regulation though.

>what i definitely agree with you is that the main benefit to
>M4A is that you dont need to depend on a job for health
>coverage. you dont need to stick around at a bad job because
>the health coverage is good.

But the government doesn't "have" to take on the cost of every American's healthcare to do this, does it? A solid public option that's always there if you need it would give people a choice if they don't like the coverage offered through their job too.


>
>from what i have seen employers complain about the cost to
>cover employees as well, that its a limitation to them hiring
>more employees.
>

And this is why I always point out that the vast majority of the private health insurance market is comprised of employer plans. And who is more equipped to bargain with/shop around on the health insurance companies, you or your employer? A corporation can threaten to take their 10,000 employees elsewhere for a better deal, and Aetna or whoever will pay the fuck attention. But the health insurance companies could care less about individuals, as we have seen with how and what they offer folks through the ACA exchanges.


>i have a couple of fears (dont know how well founded they are)
>with M4A. will it give most americans the same quality of
>coverage theyre used to? more so are these claims of keeping
>the same dr and such believable? that seems to be something
>people got burned on before and will be an easy target for it.

And see, this is a perfect area to crack down on with regulation. It should be "illegal" for a doctor to discriminate against patients because of the type of health insurance they have. Both providers and payers need to have several seats on this one. As a patient, wouldn't it make sense that no matter whether you go from Medicaid, to a private plan through work, to a public option... NOTHING changes with whether or how your provider(s) can see you? See they don't like that idea because they are paid/reimbursed at different rates depending on the type of insurance patients have. So this is why many people in the US have coverage under Medicaid but have poor healthcare access, because a doctor can decide they refuse to accept Medicaid, or they only see Medicare patients, etc. It's greedy and a huge source of inefficiency in US healthcare system.

>i have definitely seen claims that coverage would improve in
>general but there needs to be more backing to it. the second
>fear is what happens to people employed in the private health
>industries? a lot of people will lose their job right? i want
>to say no but it seems logical. i hope someone can prove im
>wrong on that.
>

I think there's a lot of proposals floating around about different ways private health insurers could still play a role, even under a single payer system. But, at least to me, the biggest concern is about the costs that are currently covered by the private health sector that would all of the sudden be the taxpayer's responsibility. The only way healthcare coverage and quality could "sustainably" improve under a US single payer system is if prices were driven waay down. But it would be nearly impossible to implement strict price controls across the board (doctors would revolt, the shareholders of all these health and drug companies would revolt, and good luck passing any meaningful legislation to make it happen), as opposed to simply piecing together a competitively-priced public option that provides good coverage and is designed to be affordable for individuals and small businesses that CHOOSE it.

And this would create the right kind of pressure on the private payers too, because if the public option ended up so much better for more folks than their employer plans, employers would start to see employee enrollment on their plans drop which after a while would beg them to ask "why pay all this money to this shitty health insurance company whose plans nobody even wants?" Which would then force the private plans to compete (i.e. better benefits, lower pricing), to attract/keep customers.