Are we finally moving toward a single payer health care system? Maybe.

President Obama has already voted, have you?

Courtesy of The New York Times:

The Obama administration will soon take on a new role as the sponsor of at least two nationwide health insurance plans to be operated under contract with the federal government and offered to consumers in every state. 

These multistate plans were included in President Obama’s health care law as a substitute for a pure government-run health insurance program — the public option sought by many liberal Democrats and reviled by Republicans. Supporters of the national plans say they will increase competition in state health insurance markets, many of which are dominated by a handful of companies. 

The national plans will compete directly with other private insurers and may have some significant advantages, including a federal seal of approval. Premiums and benefits for the multistate insurance plans will be negotiated by the United States Office of Personnel Management, the agency that arranges health benefits for federal employees. 

Walton J. Francis, the author of a consumer guide to health plans for federal employees, said the personnel agency had been “extraordinarily successful” in managing that program, which has more than 200 health plans, including about 20 offered nationwide. The personnel agency has earned high marks for its ability to secure good terms for federal workers through negotiation rather than heavy-handed regulation of insurers. 

John J. O’Brien, the director of health care and insurance at the agency, said the new plans would be offered to individuals and small employers through the insurance exchanges being set up in every state under the 2010 health care law. 

No one knows how many people will sign up for the government-sponsored plans. In preparing cost estimates, the Obama administration told insurers to assume that each national plan would have 750,000 people enrolled in the first year.

When the Affordable Care Act was passed WITHOUT the public option, I know a lot of people were really upset. Myself included.

But then I read somewhere, and I wish I could remember where, that this was just the first step of Obama's ultimate plan, and that once the bill had passed it would be tweaked, and tweaked until the programs offered had finally forced most of the health care insurers out of business, and then we would, for all intents and purposes, move to the single payer health care system that the progressives had long been hoping for.

I think that this could be the beginning of that tweaking process.

Now please keep in mind that Mitt Romney has promised that on "day one" he is going to repeal Obamacare. And if that happens, we can all kiss goodbye ANY hope of seeing our broken health care system repaired once and for all

Mitt Romney, like all Republican politicians, works for the health insurance conglomerates, and they will do ANYTHING to save their livelihoods.