I finally looked up what "single-payer healthcare" means. I’ve seen this term "single-payer" bandied around in the healthcare debate for years but I’ve never been able to wrap my mind around what it meant in the context of these debates.
I’ve always assumed that it was a debate over how to implement health insurance. Thus I’ve never really cared that much about it, because it felt like an "inside baseball" topic.
But in fact "single-payer healthcare" is a system that *doesn’t use insurance at all.* According to Wikipedia, it’s a system where someone else (ie. the government) pays for all of your healthcare costs.
This is in contrast with a "multi-payer" system, where you buy healthcare insurance and the insurance companies pay for your healthcare costs.
Lightbulb!
Finally this explains to me why it has been such a bitter partisan issue whenever this "single-payer" term comes up.
Obviously, Republicans are going to oppose a single-payer system, because it sounds suspiciously like the dreaded -isms of socialism and communism.
Now that I have a new understanding of this concept, what do I think? I’m fairly ambivalent about it. It boils down to what I want my tax dollars to buy, and I rarely even think about my tax dollars. My tax dollars aren’t in my bank account so they are dead to me.
I guess it would be nice if the government would cover basic healthcare costs, but I’d also like to have the option to pay more for better service, because you *know* government services will be terrible.
