperwork and jacks up prices: Nearly a third of all health care costs in America are associated with wasteful administration. Fully $350 billion a year could be saved on paperwork alone if the U.S. went to a single-payer system – more than enough to pay for the whole goddamned thing, if anyone had the balls to stand up and say so.
The time is now, America: Healthcare for all.