Posted on 07/27/2017 7:26:37 AM PDT by Kaslin
The reason Republicans can't "come together" on a repeal-and-replacement plan for Obamacare is that the American people haven't come together on what they want.
True, polls show Obamacare remains unpopular. But the various Republican replacement proposals have polled even worse. And when you break down the answers, Obamacare is unpopular-ish. Americans, for example, like the idea of preventing insurance carriers from denying coverage to people who have pre-existing conditions. Similarly, polls show that Americans like compelling an insurance company to keep a child on a parent's policy until the child is 26 years old. Americans wish to prevent insurance carriers from "discriminating" on price based on their projections of who is more likely to use health care.
When asked whether they believe "health care is a right," many polls find that a majority of Americans say yes. Once again, Obamacare was designed to continue the march toward a Canadian-style, single-payer health care system -- a type of cradle-to-grave "Medicare for all." Under so-called single-payer, the federal government becomes the insurer, eradicating private health care insurance. So "single-payer" means that every American taxpayer is paying for the insurance -- and all the overhead costs of a bloated, inefficient, bureaucratic federal government that faces no competition or incentive to be cost-efficient.
Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, an early advocate of the single-payer system, later said he supported the "public option" -- a federal Medicare-type insurance available for purchase. It would coexist in the marketplace with private insurance, theoretically offering the consumer a "choice" between private or government insurance.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Dean talked about the health care proposals of Democratic candidates Barack Obama and then-Sen. Hillary Clinton: "I think while someday we may end up with a single-payer system, it's clear that we're not going to do it all at once, so I think both candidates' health care plans are a big step forward."
In other words, Obamacare was just a steppingstone along the path. The end game is the single-payer system. Obamacare was intended to fail, given the Democrats' real goal of a Canadian-style taxpayer-paid health care. Harry Reid openly said so. The Las Vegas Sun reported in 2013:
"(Senate Majority Leader Harry) Reid said he thinks the country has to 'work our way past' insurance-based health care during a Friday night appearance on Vegas PBS' program 'Nevada Week in Review.'
"'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.
"When then asked by panelist Steve Sebelius whether he meant ultimately the country would have to have a health care system that abandoned insurance as the means of accessing it, Reid said: 'Yes, yes. Absolutely, yes.'"
Barack Obama, then a state senator from Illinois, said: "I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer, universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its gross national product on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. ... A single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. That's what I'd like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we've got to take back the White House, we've got to take back the Senate, and we've got to take back the House." And later, then-President Obama reiterated his stance, with the qualification that if starting "from scratch" he'd have a single-payer system.
Never mind that Claude Castonguay, the "father of Quebec Medicare," criticized his own invention, and said that the mistake was not encouraging more private-sector participation. In the '60s, Castonguay chaired a Canadian government committee on health care reform. He urged Quebec, his home province, to enact government-administered health care, paid for by all tax levies on its citizens. Quebec obliged.
Eventually the rest of Canada followed suit. But 40 years later Castonguay, serving as chairman of a government committee reviewing Quebec health care in 2008, said the system was in "crisis."
"We thought we could resolve the system's problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it," said Castonguay. "We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice." His recommendations included contracting out services to the private sector, instating co-pays to see doctors and legalizing private health care insurance. Radical stuff.
Never mind that, a year later, the newly elected president of the Canadian Medical Association said that her country's health care system was "imploding" and said, "We all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize." At the same time, the CMA's outgoing president said, "A health care revolution has passed us by" and "competition should be welcomed, not feared." Better late to Economics 101 than never.
The GOP took a big step this week toward fulfilling its promise to repeal and replace Obamacare by passing a procedural vote to debate the issue in the Senate.
Now comes the hard part.
Ditch and Mueller-is-a-good-guy-deep-stater PRyno are no ace gunslingers for the shootout at the 0Care Corral.
Americans like all the goodies but don’t want to pay for them. Par for the course.
70 Billion directly to insurance companies? How much #stabilization fraud funds?
All bills being proposed need to be made public for 48 hours prior to the vote. After the house tried to bailout insurance companies, I don’t trust them. #NeverBailout.
Preexisting conditions? What if my house burns down, should an insurance company be forced to pay me for it even though I was not covered at the time? And since when are 26 year olds “children?”
You would think that over eight years would be enough time for those in the whorehouse on the hill to check with their johns on what to do about “health care.”
Government has no business being involved with heath care anyway.
