Let's be clear about one thing - Obamacare sucks and the Democrats failed on a phenomenal scale when they attempted to modify our "uniquely American" system of keeping for-profit insurers at the center of our healthcare system. Ever wonder why our system is "unique"? Because almost every other sane country in the world has realized that "profit" and "healthcare" cannot co-exist in the same space.

The health insurance industry was obviously already aware of that fact. Why do you suppose they came up with the concepts of "pre-existing conditions" as a barrier to coverage, or "lifetime caps" to limit payouts or "age-rating" to gouge older people who will have predictably rising coverage needs, or "rescission" in order to bump out covert bunion sufferers who later turned up with breast cancer? Because the insurers want premiums but they don't actually want to pay for actual healthcare! Imagine an industry whose sole goal is to limit and hinder access to the product they supposedly are the conduit to. Insurers are the industrious beavers damming up the channels we have to navigate in order to treat our illnesses and hopefully save our lives. Instead of realizing that there is no role for beavers and their dams in a modern national healthcare construct, the Democrats undertook a Save the Beavers campaign.

The Beavers are actually responsible for writing much of Obamacare, through the Senate Finance Committee and Max Baucus with the full approval of the President and his White House minions, who in an early secretive move, killed off the only thing that potentially could have made Obamacare successful - the Public Option which would have acted as a powerful lever of competition to provide an alternative to the for-profit insurers. The Beavers would have been faced with some industry altering choices if they still wanted to stay in the game - like (gasp!) not paying out ginormous, staggering sums to their top tier executives and BODs. Those insane and immoral compensations are based on the relative success of the scheme to kill Americans through Death by Spreadsheet - healthcare denied is healthcare insurance profit earned.

Why is Obamacare so spectacularly unsuccessful? It's a matter of simple math. A person may be able to afford the premium, but then they have to sit around and hope that they never have occasion to actually USE the insurance, because they will be hit with co-pays, deductibles and out-of-pockets that they often will not be able to afford. For 2017 the maximum out of pocket for an individual is $7,150 and for a family it is $14,300. When taking into account that the average American family has savings of less than $1000 it's easy to see that a number of people who desperately need coverage have figured out that they would be forking money over for premiums for coverage they can't affords to actually use. They will be out the premium money and they will still be forced into financial ruin or bankruptcy over medical expenses. And this situation is not limited to those covered by Obamacare, people who have employer coverage face the same dilemma of having insurance but not being able to cover the co-pays and deductibles.

Kaiser recently released a study in conjunction with the New York Times detailing the consequences that start the downward financial spiral when someone is unfortunate enough to get ill or have an accident even when insuredThe Burden of Medical Debt - Section 2: The Role of Health Insurance Major issues cited were the inability to pay their portion of cost-sharing (75%), "surprise billing" from a health provider they were unaware was outside of their network (32%), or having their claim denied by the insurance company (26%)

So here we are folks, in 2016, six years after the passage of the ACA in2010 and 3 years into its implementation. The problems that existed before the ACA still exist even though coverage has increased. The increase in coverage becomes moot when large percentages of the population, whether covered by Obamacare or receiving employer coverage STILL cannot afford to get care as opposed to the illusion of care.

In my opinion the ACA suffered from a fatal flaw at its inception, the tenet that for-profit insurers had to remain at the core of the American healthcare system. The good thing about the ACA is that it can be considered an experiment that failed. The choice is clear - either insurance companies retain profit subsidized by the illness and death of every American, or we finally, finally attempt to implement a single payer system that removes profit from the equation.

We can rely on Republicans to continue spouting useless aphorisms about "market-based" healthcare without understanding that is what we have had and still have - a market created by the greed of both the providers, the drug companies and the insurers. They will also talk about Health Savings Plans, another useless concept for Americans with stagnant wages and no disposable dollars. I have no particular reason to believe that Democrats will rise to the occasion of offering a better alternative to the ACA based on their previous failures of competence and reasoning in implementing it in the first place. The only way that Americans will finally get comprehensive, single-payer healthcare is if we coalesce around this issues and make it a litmus test for any politician who wants to get elected in the future. Bernie Sanders laid some groundwork in this regard. Healthcare was a major impetus for the election of President Obama in 2008. We need to make it the impetus for election in 2018 and beyond. We need to reject candidates who tell us "it will never happen" if we want it to happen. We can make it happen.

I leave you with this article Repealing Obamacare? A Better Idea: Medicare For All written by Rose Ann DeMoro, Executive Directer of National Nurses United.

Medicare remains one of the most popular social reforms in U.S. history. Expanding it to cover everyone is an idea favored by 58 percent of Americans, as a May Gallup poll demonstrated. It’s the real healthcare reform we need.

Imagine that - 58% of Americans are already in favor of Medicare for All right out of the starting gate. Imagine what will happen after we unite and promote and educate. Our leaders apparently don't have the will to do what needs to be done. We will have to "make them" as one of them told us frankly. It's a struggle we can win.