Healthcare, in all ways, is a necessary service that should be provided by the government (see 9.1 at my blog). If all businesses were consolidated and owned by the government we wouldn't need to worry about the cost of ensuring our health. Socialism is necessary to fix the problems we see in capitalism (see 8.1 at my blog). We need socialism to mend the problems of capitalism (as seen in chapter 8 of my blog). Consolidation would fix all inabilities to fund projects.
Healthcare is necessary but that doesn't automatically mean it must be provided by government (certainly not directly in all cases), only that it should be available in an accessible manner (and there are a whole load of questions and difficulties around the details). If you use socialism (communism really) to "solve" the problems of capitalism, how do you deal with the equally significant problems of socialism? Extreme systems don't work regardless of the extreme; That's why there are hardly any left.
There are ways to keep the benefits of capitalism (competition, innovation, different pay for different jobs etc.) and have the benefits of socialism (see chapter 10, http://derive-the-law.blogspot.com)
The simple solution to me is make Medicaid or a similar system as the default insurance for the uninsured while keeping other options in place, employer coverage and so forth. Once could simply have the costs based on ability to pay for a national health system say 8% of ones income if earning over a certain level say 133% of the Federal Poverty Line for any month your using the system, regardless of income. The wealthy would likely have some coverage and many get it from employers but this would be a safety net program. Not ideal but it would make this simple if your covered with an insurance policy with broader options your fine if not your going into Medicaid or whatever the system is the costs a tax on income or paid at the end of the year or something.
The problem with the formula put forth by HHS and enforced by the IRS for insurance subsidies is that it does not take into account "non tax deductible monthly expenses; such as food, gas, electric, credit card debt, personal loan debt(such as car and mortgage payments). To suddenly mandate an individual or family pay for health insurance(including benefits they will never need, such as maternity, newborn care, addiction treatment; without assessing their ability to pay the additional monthly expense; is not what we were promised. We were promised prior to and at passage of the PPACA that our premiums would be lower, we would receive a premium subsidy to purchase insurance on the exchange if we could not afford the premium and that if we liked our current coverage we could keep it. They knew all along that few would be able to keep their coverage as most were paying for the benefits they needed. Those not needing maternity were saving hundreds of dollars per month as Maternity and Newborn benefits have always been amongst the highest costs of insurance. And, where an individual or family earns above the poverty level and income HHS put forth AFTER the law passed, they do not qualify for assistance regardless if they have the disposable monthly income to pay the premiums. And, by extending the mandate for small business group health insurance until after the 2014 elections, Obama(Dems) hope to delay the thousands of small businesses that will lose their current group coverage or be unable to afford the new coverage mandated. Not only hurting the businesses but more importantly their employees losing their coverage and being forced to purchase higher premium, higher deductible, and higher out of pocket insurance through the exchanges. Many will go uninsured. This law was misrepresented. The promise to reduce premiums and provide affordable insurance to those that were uninsured and allow those happy with the coverage they had in 2010; was nothing more than a lie that the Democrat controlled Congress in 2010 used to pass the PPACA as deficit neutral. Even the CBO, commented many times that while the information the were given to score came out as deficit neutral, it would only be neutral if nothing changed. Including using the Student Loan Act and changes to SS to benefit those legislations attached to the PPACA. Instead of using the savings from these two pieces of legislation to help pay for the PPACA. Also, once the Supreme Court ruled that States could opt out of expanding Medicaid, that too add huge costs to PPACA. Not much that guaranteed that the PPACA would be deficit neutral, lower premiums and the cost of providing health care is left.
