Honestly it's in society's best interest to limit unwanted pregnancies as much as possible, which is why it's legal in the first place.

Nice double standard you have there the system as it was prior to the whole reform starting couldn't live up to that list.

It'll take probably a decade at least before we really see the cost savings involved with the reform. It takes time for older sicker people to die off and for younger people to not get serious illnesses. But in time it's definitely cheaper to prevent than it is to treat after the fact. And in the mean time it's only been since October of last year that the cost savings provisions went into effect. And since the beginning of 2011 that health insurers were forced to spend 85% of their premiums on actual health care for group policies and 80% for individual policies.

If you don't believe that single payer will save money, I'd like you to do some research and find one country with a single payer system that spends more on health care than we do in the US. I can guarantee that you won't find any anywhere because by all metrics the US spends more on health care than anybody else does.
It's legal in the first place because the US is not a theocracy and there's little to no evidence that anything other than education on sexual health, living wages and access to contraception reduce abortions.

The SCotUS legalized it based on privacy, which is kind of silly really. I am pro-choice, but that's a really silly way to make it legal. By that logic a doctor should be able to hand out cocaine as long as it's a private matter in his office.

Anyway, it was made legal because society demanded it be legal, basically. Even if we are split on it (last I heard 52% were pro-"life") the general consensus of the educated is that it needs to be available.

Do you have any evidence that people use abortion as birth control? There are plenty of people who, thanks to abstinence only sex ed, don't know about contraceptives or who can't get them thanks to right wing pro-lifers who think that birth control pills ought to be banned as well. But I've never encountered a single person in my life who thought of abortion as birth control.

I keep hearing about these "convenience" abortions, but there's nothing convenient about it. It's a great talking point, but it basically does nothing but polarize the issue.
It's a silly basis. But what's more silly is that the small government folks seem to have no problem with the government forcing women to carry these unwanted babies to term.

Well, although I pretty much disagree with what you've said, I've gone up and uprated it for no other reason than there was no reason to downrate it. This has for the most part been a very civil discussion and it's a textbook example of good forum etiquette.

Or quoting an old American favourite, Evelyn Beatrice Hall: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." It's a shame so few people live by that morality today. These days, people see freedom more as a means to shirk their responsibility and less as a way to maintain the natural balance of things.

I'm personally just glad that fellow with the bible chapter in his tag didn't pop up. THEN it would have turned into a flame war.

I actually uprated OP for the same reasons. I didn't agree with him/her but I also didn't agree with the OP post being downrated for crudely expressing their opinion.

I think you misread that bit. The Ponzi part of the current programs is that younger generations are paying for those currently using the benefits. With the current situation, as I mentioned in an earlier post, we have a problem where the ratio of those paying into the system to those using the benefits is decreasing. For a single-payer system to work, that needs to be looked at as the funding problem that it is, and then derive a solution.

When I get my annual SS statement, I can project into the future total and see that it is quite unlikely that, if I live to the average age, my contribution will fully pay for that which I take out in retirement. This shortfall will be taken out of the funds that younger folks are supposedly contributing for their own SS retirement benefits. This isn't going to work without some significant changes to that program. What I was saying there is that this needs to be recognized and dealt with if a much-larger single-payer program is going to have any chance of working.
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You said it better than I did, and that's what I meant. It should, at the worst, come out even: eliminate private spending on premiums and free up that money for the necessary tax increase. Now, does that manifest in a higher business tax rate, or do we expect the salary increase and then pay the higher tax on the personal returns? Kaiser Family put the 2010 average family premium at $13,700 for 2010, so the monthly $1,100 has to come from somewhere. If the increase is placed on the family, and that family doesn't get a corresponding raise, then that's going to really hurt the economy; $1,100 each month is a big deal.

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I figured the bit on abortion would raise some eyebrows. That's fine. I'm not asking for them to be outlawed but I would like to see pregnancy prevention be more proactive, whereas abortion is an invasive reaction. For all of those who have said that one of the benefits of single-payer is preventative care, I'd like for you to consider applying that notion to prevention of pregnancy. With any luck, we'd see an improvement in proactive pregnancy prevention when told that abortion as birth control would not be funded, but proactive measures would be.

What solution would you recommend then> Maybe investing the money(Or part of it.) put into the system in some sort of fund or portfolio of investments? Some other method?
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I agree prevention of pregnancy(Through information campaigns/contraceptive usage&awareness/etc.) should be made to be the more attractive option so that more women would try to prevent said unwanted pregnancies instead of getting pregnant and needing an abortion after the fact(For whatever reason.). This would better protect the health of the women at risk(No need to go through abortion procedures, less chances of getting STDs by using protection, etc.), and would benefit the system as well.

Try getting the church to allow it though....and before you say we don't need to remember that many women/men/etc follow the church's word to the letter and won't use birth control(Even if they need it or think they might need it to prevent pregnancies/STDs.) if ever.

