In case you have forgotten, the Dems continued to weaken the public option at every turn until such time that the conditions that they established guaranteed that the option would not and could not compete against private insurance. If the Dems had included the final version of the public option, it would have failed miserably in a relatively short time. Don't see how anything has changed since Obama made a deal with the health care industry not to include a robust public option. The industry does not want it and Obama wants their help to keep this POS system alive.

This is not a slam per se but I do find it ironic that those of us who advocate for single payer are consistently told that we are being unrealistic yet supporters of ACA keep claiming that Obamacare will be continually improved into something great and wonderful. In this corporate centric environment, all these changes to made it better are as likely to happen as implementing a single payer system - meaning ain't going to happen any time soon.  To the best of my knowledge, all the changes that have been made to system since it was signed into law have made it less progressive and not more.  

kdog: "My sister's nickname ain't Nurse Ratched for nuthin'!"

... she's also a teapartyin' wingbat who would similarly complain about people abusing the ER looking for drugs. In fact, she complained about that all the way up to the time she was finally caught stealing narcotics from the hospital pharmacy.

Then she changed her tune somewhat, and complained that because she was addicted to pain medication, she shouldn't be held legally responsible for her actions and should instead be treated with compassion.

She eventually received a deferred acceptance of guilty plea in exchange for completing drug rehab and other community service requirements, and is now clean and sober, and singing a far different tune about drug addicts in the ER than in the past, thanks to her personal experience and brush with the law.

That said, I've always found it somewhat sadly amusing that those persons who publicly advocate that the less fortunate should take greater personal responsibility for their own lives and fates, will then exempt themselves from their own prescribed code of conduct whenever it's personally expedient to do so.

Medicaid provides health care benefits to certain categories of poorer Americans and legal permanent residents. Most Medicaid participants - 65 percent - are "working poor" families in which someone is employed.

The uninsured individual who pays ZERO pays the same for ER treatment as someone on Medicaid who pays ZERO. Simple math. ZERO = ZERO regardless.

But that raise you haven't gotten in 7 years probably isn't because of Medicaid.  I suspect the scoundrel responsible can be found in the closest mirror.  That guy with the bad attitude who has convinced himself no one can tell he hates them, while simultaneously b1tching about not getting a raise.

If all you pros out there want to talk about negotiation, you can't backtrack and ask for something that was already given up.  By not campaigning for single payer in 2008 (and no one did; and even Edwards did not call his plan single payer), you cannot out of the blue make an opening bid of something that was not part of your campaign.

But I'll post it again:

Whenever we allow the wealthy to buy better care or jump the queue, health care for the rest of us suffers. If the wealthy are forced to rely on the same health system as the poor, they will use their political power to assure that the health system is well funded. Conversely, programs for the poor become poor programs. For instance, because Medicaid doesn't serve the wealthy, the payment rates are low and many physicians refuse to see Medicaid patients. Calls to improve Medicaid fall on deaf ears because the beneficiaries are not considered politically important. Moreover, when the wealthy jump the queue, it results in longer waits for others. Studies in New Zealand and Canada show that the growth of private care in parallel to the public system results in lengthening waits. Additionally, allowing the development of a parallel, private system for the wealthy means the creation of a permanent lobby for underfunding public care. Such underfunding increases the demand for private care.

More:

The "public plan option" won't work to fix the health care system for 2 reasons.

1 - It foregoes at least 84% of the administrative savings available through single payer. The public plan option would do nothing to streamline the administrative tasks (and costs) of hospitals, physicians offices, and nursing homes, which would still contend with multiple payers, and hence still need the complex cost tracking and billing apparatus that drives administrative costs. These unnecessary provider administrative costs account for the vast majority of bureaucratic waste. Hence, even 95% of Americans who are currently privately insured were to join the public plan (and it had overhead costs at current Medicare levels), the savings on insurance overhead would amount to only 16% of the roughly $400 billion annually achievable through single payer - not enough to make reform affordable.

