Just wait until the price comes in.

@2 It's the good people of the state of Washington you need to convince to fund this and whether it's a carbon tax or income tax, we regularly have to bitch slap you over your dreams of ever-expanding government.

This is little more than political posturing to raise Inslee's national profile in hopes of a cabinet position after 2020. It's never gonna happen but he's more interested in getting your Pavlov response.

@1 -- We MUST raise "health" Insurance Corps fees from a measly 20+/-%
to (at least!) 50%.

Repeat after me: Gotta make a Killing Gotta make a Killing Gotta ....

" the "good" people of Washington state who are opposed to this are the same cunts that voted Trump."

I didn't. I also voted for Obama twice and like Obamacare for its balance of private and state roles and not nationalized healthcare with all the required rationing that goes with it.

But keep imagining the 65% of Washingtonians who rejected an income tax last time (which is what would be needed to fund this) are all "Trump voters".

@7 Ok, I'll admit it, I voted for Reagan in 1984 and am not embarrassed by it. Reagan would probably be a Blue Dog Democrat by today's standards.

Anyway, good luck convincing the good people of Washington state to fund this massive increase in state government. Maybe you can convince us that getting our healthcare will be as fun and productive as visiting the DMV?

This announcement's only purpose to help Governor Milquetoast's cabinet aspirations. How else can you explain him trying these after 6 years in office?

@10 Sorry I reduced you to insults rather than facts.

@13- by what metric did they do these things well? By profit, maybe. But given that they spent an order of magnitude more per customer than most countries with socialized medicine, and had worse outcomes, that doesn't speak well of their actually effectiveness.

I feel compelled to comment here not to make any insightful comments about Jay Inslee's endorsement of "Cascade Cares" or provider deserts, but rather to comment on the appearance of King County Commissioner Dow Constantine in that photo. I'm used to seeing a slim, elegant Dow Constantine cutting a dashing figure that reminds me of a healthy David Duchovny. But here I'm seeing a bloated Dow Constantine, like he's had a few too many provider desserts. I hope it's not a glandular issue or whatever happened to Jerry Lewis.

Dow, if you're out there, please let us know you're doing OK.

Oh, and reading mistral @13: "I wish the government would keep it's fat ass out of private insurance altogether." Why do conservatives so liberally interchange "its" and "it's"? Their treatment of the English language betrays a certain radicalism. (Forgive my Segal-esque Grammar Nazism.)

@8: “How else can you explain him trying these after 6 years in office?”

Because this is the first year he does not face an obstructionist majority in at least one house of our state’s legislature.

The flip side of that answers Rich’s questions: Inslee’s non-obstructionist majority is thin enough that he’s trying to get something done, rather than the nothing he was forced to accept until now.

@13: As @14 suggests, you should look at other, English-speaking countries with single-payer, and compare costs. (Just because a bureaucracy is private doesn’t make it efficient.) Until then, you can tell us all about how much damage Seattle’s high minimum wage has done to our economy. (Or, more briefly: how much lower can unemployment possibly go?)

@8 Yeah all those countries with public health care systems that beat the US (by a wide margin) on almost every metric are screaming for our medieval system. I get it that something for nothing chuckleheads (like yourself obviously) have zero interest in metrics, or reality in general, however.

I think that attempting 'single payer', as it is commonly defined, on either the state or federal level is a recipe for failure. People who have employer provided coverage are guaranteed to revolt enmasse over the idea. I'd like to know what is supposed to be better (or even cheaper) about this frankenstein plan compared to a for real 'public option' though. A public insurance plan that would compete with private insurers on the exchanges would most likely be a hell of a lot cheaper than their offerings and all but the shiniest gold plans would atrophy away. You get to full coverage by stealth, not by taking on the hoards of anti-tax zombies head on.

@17: “People who have employer provided coverage are guaranteed to revolt enmasse over the idea.”

Try it and see. My spouse and I each have great healthcare (by US standards) through our employers, and we’d go for a UK or Canadian plan in an instant.

@18 Eh, so do I and so would I but the ordeal of getting Obamacare passed should be all the evidence you need: any proposal that involves 'taking away' people's healthcare (that is, what they are familiar with), and jacking up taxes (regardless of the hypothetical 'savings', which employers would mostly just pocket), would cause the epic meltdown to end all epic meltdowns. Try it and your proposal will go down in flames before it gets anywhere. Shooting for a real public option has a much higher (although certainly not real good) chance of success.

" A public insurance plan that would compete with private insurers on the exchanges would most likely be a hell of a lot cheaper than their offerings and all but the shiniest gold plans would atrophy away."

Yes, they'll be lining up outside the door for a state run system with 6 month waitlists to see a specialist.

@12 German Sausage: Thank you for getting Trollworst to shut up.

Medicare for ALL, dammit!

@20 Trollworst: A little slow down at juvee hall today?

@20 I'll assume by your enthusiasm for the 'wurst' healthcare system in the developed world that you have never been sick.

@20:

I'm sure it's fun to talk out of your ass and then just make stuff up out of the shit that is extruded as a result, but IME at least, my Canadian mother-in-law for example has been seeing a series of specialists up there for longer than she's been my mother-in-law and her wait-times have been a matter of days or maybe a couple of weeks at-most; but demonstrably shorter than wait times I've had to endure to see specialists here in the States. And the only reason her waits are as long as they are is because they live in a small town where the local clinic pulls in patients from a fairly large geographic area, so it's really just a matter of workload-throughput than anything else.

@24 Cute anecdote.

Here's some data:

"Waiting for treatment has become a defining characteristic of Canadian health care. In order to document the lengthy queues for visits to specialists and for diagnostic and surgical procedures in the country, the Fraser Institute has—for over two decades—surveyed specialist physicians across 12 specialties and 10 provinces.

This edition of Waiting Your Turn indicates that, overall, waiting times for medically necessary treatment have in-creased since last year. Specialist physicians surveyed report a median waiting time of 21.2 weeks between referral from a general practitioner and receipt of treatment—longer than the wait of 20.0 weeks reported in 2016. This year’s wait time—the longest ever recorded in this survey’s history—is 128% longer than in 1993, when it was just 9.3 weeks.

There is a great deal of variation in the total waiting time faced by patients across the provinces. Ontario reports the shortest total wait (15.4 weeks), while New Brunswick reports the longest (41.7 weeks). There is also a great deal of variation among specialties. Patients wait longest between a GP referral and orthopaedic surgery (41.7 weeks), while those waiting for medical oncology begin treatment in 3.2 weeks."

https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/waiting-your-turn-wait-times-for-health-care-in-canada-2017

@25:

Quoting a "study" by a far-right leaning, libertarian think-tank propped up by the Koch Brothers, Exxon-Mobile, and the U.S. pharmaceutical industry isn't how you win points for "objectivity", donchaknow?

@26 You stick to anecdotes then little fella.

@25 Hey if your last name happens to be Bezos or Koch your wait time is likely to be pretty much zero in the glorious old U S of A! On the other hand, if you are among the unlucky 28 million uninsured it will probably be rather close to infinite.