pr0f3n

You're making assumptions. Edwards' and Clinton's plans mandate insurance but introduce increased controls on how insurances behave to counteract exactly what you're talking about. The people who've outlined these proposals are experts in the field, and it's important to remember they're offering workable compromises to a full scale single payor market, which is preferable. They also have the attempt Massachusetts has made to build on.

The 47 million uninsured figure that gets bandied about are not the poor and indigent, these are people who don't qualify for public assistance who cannot afford to buy an individual plan and whose employers don't offer plans.

As for raw price there's several mechanisms at work. The millions of extra payers decreases risk and depresses prices for consumers. The government's leverage in price negotiation depresses prices for consumers and gives the insurance greater leverage in negotiating reimbursement rates with providers.

People who are unable to pay the new lower rate are given waivers/tax breaks/reimbursements, etc.

These type of slippery slope arguments are never convincing because reality never even comes close to the implied consequences. The sentiment behind it resonates with me, I believe we should have the right of self-determination even when that right both harms ourselves and places a greater burden on society. Prohibition's never been an effective policy, and to say more would start a humongous derail, so I'll stop at that. I'd ask you to consider the decades long precedent set by the UK with it's nationalized health care industry or the rest of Europe with their single payor systems. None of them have outlawed the things you're afraid will be outlawed.

That's exactly the type of thing found exclusively in our mixed payor market and a reason for higher reimbursement demands from providers.

Let me try. First, it doesn't eliminate the profit motive from health care. Yes providers are always going to need compensation for their services, but the health care industry is an unfair market because the demand side is never not going to need their services, so their influence on the market is inherently impaired. As such, insurances and providers are better able to artificially inflate prices. They have no real motivation or pressure to work out a sliding scale that does anything less than demand every penny they can hope to extract. That's why the average bankruptcy has more than $10,000 in medical debt.

Second, it's still an artificial limitation on access. People are dissuaded from seeking preventative care or any care until they absolutely need it, which drives up cost and burden on providers, which is passed on to consumers, not to mention a decrease in quality of life and economic productivity.

Third, the percentage of settled claims for uninsured patients is extremely low. Regardless of the reason for that, it's a reality, and when providers are losing money on the uninsured they're less willing/able to reduce their reimbursement rates from insurance.

Any health care scheme is going to have problems, and mandating privatized insurance is fraught with them, but it's a start, it is an improvement over what we have currently, and given the last 20 years of legislation I believe this is the best that can be done right now.

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In heaven all the interesting people are missing.
Friedrich Nietzsche