The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) has provided expanded investment opportunities for the private equity firms. Two of the greatest opportunities include: 1) consolidation through acquisition of small and medium-size health insurance companies, and 2) takeover of Medicaid contractors in an environment of expanding programs in cash-strapped states.

Of all of the industrialized nations, the United States has the greatest amount of health care rationing, and we do that through a unique mechanism. We ration based on ability to pay. As this NEJM report shows, our flawed financing system also results in rationing by inconvenience. This is a unique tool used by the private insurance industry – a tool that serves the interests of the insurers, at the cost of the patients.

Supporters of Medicare for all are already familiar with the Pro position expressed so well by Quentin Young, but you may want to download the full article anyway to share it with others who may be less informed.

Taiwan’s 1995 introduction of a single payer system of universal National Health Insurance provides us with a natural experiment on the impact of single payer reform on health outcomes. The results are dramatic. The rate in reductions of deaths due to disorders that are amenable to health care were nine times the reductions in deaths from non-amenable causes. Nine times!

Imagine WellPoint improving those plans so that they do provide adequate benefits, with a choice of physicians and hospitals, without excessive cost sharing, and that they would include everyone regardless of preexisting conditions. Imagine the premiums that they would have to charge. Then imagine many companies developing similar quality insurance products to create a robust market of plan choices within the insurance exchanges.

Although the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act would allow states to apply for waivers to implement their own systems, they cannot do so until 2017, three years after they are required to implement the private insurance exchanges. Many have asked if Sen. Sanders still intends to introduce legislation to move that date up so that states would not have to set up the exchanges only to replace them soon thereafter with a single payer system. The answer is yes.

On the 45th anniversary of Medicare it is reassuring to know that the vision of President Lyndon Johnson and the 89th Congress for an America that ensures health care for everyone, through a comprehensive Medicare for all, not only still lives, but is an inevitability.

A Quote of the Day message earlier this week described how private insurers were getting around the requirement to provide coverage to children with preexisting disorders. The insurers intended to avoid this obligation simply by closing enrollment to new applicants. It is important to understand the counter-response of the Obama administration because it exemplifies just how dysfunctional the private insurance model is that President Obama and Congress chose for us.

By reading John Geyman’s very timely Hijacked, those who are uncomfortable with the reform process that took place will be able to understand more precisely what went wrong. He explains why our concerns are fully warranted, but, instead of abandoning hope, he provides us with a road map for reform that will ensure that all of us will have the health care that we need.

In several speeches about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, President Obama extolled the immediate end of insurers denying coverage to children with preexisting conditions. He was wrong. His miscalculation stems from the fact that he seemed to trust the insurers to do the right thing for patients instead of continuing to place their own business interests first.