Dude, the term "Means Tested Single Payer" is an oxymoron.  "Single Payer" obviously means only "one payer" - i.e. the government.  "Means Tested Single Payer" means only the means tested will get the single payer while others other will get other payers.  So "Means Tested Single Payer" cannot actually exist because means testing implies there will be multiple payers.  The Left of Yglesias's have already dropped using the term "public option" because of how Yglesias and his fellow progressives have re-defined the term.  Now Yglesias is trying to re-define the term "Single Payer" also so that it doesn't mean what it plainly means.  Does he have no conscience?

The wonderful exchanges will be based on what insurance costs in 2014, by then a price that will most likely be totally and completely an unjustifiable expense by anyone with half a brain.  Affordability act?  Such a name is nothing but hype, along the lines of Bush's Clear Skies and Healthy Forests acts.  Subsidies?  Over Republicans and many Democrats dead bodies.  This is the group that thinks we gotta raise taxes on the middle class, lower taxes for the rich, and cut social security for "deficit reduction".  Do you think they'll offer REAL subsidies?

Here's an article that does a nice job of depicting what Regence in our state is doing right now...raising premiums atrociously and cutting benefits just about anywhere not mandated by the "Affordability" act...that means cutting prescription drugs, scans, raising deductibles...etc.  All of this, they say is to justify the added expense of changes they now have to make to comply with the law.

Link

But under ACA that's not the case. Of course subsidies will be needed for most retirees, but a workable highly progressive system would be in place to ensure that nobody has to go without access to health coverage.

I am confused as to how the government subsidizing private insurance premiums at a higher cost does anything to cut the deficit. The cost differential between the government higher cost of private insurance if they adopted a highly progressive system and what they would save because a small percent of seniors would be required to pick up the entire tab would be negative IMO unless the range of subsidies were very small. This IMO is correct:

Saying that "the Affordable Care Act haven't really sunk in yet" is another way of saying that the assumptions used to calculate cost savings to the government of increasing the Medicare eligibility age are quite wrong. Shifting old people out of an efficient insurance provider into an inefficient one that they pay for with government subsidies isn't sound policy.

This the equivalent of a pony for everyone:

You add a public option with Medicare payment to the ACA exchanges

Using Medicare rates is strictly "pie in the sky" before they go to moving to just the exchanges as being good or at least better than nothing. Congress was not willing to adopt any system based on Medicare rates. They would not even go with Medicare rates + 5%. Their donors would not allow it then and they will not allow it now.

Seniors have prepaid for their benefits. I don't think that the government defaulting on their obligations is either good policy or good politics.  

Medicare for all...too simple, too obvious.

With Part D, it requires that you be able to see into the future to predict exactly what drugs you will need during the next year because the drugs covered by the various Part D plans (which are all private insurance plans) vary from plan to plan, and you are stuck with you plan for a year. Monthly premiums change every years, as do $$ amount of co-pays.

Medicare Advantage plans, also private companies, come and go every year, so this years plan may b not be around for next year. Each plan offers different things for different amounts of money. Tons to wade through.

The Catfood Commission's proposals are filled with proposals that not only are bad, they are far outside the mainstream of what Americans want, and, more relevantly, what Congress will ever approve. I mean really - eliminate the mortgage interest deduction is going to happen? Cutting Social Security benefits is going to happen? Never. Ever. The Catfood Commission proposal is unserious and unSerious. BTD

It's not just you, it's all the entire political/media establishment.  Similar to Death Panels, it was absurd, yet everyone had to pitch their two cents, and in this case, seems like your in for about a buck fifty for something that you claim is an improbability.

And in  support, Erskine Bowles, typifying the kind of bi-partisan Democrat that gives President Obama nocturnal orgasms, piped in, "Yes, there will be pain, but we put everything on the table."