I have long believed that if someone supposedly working toward a stated agenda is using anything other than the simplest means possible to achieve that agenda you can be sure their stated agenda is not their true agenda.  So it is with repeal and replace.

Amid cheers and jeers, depending on which side of the aisle you reside, the newest iteration of repeal and replace has gone down in flames.  For seven years Republicans have waxed eloquently on the subject and crafted many pieces of legislature addressing repeal, knowing full well that President Obama would never sign any of it.  Now with a Republican president vowing to sign the bills none are forthcoming.

On the Democrat side the voices were raised in support of fixing the ACA but it was all empty talk designed to impress the base.  Neither side actually worked to advance their stated agenda.

If we stop looking for complicated reasons the why of this all becomes crystal clear.  By the most widely accepted number health care consumes 6 percent of our national GDP and there are some sources that place the number as high as 17.1 percent.  At either end of the scale that is a huge chunk of change.

These funds are largely controlled by the insurance industry but it is a secret desire among members of both houses of Congress that the money  would be better controlled by the legislature.  In other words, a single payer system.

You won’t hear much open discussion of government controlled health care for a couple of reasons:  There is not yet enough popular support in the electorate to provide cover for the early advocates of such a system and the insurance industry spends far too much money buying legislation favorable to conducting its business.  The recipients of that largess are not willing to abandon it until something to replace it has been firmly established.

And so they dither while waiting for the current system to collapse under its own weight.

Personally I support the idea of a single payer system, not because I am against free enterprise but because I am opposed to the insurance industry as a whole.  If you are too young to have been involved with insurance some 25 years ago ask an older relative or friend how it was back then.  The insurance industry used to have as its model customer service first, the good of the injured party foremost.  If this were still true I would be firmly in their corner but it all changed in 1992.

Read the Huffington Post article attached and you will see the beginning of the end for service based insurance.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/13/insurance-claim-delays-industry-profits-allstate-mckinsey-company_n_1139102.html

That which started with Allstate spread rapidly throughout the industry.  Today every family will have some member who has a horror story to relate about an insurance company.

Many industrialized nations have adopted single payer health care, some good, some bad and some completely incompetent.  I cannot help but believe that given so many decades of combined experience it would be possible for a group of fairly intelligent experts to assess the relative merits and drawbacks of those various systems and based on the experience of others, craft a system that would be fair and equitable for our citizens.

I would also support a constitutional amendment making universal health care, cradle to grave, to include dental and vision, a right of every US citizen.  Full disclosure; As a vet with a service connected disability I have the VA and no need of the ACA in any form.

Congress has somewhere between 6 and 17.1 percent of the GDP to play with.  That should be enough to fund a single payer system.  It’s time for them to abandon the charade and move toward what they all really want.

I’ll give Bernie this one, it needs to be done.