The problem is that the biggest opponents of abortions are also those who think that abstinence is a great idea to teach our kids. And it just doesn't work. Teenage pregnancies are the highest in states and cities that teach this abstinence fairy tale. And birth control needs to be covered by healthcare, not only for practicality but simply because it is amongst the set of revocable rights women have. Nobody wants an abortion, but daemonizing women that get one is morally abhorrent.

Conservatives need to face reality also on this issue of they want to be part of the solution.

I'm pro-choice and agree, but I can also see the other side. If you believe life begins at conception, or at the first heartbeat, or whatever else, then it makes sense (to you) to stop the murder of that life.

Abortion is a debate I easily see both sides of, even if I am pro-choice (mostly for societal benefit reasons).

Just before anyone pops up accusing me of speaking too soon *lol*

It's not intended to be used that way, but that's how it turns out for some. As you said, folks may be uneducated about proactive measures, so abortion becomes their birth control. Not necessarily by choice. In a preventative system that single-payer claims to be, this could be reduced. With roughly 1.2 million abortions last year, I think it's more than simply accidental pregnancies. Can we reduce the instances of that comparatively costly procedure with education and inexpensive preventative contraception?

If we're going to spend federal (taxpayer) funding on this, it's better to get at the problem on the cheap side. A $400 abortion (making up that price based on an average from a search) will buy 1,000+ condoms and a whole lot of birth control pills. The cost of 1.2 million abortions could fund a lot of simple education. Let's encourage that instead of paying for the expensive after-the-fact reaction.

How is that a double-standard? I never claimed the current situation was perfect. But if we're going to make the gigantic change to single-payer (and I think that's an eventuality), then let's do it right. Kinda pointless to go to all the trouble if we're then stuck with an irreversible system that turns out no better than what we have right now - which does work quite well for a majority, yes, a majority, of the people.

That's great, and we also don't have the same extent of wait-lists and denied services as found in some of those systems. I can make our system cheap, too, by slowing down the system, putting you on a four-month list to see a specialist or get a screening, and telling you to simply get by in the meantime with some crutches and pain pills. Months to get an appointment to start investigating the problem, let alone begin solving it? Yeah, that crap, and worse, sometimes happens in single-payer, and it's a travesty. I'm asking that we take that into consideration and do our level best to minimize those particular problems that do exist within single-payer systems. If we can't learn the lessons from those who have already trod the same path, then we'll get exactly what we then deserve: an expensive and substandard system that serves no one well.

I'm not sure why folks are getting uppity about it when I'm simply asking that we seek to achieve the best possible single-payer system if we're going to make the effort do it at all.

If (when) single-payer passes, they won't have a choice. I'm sure that education will be written somewhere into the ~10,000 pages that nobody in Congress reads.

Oh, nothing wrong with teaching abstinence. Just don't make it the only thing that's taught.

And aren't these people also less likely to seek abortions? As you say, they follow the church's word to the letter...

I've covered my thoughts on the SS problem in other threads. Either way, its funding model is not one that should be copied for single-payer. That's the whole point of bringing it up - whatever we do, don't do it that way.

My dad couldn't get health care because he was misdiagnosed as a child, and as a result couldn't afford the medication and treatment needed for his physical therapy from his motorcycle accident and then the cancers he developed afterwards (And we know what happened after that). Any health care plan, be it government mandated or private, that will accept clients with preexisting conditions is okay with me as long as it is regulated and properly executed with an affordable premium/tax/whatever. That being said, I don't know enough about this myself even though I have been researching it myself. I welcome change and any benefits it brings. We can only hope to improve on that and learn from our past and upcoming mistakes.
Edited for a grammatical error.

Problem is that often such people marry other like minded people(Well it's not a bad thing for people to marry those who think and act like them, perse.), and while(Usually) only the woman has to choose to have an abortion(And possibly "betray" their faith, as it were, to do so.) & go through with it, using contraception is often a two sided/two party deal and the woman would have to get the man to "betray" his faith as well(By using contraception/other methods.) to go through with this method of pregnancy prevention vs. an abortion. Of course there are other factors why women don't use birth control more(Not being informed of the dangers of unprotected sex/unwanted pregnancies at an early enough age, etc.). This is just one of them.

Translation: "Let's ignore all the problems the US federal government created just because of a few decent things some other politicians did in the past."

As for claims about other countries having it so much better than us with their government-run health monopolies, I know people are going to argue about these articles or claim that I'm just cherry picking but government insurance doesn't guarantee immediate or any treatment as show by the following Canadian and British articles concerning delayed and denied medical treatments at the hands of government bureaucrats.

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/216280--year-long-wait-for-skull-surgery
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2672411/Crippled-man-up-in-arms-over-NHS.html

The articles can be seen as dated and I'm not saying every Canadian and UK citizen is doomed to experience what that truck driver and plumber experienced but they show that the government isn't some magic genie that fulfills all your needs. Yes, there are some things governments should do like protect the border (which this government is not doing) but running someone else's medical care is not one of them.

If the politicians really wanted to address the issue of cost and availability, they could have just opened up the state borders to all purchases and uses of individual health plans which would have promoted competition leading to lowers prices and better services while addressing the threat of overly expensive medical malpractice suits to help reduce malpractice insurance costs.