Harry Reid: Obamacare ‘Absolutely’ A Step To Single-Payer

Brace yourselves, conservatives. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is now on record admitting your worst fears. The Affordable Care Act (popularly known as Obamacare) is “absolutely” meant to be a step toward a single-payer healthcare system.

A common conservative complaint against Obama’s signature healthcare reform policy is that it is secretly a step toward single-payer healthcare. While most progressives almost certainly want single-payer, spectators are divided on whether the ACA was meant as a pathway to the controversial overhaul or not.

But when asked on PBS yesterday whether or not Obamacare is meant to set up a potential single-payer system, Reid admitted “Yes, yes. Absolutely, yes.”

Critics say that a single-payer system would effectively wipe out the private insurance market and set up the government as the sole provider of healthcare in the U.S.

Reid said that America has to “work our way past” our reliance on private healthcare.

“What we’ve done with Obamacare is have a step in the right direction, but we’re far from having something that’s going to work forever,” Reid said.

Reid also admitted that the fight for a “public option” was indeed a Trojan horse for a single-payer system, but that the Senate didn’t have enough votes to make it a reality.

“We had a real good run at the public option … don’t think we didn’t have a tremendous number of people who wanted a single-payer system,” Reid said. “We had to get a majority of votes,” he continued. “In fact, we had to get a little extra in the Senate, we have to get 60.”

Forbes notes that among polls that still show Obamacare as incredibly unpopular, roughly 10 percent of respondents dislike the legislation because it doesn’t go far enough.

Do you think that single-payer healthcare will become a reality in the U.S.?