Hillary Clinton sells her soul on Single Payer Healthcare

We reached out to both campaigns, but only the Sanders campaign responded. Warren Gunnels, policy director for the campaign, compared the bill to ObamaCare's structure for insurance exchanges, where each state may set up its own exchange calibrated to its own needs, but if they'd rather not, they will default to the federal exchange. If conservative states refuse to set up a single-payer plan to the government's liking, then their "citizens would receive coverage from the feds," he told me.

Now, that's still sort of a weird way to set up a single-payer system. Sanders routinely describes his ideal plan as "Medicare for all," and that program is completely under federal control. Setting up 50 smaller single-payer systems (or however many states choose to participate) would surely create much duplication of administration structure and hence waste. Worse, it provides a potential crack in which conservative hacks on the Supreme Court might rewrite the program to be optional — just like they did with ObamaCare and the Medicaid expansion. Medicare is already firmly established, so it's perhaps wiser to implement single-payer on a similar foundation.

Hillary Clinton today defended her daughter’s attacks against her Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders’ single-payer health care plan, despite criticism the remark was inaccurate.

“You know, I adore my daughter and I know what she was saying,” Clinton told “Good Morning America” about Chelsea Clinton. “Because if you look at Senator Sanders’ proposals going back nine times in the Congress, that’s exactly what he’s proposed. To take everything we currently know as health care, Medicare, Medicaid, the CHIP Program, private insurance, now of the Affordable Care Act, and roll it together.”

[Bernie Sander's] plan would take Medicare and Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program [CHIP] and the Affordable Care Act health-care insurance and private employer health insurance and he would take that all together and send health insurance to the states, turning over your and my health insurance to governors,

Sen. Sanders wants to dismantle Obamacare, dismantle the CHIP program, dismantle Medicare, and dismantle private insurance. I worry if we give Republicans Democratic permission to do that, we'll go back to an era—before we had the Affordable Care Act—that would strip millions and millions and millions of people off their health insurance

she also does not support getting rid of Medicare and neither do I.

The ACA does need some improvement, but I agree with Hillary and think we should work with what we got rather than trying reinvent the whole wheel. I think eventually, we will have universal health care and that is what I support but it is not what Sander's advocates.

All developed countries have single payer except for the US, and the ACA, so far, has not proven to be a successful compromise.

Do you agree that moving to a single payer health care system is the best way forward for the United States?

States Opting Out of Medicaid Expansion

The law previously required states to expand coverage to everyone making less than 138% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) or lose federal funding to Medicaid. However, that provision was changed during a supreme court ruling on ObamaCare.

States can now opt-out of Medicaid Expansion, leaving millions of poor working families in the “Medicaid coverage gap” between those who qualify for Medicaid (as low as 50% FPL in some states) and those who qualify for marketplace subsides (between 100% – 400% FPL).

States opting out of the expansion of Medicaid under ObamaCare is projected both to drive up insurance costs and to save the States relatively small amounts (with some, like Minnesota, showing up to a billion in new revenue under the program).

Under the ACA health care institutions that are good for people and good for overall health are going out of business because they aren't profitable and no one with money has any incentive to keep this important work going on.

Do you agree that moving to a single payer health care system is the best way forward for the United States?