I give up--I'm joining the single payer camp

I'd hoped for the possibility of a compromise with the health ins cos and pharm cos etc. since that would be more palatable to the dittohead population than a single-payer system...but after confronting what I'm facing with Medicare Part D and the doughnut hole of death, having to live in dread of what a cost-of-living increase meant to HELP me might do to me in 2010, I realize that Medicare Part D is the perfect example of what happens when we try to "compromise" with an industry that has no heart and not even an economic interest in doing what is best for the nation as a whole. The short-term-thinking greedheads are the ones who gave us Wall Street 2008 and a Medicare prescription plan that can kill people...what would they give us next?

I also had a horrible thought: what if they have made a lot of bad investments, with all the premiums they have collected which could have bolstered Medicare for ALL...and ask for a bailout one of these days? It could happen!

So I posted the below, here . Which begs the question...which do I trust more, economic theory or my personal experience?

Guess which.

Anyway:

The private health insurance companies have already had decades to show us what they can and will do for...and TO us. They've had their chance in spades. As someone who is facing potential death from next year's annual cost-of-living increase for Social Security Disability (SSDI), which could kick me into Medicare Part D's dreaded "doughnut hole" (no exemptions for people with fatal diseases or anything compassionate like that), and who also can't even try out a home-based business thanks to that same "doughnut hole", I've finally had to accept, despite an economics degree, that in this particular case market failure is so rampant that "competition" isn't really there, and so it cannot work. The health insurance cos siphon off the healthier population and collect premiums from them while the taxpayer picks up the tab for the sick/disabled and the elderly. Nice work if you can get it. They probably have some bridges to sell to us, too. Of course a lot of what they make is frittered away in outrageous administrative costs, executive salaries and perqs, what they remit to their stockholders, and I'll bet you anything some bad investments they are going to be begging to be bailed out of one of these days! A significant portion of the U.S. population has been trained to fear their government more than greedy corporations who don't face all that much competition since they are divided by region and are permitted to exclude people like me who got diagnosed with systemic lupus right when I got off of my parents' health insurance at age 23...resulting in the permanent destruction on December 24, 1985 of any chance I might have had at the American Dream. It is up to our elected representatives to remind our citizens that in a democracy we ARE the government. We've abdicated our power to lobbyists and corporate campaign contributors but we CAN take it back. As for single payer, two arguments: covers ALL of us, at the LEAST COST. We don't even have to pioneer it. We just have to help people not be so afraid of it. We shouldn't have to be concerned about inheriting the flaws of underfunded systems...not with what WE spend on health care per capita...could I please have equal time with Rush on the airwaves? give me that microphone, now! I want to know why the penalty for me trying to work is death, and has been death for some time now, but it's ok for policymakers to consider more of the same old same old when spending $$$ on health care "reform." When I get a good answer, I'll shut up.