2 - A quarter century of experience with public/private competition in the Medicare program demonstrates that the private plans will not allow a level playing field. Despite strict regulation, private insurers have successfully cherry picked healthier seniors, and have exploited regional health spending differences to their advantage. They have progressively undermined the public plan - which started as the single payer for seniors and has now become a funding mechanism for HMOs - and a place to dump the unprofitably ill. A public plan option does not lead toward single payer, but toward the segregation of patients; with profitable ones in private plans and unprofitable ones in the public plan.

Oh, and the decision not to fight for a single-payer plan wasn't made by the public, but by politicians, many of whom have been bought and paid for by big money interests.

I'll leave you with some observations from Charlie Pierce:

But the fact is that the country wanted its massively fractured health-care system fixed, and it had wanted that system fixed since before Bill Clinton tried it back in the early 1990's. A completely ludicrous percentage of the country also wants criminal background checks on gun purchases. Right now, if you believe the polls, it is massively in favor of raising the minimum wage. And, actually, if you go below the surface of the polling on the ACA and health-care reform, you find a substantial portion of the country that doesn't like the embattled law because it doesn't go far enough toward health-care's being a right, not a privilege and, in any case, the country repeatedly stated throughout the last 20 years that the status quo ante was an unacceptable combination of corporate avarice and personal tragedy. And yet, that is where the debate is right now, no matter how much Fred Upton says otherwise from deep in the pockets of the people who make money off human misery.

It has become remarkable how the people of this country, an ostensibly self-governing republic, fail to get what an overwhelming percentage of them say they want from their government, over and over again. You can argue, and I have, about the power of money, increased by an order of magnitude through the egregious Citizens United decision. You can argue, and I have, about the unforgivable vandalism practiced by the Republican party and the modern conservative movement that has been the prion disease in the party's higher functions that has driven it mad. But the fact remains that, dammit, there has to be a political price to pay for actively opposing something 66 percent -- or, in the case of the background checks, 91 percent -- of the people say they want. And the electorate is the only body of citizens empowered to exact these penalties, and it has been shamefully lax in doing so. Parts of the country have contented themselves with electing morons and crazy people. (How in the name of god does a buffoon like Louie Gohmert ever run unopposed?) Great portions of the country can be duped, or frightened, into voting against their own economic interests. And the great undifferentiated apathy that attends most of our elections is a deadweight on the democratic process that grows heavier by the year. If our politicians are not responsive to our needs, then it's time for new politicians, and we're the only ones who can bring that about. And yet, it's easier to complain about an inconvenient website, or a scary letter from an insurance company, or bullshit anecdotes that fall apart under the barest scrutiny. The country is ungovernable because we, The People, have decided not to govern it any more. That, to borrow a phrase from the president, is on us.

Can you explain to me why Google, Apple, IBM or many other companies would like to transfer the responsibility of medical care to the government? I have attended benefits seminars with several large employers. HR representatives have consistently said that medical benefits are used to help sell their companies to potential hires, so they would not like to transfer the responsibility of providing benefits to the government (atleast not at this time). Most people that I know also believe that they are getting these benefits because they work harder and smarter than other people (yes, even people who are in the lower rungs of the corporate ladder) and that these benefits are earned through meritocracy. Why isn't there a mad rush by the big companies to turn over health care over to the government if they are currently paying more than what they would pay through single payer? Either these companies are not paying more or if they are, they think that investment is worth it to retain employees.

It is really bizarre to think that all large corporations are being forced by medical insurance companies to retain Obamacare when a better option of transferring the responsibility of medical benefits to the government was already available to them. Health insurance companies do not have that sort of power.

2% is not just a "large middle class tax increase" it's freakin' huge. Ginormous. Nobody would go for that instead of a bank and back breaking umpteen thousands of dollars a years for the right to have even more ginormous deductibles and denials too...

And not only that, but a "government takeover of health care" would never work. It's been proven all over the world and everybody knows that Socialized Medicine Sucks. Nobody in his or her right mind would want that, and any politician who so much as suggests it is obviously deluded.