You can't prevent insurance companies not covering pre existing conditions unless you make everyone buy insurance. Otherwise, just wait until your sick...

Btw, the idea of for-profit hospitals was not just something foreign in the first half of the last century.  I was born at the end of that half-century in a not-for-profit hospital, I spent a lot of time in not-for-profit hospitals (as a sickly kid), and I had my firstborn in a not-for-profit hospital not all that long ago.  

People want choices and freedom.  Back that up with a strong government option, safety net whatever you want to call it.

IN our perverse system they have neither.  They have heavy government regulation along with limited freedom and rising costs.  Literally the worst things from each type of system.

One can pretend that a single payer system would be perfect but that's simply not the case.  Instead of allowing a big insurer to make your health decisions for you instead you are allowing the gov't to do it.

For every example of wrong doing you can give for our current system I have examples of people pulling out their own teeth in socialized systems.  As pointed out earlier if you can afford a 50% tax rate accross the board we can have it all.  

But that's not going to work in a country our size.   We have too many people and we lead to reckless a life to afford socialized medicine.

Look at the states that have already implemented single payer.   they have all lost control of costs and that is why Mass voters rejected a fedral program layered on top of it.

I don't have a perfect solution but I know one thing.  Single payer is not the answer.

It would restrict access to helath care and reduce costs.

While it definitely would reduce costs, it doesn't do that through restricting access to care.  On the other hand, this monstrosity of a reform bill does not significantly reduce costs and is likely to restrict access to care by making it financially difficult or impossible for people to afford the care they need after they pay premiums for mandated insurance and the higher co-pays and deductibles.

Whether that is good or bad is pretty irrelevant because single payer isn't going to happen.

So if the idea is to reform the current system (which already has massive gov't intervention) with more government intervention you can imagine how the average American is a little worried.

Simple economics state that 30million new people with unfiltered access to the current health system will not decrease the cost curve.  It's simply impossible.

The only real argument is in the long term it'll reduce costs by reducing the amount of care we provide through smarter more efficient care.

The problem is I and many Americans don't trust the government to execute.  Call us crazy but we simply don't think the government (no matter who is in power) has the ability to make something complicated (and it doesn't get more complicated then our health system) more efficient and cost less.

That is the major pushback against Obamacare that liberals/progressive and especially Obama and co. can't understand.

The country as a whole doesn't trust them to execute what they're selling.   They want change, they want a better system but they've been listening and watching this process play out for more then a year and have responded forcefully.

We simply don't believe they will deliver on their promises and worry the fix will create a bigger mess then we already have.

Time to start over.

Simple economics state that 30million new people with unfiltered access to the current health system will not decrease the cost curve.  It's simply impossible.

This is simply economically incorrect. You assume those 30 million people's health care currently costs nothing. That's not true. Right now they're using the most expensive, inefficient health care possible: emergency rooms. So, yes. It would cost less if they could walk into community health clinics on the government's dime and get preventative care.

The problem is I and many Americans don't trust the government to execute.  Call us crazy but we simply don't think the government (no matter who is in power) has the ability to make something complicated (and it doesn't get more complicated then our health system) more efficient and cost less.

Gooper, please.