They LIE!
They had eight years to prepare a plan. Now, they can’t or won’t do it. A lot of credibility has been flushed away for certain republicans.
“the American people haven’t come together on what they want.”
That’s why FREEDOM is paramount, and CAPITALISM succeeds.
We don’t have to “come together”, just leave us all the he11 alone and let us do as we see fit.
If enough people want what is practically a single-payer system, they can all pile on to a single do-all plan and pay accordingly.
If individuals don’t want any plan, or catastrophic only, or whatever special needs they want, they can choose from a plethora of plans and in turn the providers can pay attention to what people want.
I don’t WANT to “come together”. I want to make arrangements as I and a provider agree on.
REPEAL. NOW. Get your own personal “replace” as you see fit to buy, and someone else sees fit to sell you.
Obamacare won’t be repealed, because it can’t be repealed - or, more exactly, it can’t be repealed without ushering in huge Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate.
Members of Congress don’t know much, but they can count votes like a pimp in a whorehouse can count money.
Yes, the voters “hate Obamacare and want it repealed”. That is absolutely true.
It’s also true that they want the ability to buy insurance for pre-existing conditions, want insurance companies to be forbidden to cancel policies for non-payment, want zero payment at the point of service, want their adult children who are smoking dope in a dive in Oakland to stay covered, want their States to expand Medicaid without taxes going up, and so on.
In other words, the only two things they hate about Obamacare are paying for it, and the name.
Republicans in Congress understand this perfectly well, which is why there’s no plan.
And, not coincidentally, Obamacare (and Romneycare) were the culmination of fifty years of “reform”, all of which had the purpose of destroying the private sector or making it impossible for the private sector to function, except for boob jobs and a few other things. And, by 2009, the mission was largely accomplished.
Obamacare was merely a temporary mop-up operation, until full nationalization was possible.
And now, it is.
Like Nixon to China, Trump will propose single payer within the year. It’s really the only way out at this point.
And before you accuse me of favoring it, realize that it will destroy a lifetime of work for me. I don’t like it - I hate it.
But it’s coming, because it’s what the voters, bless their pointy little heads, want.
Sounds like latching onto an excuse not to keep a promise made to the people who elected them.
Frankly, screw Democrat voters and non-voters ... trying to keep them happy will only cost you your actual voters who have been sufficient thus far to get you elected.
Do these RNC types think independents will vote for them if they cannot keep a pledge they have been so publicly dedicated to? The Democrats will speak often and loud that Republicans are liars who make promises only for partisan advantage and it will stick.
The voters who elected them will be discouraged and the independents will vote for Democrats ... the Republicans are nitwits if they continue to think about the “American people” rather than those who actually sent them to office.
“replace”? Looks like we’ve been directed by MSM TomTom into “comprehensive” and “immigrant” Semanticsville.
When did the false choice of “repeal AND replace” become the goal? They promised to repeal it.
The problem is that the GOP—like their counterpart `rats, the left wing of Uniparty—is incapable of shame. They just don’t do shame. None of them do.
Something as shameful as this—a flat refusal to act by our `champions’ after years of their promises and lectern thumping—so shameful that it would make a murder of crows blush, why—it’s like a fear of hard work ...
The right wing of Uniparty can lie down next to shame (and hard work) and go right to sleep. And they sleep like babies: waking every couple years to bawl their heads off.
The GOP: our beardless, exempt, shameless Rip Van Winkles. `bout time for another recess isn’t it? yawwwwwwn.
Neither does the insurance industry which has merged with banking.
The Democrats will speak often and loud that Republicans are liars who make promises only for partisan advantage and it will stick.
The Republicans are not liars. The demonrats stick together and the Republicans do not. As long as they are divided they will not be successful.
IT'S TIME FOR THEM TO UNITE
Actually, several former leaders have stated that the promise to repeal WAS a lie - and was know by them to be a lie when they said it. Cantor is one such idiot.
>>>The reason Republicans can’t “come together” on a repeal-and-replacement plan for Obamacare is that the American people haven’t come together on what they want. <<<
Nope, it’s because some republicans are actually democrats aka RINOs
Actually, enough of them are.
At any rate I was speaking about what the Rats will say. They will say that the Republicsns who ran for all those years were lying. And the media will parrot them. Many will believe them and be discouraged.
That the Democrats are bigger liars will never matter to their base or to many of the “independents” who have their heads up their cans or else they’d realize what the Rats are.
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