Posted on 10/02/2017 9:28:37 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
For the past century, socialists, progressives, communists, statists, and an increasing number of Democrats have supported the imposition of a government-run socialized medical care system in the United States. Every Democrat president since FDR (except JFK and possibly Jimmy Carter) has spoken in favor of or introduced a plan for socialized medicine. Now, it finally appears that a critical mass has been achieved and the Rubicon has been crossed.
A Quinnipiac University national poll on August 3, 2017 reported “Replacing the current health care system with a single payer system in which Medicare covers every American citizen is a good idea, voters say 51-38 percent.” This reported majority support for single-payer reflects recent samplings of public opinion by Pew Research and other polling organizations. Citing a September 28, 2017 Quinnipiac survey, a CNN article on September 30, “Majority of Democratic voters are all-in on single-payer,” further advanced the story:
Asked in a new Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday whether they support a single-payer system, in which the federal government would expand Medicare to cover the medical expenses of every American citizen, nearly two in three Democratic voters (65%) said it was a "good idea."
That result mostly fell in line with other recent surveys, which have shown increased backing among liberals and independents, with a slight upward trend across the board.
But the Quinnipiac poll pushed harder, incorporating another key detail into a subsequent question – the specter of a tax hike.
"Would you think that a single payer system is a good idea or a bad idea if it removed all health insurance premiums, but also increased your taxes?" the pollsters asked.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Docs have been threatened with massive Medicare audits?
I recall finding on Google News Archive an article in the Ottawa Citizen from about 1982 and it was an interview with a doctor who for many years worked at one of our major hospitals until about two or three years earlier. He got fed up with how the government controlled everything from his billing, how much hospitals spent on food, when certain procedures and surgeries were to be done and at what cost, etc. He moved to Arkansas and immediately found far more freedom in terms of how many more patients he could serve and how more fully he could serve them and do all sorts of other things in terms of delivery of his services that were greatly restricted back up here.
“How can Medicare cover every citizen when we had to pay deductions for many years and wait until age 65 to use it?”
But didn’t San Fran Nan tell us that Obamacare would reduce the deficit?
It won’t be Medicare for all my “ right of what is commonly presented on this forum” friend. There isn’t enough money for that.
Perhaps some degraded form of Medicaid for all. Read Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward (if you haven’t already) and you can get a pretty good idea of how single payer will play out in a bankrupt country. Just make sure you’ve got a stock of vodka for your doctor visits.
RE: Medicare for all will provide the best alternative to what we have now. I see no alternative.
There’s only one thing that you will have to consider — Medicare for seniors has been PAID FOR by these same folks via payroll tax deductions during their lifetime of work.
If we have Medicare-for-all, I assume that Medicaid will be done away with.
Does this mean that even if you did not pay into the Medicare system, you qualify for it?
How’s that going to affect the country’s finances?
RE: Im a physician. I know no doc who wants single payer.
Well, it looks like you do now... see Post #18 in this thread.
Perfectl Played by the globalist establishment...how quickly we are turning into a third world nation!! I hate the freakin liberals they are a cancer in society!! Everything they touch become fecal matter!! EVERYTHING!!
“Single-Payer means Physicians are government employees”
I’m a physician. The Rubicon was crossed 8 years ago. We already are government employees, de facto, one way or another. All that is left is a formalization. The door was left open by the GOP Senate.
Not only are more of them younger and female, they’re also increasingly foreign.
And...? How much do doctors make? How much does the average American make?
>Constitution? No, that doesnt matter!
Why, has that venue even been in consideration since the bill was pulled out from some D.C. desk drawer?
The whole ‘debate’ revolved upon ONE sentence: the ability to TAX. That’s as far as D.C./courts discussed.
Nothing about ‘taxing FOR’. Nothing else in A1S8 was considered. Nothing re: 4th/5th/9th/10th/13th...
100yrs+ the Socialists promoted, and excelled, as selling conflicts as ‘legal’; the (R) has been *GREAT*...at searching their belly-buttons for lint. Just watch the (R) as it comes to the Vegas shooting. How many more tomes of ‘laws’ will they concede, in clear violation of ‘shall NOT be infringed’?!
Sorry, but you can’t use GOVT to solve GOVT created problems.
There is no surplus of doctors. The AMA and medical schools (and often medical school "feeder" universities) have been restricting supply for at least fifty years (since I was in grad school in the 1970's, and probably since WWII).
From a providers perspective of course they would prefer single payer... the overhead of dealing with all the different payers is a huge cost burden on providers.
You forget that we have crony capitalism here, run by GOPe.
Once you have established both a monopoly and a monopsony, the opportunity for corruption grows enormously. Campaign contributions would escalate in return for favorable treatment of medical costs.
I used to think health care costs had about topped out when it reached 1/6th of GDP, but now it is 1/5th. I don't see why it couldn't be 1/4th of GDP, or more. Of course, housing, transportation, education, food and consumer products industries would have to take even more cuts, but hey, why not?
Once you have 100% control by the federal bureaucracy why would you expect any paperwork relief? What does bureaucracy do; what is the one thing it is actually good at? Why generating more bureaucracy and hiring more bureaucrats. And with the bottomless pit of US healthcare revenues to raid to pay for it, well, baby, you ain't seen nothing yet.
Honestly the Rubicon was crossed when Medicare became law...
80% of what a person spends on health care in their lifetime is spent during the last 2 years of life on average... meaning the overwhelming amount of money spent on healthcare by far is spent by medicare....
Medicare and the government DOMINATE everything in the industry, if they change their regs, reimbursement or requirements, all others follow suit or get left behind.
My GP is from Canada. He once had a chance to attend a conference with the Minister of Health present discussing Canada’s incoming switch to single-payer healthcare. This was obviously decades ago. He got to meet the guy in a bar later during the conference, and he said to the Minister, “You know a lot of this is not going to work.” And he reports that the Minister responded that they knew it wouldn’t work, but they were going to do it anyway.
My doc decided right then that he had to get the hell out of Canada, because of the coming system. He said that out of amazing fortune, he happened to get a call very soon out of the blue with a job opportunity in Houston, TX, where he’s been ever since. He was the youngest chief-of-staff ever at his hospital in Canada, and he had to take the lowest position possible when he came to U.S., but he was willing to take his family and do that to get the hell away from the oncoming Canadian system.
I don’t disagree with you one bit.
I am saying that the current Rube Goldberg system for physicians to get paid by insurance companies is so burdensome, time consuming, expensive and corrupt (bills DELIBERATELY not paid to force you to keep resubmitting) that I can see how one could become desperate for the alternative.
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