Single Payer: Coming to a Liberal State Near You

The Teahuggers were right.  Obamacare really IS just a steppingstone to that there Socialized Medicine.  Works for me.

Until I saw Froma Harrop's column yesterday, I didn't know about Section 1332 of the Affordable Care Act. Under Section 1332, beginning in 2017, states will be able to apply for “innovation waivers.”  Under these innovation waivers, a state can choose its own path to health care reform, even if this path is different from those that are spelled out in the Affordable Care Act.

These individual routes to health care reform will have to meet the minimum requirements of the ACA.  But it's OK if a state exceeds those requirements.  And this paves the way for Single Payer.

Several states have indicated that they plan on using Section 1332 to start implementing a Single Payer system.  These states include Vermont, Washington, Oregon, California, New York, Maryland, Colorado and Hawaii.

It's a start.  After that, it'll get harder and harder for the rest of the country to not follow suit.  Soon we'll all be sliding down that Slippery Slope to Communism.

In her column, Froma Harrop spells out the obvious (if you're not a Republican):  “By the way, Canada’s [single payer] system is not socialized medicine but socialized insurance (like Medicare). In Canada, the doctors work for themselves.”

Whether the teabaggers and Foxsuckers like it or not, America is slowly being dragged kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century.