Re: I am opposed to a blanket UHC plan, because what I've seen is when you make healthcare free -- you will create the same problem nationally we've had in TN, and nobody has a clue how astronomical the costs are going to be.

Those costs are going to exist no matter what! You cannot expect people to just lie down and die just to save you a buck along the way.
Problem is, the costs are largely hidden now because no one is directly billed for "uncompensated care". Instead the costs are just snuck into everyone else's bill.
As for TN if the fools in Nashville had funded the plan right it would not have run into this plan.
Universal healthcare is indeed a moral imperative and, yes, we are going to have pay for it (and forget that silly slogan about it belong "free"; it won't be and we all know it). So be ready to ante up your fair share and be glad that you too will never be without healthcare. I call that a good bargain.

If the left and the right would only lie down together, like lambs among lambs, many things would be possible. And that could happen if neither side had principles, core beliefs or concerns about elections. But even then, their mutual labors might just produce a monster.
And I can't imagine a bigger monster than the one we'll get when the insurance industry realizes its plan for universal health care.

Universal, single-payer health care (definitely NOT the industry plan) will free up hundreds of millions of dollars currently used unproductively to fund competing private health bureaucracies, their duplication of efforts, mass confusion, profits, coverage exclusions, payment dodges and legal entanglements. Universal, single-payer health care will relieve American employers of the unreasonable and unconscionable requirement to be the provider of good health for their employees, and free them to focus their human and financial resources on becoming better global competitors.

The Tennessee experience is instructive, not in the way it is discussed above, but because it demonstrates that universal health care cannot be piece-mealed at the state level. TennCare was a well-intentioned Medicaid solution that did not and could not address the fundamental problem. Medicaid winds up providing care to those with the most intractable, chronic problems who have no remaining resources of their own and who have been cast out of the mainstream system by all other insurers.

That's the crux of the issue. Insurance is supposed to be about shared risk. But the game among private insurers is to accept risk only from those who are at the least risk, and shun those who are at the greatest risk. So long as the game is competition among private employers and their private insurers, and the incentives for both are to shun risk, you can bet that those most at risk will have no coverage, or, if they do, their coverage will disappear as soon as those chronic symptoms take over their lives. Soon they, too, will be on Medicaid.

The only fair, equitable, practical and affordable health care system entails universal risk sharing, which results in a single-payer system.

I'm not so foolish as to believe that universal, single-payer health care is a panacea. There will be many problems to deal with, many of which have been pointed out by opponents of the system. But if we believe it is important to make good quality health care accessible and affordable for every citizen, I see no other way to do it. And it can be done well. That's the key. We can do it, and we can do it well.

I think that universal health care can be accomplished in a bipartisan manner, but only when the large majority of the employers in this country who are not insurance companies or health care providers finally realize that their interests in this matter are inconsistent with the interests of that minority who are insurance companies and health care providers. Then, like good corporations everywhere, they will tell their elected representatives what to do.

Re: JP, without even researching the Tenncare program, you have the audacity to say they should have just funded it right.

If a program runs out of money it usually means it is not properly funded or perhaps is poorly organized. That and not universal coverage is the reason for such difficulty.

Re: C'mon, do the research first, and you will discover the issues of UHC are very complex.

Complex? No. Complicated? Yes. there's a difference. As with all financial matters the trouble boils down to failure to balance income with out-go. Sure, there are a myriad aspects to that problem, but it's a single-value problem, not something complex at all. To solve, analyze where and how the money is coming in and going out, then adjust as needed. True, the political will may have been lacking to tell providers they would receive less and suscribers they would have to pay more, but that's a political failure, not something inherent in the system.

Re: A European model will not work here for many reasons

There is no single "European model". Europe's healthcare systems range from Britain's uber-socialized NHS to Switzerland's (heavily regulated and subsidized) free market system. All of them produce universal coverage, and we too should be able to find a model that works for us-- not necessarily by copying anything Europe does exactly, but by sorting out what will work best for us. The money is there (Come on, the US economy is many times richer than what is needed for this); all that's lacking so far is the will to spend it.

I have actually suggested on other threads about healthcare that the GOP will finally go along with universal healthcare (but not single payor) but will strive mightily to turn it into a gravy train for their corporate benefactors. A while back on Slate there was even an article about many GOP bigwigs buying stick in companies that would profit from universal health insurance. In fact, since many Democrats have the same corporate sponsors I would not be surprised to find the democrats joining that parade.

If you have access to NYT Select, read Krugman's lucid editorial today:
"A Healthy New Year."

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/01/01/opinion/01krugman.html?hp

Here are a couple of quotes:

"Apologists for our system try to minimize the significance of these numbers [47 million uninsured]. Many of the uninsured, asserted the 2004 Economic Report of the President, “remain uninsured as a matter of choice.”
"And then you wake up. A scathing article in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times described how insurers refuse to cover anyone with even the slightest hint of a pre-existing condition. People have been denied insurance for reasons that range from childhood asthma to a “past bout of jock itch.”

"The only reason universal coverage seems hard to achieve here is the spectacular inefficiency of the U.S. health care system."

"...now is the time to warn against plans that try to cover the uninsured without taking on the fundamental sources of our health system’s inefficiency. What’s wrong with both the Massachusetts plan and Senator Wyden’s plan is that they don’t operate like Medicare; instead, they funnel the money through private insurance companies."

Krugman's on a roll.