Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Beware the Wounded Animal
Obamacare is failing. Here’s the latest from The Wall Street Journal (behind pay wall):
The majority of ObamaCare’s insurance co-ops—12 of 23—have now folded, and their $1.24 billion in federal loans has all but vaporized. More will fail, nearly a million Americans may lose coverage, and now the contagion from their failures is spreading.
The co-ops are government-sponsored nonprofits that were supposed to increase competition, but instead they’re causing the greatest insurance disruption in decades. The co-ops aren’t merely jilting their displaced members or the taxpayers who supplied their “seed money.” Local regulators are defying the feds to close them because other insurers are liable for their toxic balance sheets.
Before we open the champagne, Obamacare’s failure is the excuse the left has been waiting for to impose a single-payer system. Will they be successful?
Well, we have a Republican Congress. A single payer bill would have to pass both houses of the Congress first, so it appears we’re safe.
But what if Obama threatens to shut down the government (and blame it on the Republicans) unless a single payer bill is attached to the next budget? I’m sure the Democrats have one already written and stored in a file cabinet somewhere.
Will Congress stand up to that threat?
Published in Healthcare
Given the deal they just passed, they will not have to. No shutdowns on either side. Obama will just let it crash anyway and blame the GOP on his way out. I am still waiting to see who funds his post presidency lifestyle.
Trump will move it to a single payer system and Congress will be bullied into passing it. They’re easily bullied. What will others do? Maybe, like Trump, what they say they’ll do.
No. They needed sixty seats to get Obamacare passed. They couldn’t pass single payer even with that large a majority.
We may all be dead before they see such a majority again.
Why do you assume republicans will unite against such a thing?
Good question. They did unite against Obamacare, but that doesn’t guarantee they would unite again. Especially if Obama threatens a shut down.
They did last time. Not a single Republican (including all of the soft one’s like the women from Maine) voted for Obamacare. And Obamacare came well short of single payer.
As soon as Scott Brown won (a liberal Republican from Massachusetts), the republicans easily held a filibuster with no margin for error.
It was only lawlessness that allowed it to pass at that point. There should be no serious question that the republicans will stand united against such a thing.
Agree with all of that of course, but we still had a functioning (please entertain wide definition) health insurance market during that vote. When Obamacare crashes that will not be the case.
The point of Obamacare was to create a crisis to move single payer into the fore. Even make folks in the center right year for single payer in the absence an alternative.
Obamacare was a party line vote because there wasn’t a crisis. It had to be passed to create the crisis.
Today Colorado‘s secretary of state verified the signatures to put a single-payer healthcare system on the ballot next year.
Interesting that this news came out shortly after CO’s largest co-op shut down a couple weeks ago after being deemed financially unstable.
States have experimented with such things before, and watched them fail spectacularly.
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/single-payer-vermont-113711
The narrative is so easily countered. Everyone knows the healthcare bill as Obamacare. His name is literally on it. These failures hang on the heads of democrats.
Now, there will be things we on the right don’t like that are done to fix this. As much as I hate it, the Republican replacements will contain some kind of temporary handout in order to ease the transition off of Obamacare for people. I will take temporary handouts in exchange for structural reform though.
I know it failed in Vermont and I’m sure (at least I hope) it wont pass in Colorado. But don’t you think this is at least further bringing the idea of a single payer system into the national spotlight which helps make the idea more palatable to those that don’t know better?
The Democrats had control of the congress then, so there was no threat of a shutdown.
Many conservatives, including some at Ricochet, strongly feel we should not risk another shutdown because the Republicans will get blamed for it. Many elected Republicans, like Mitch McConnell, feel the same way.
Others, like myself, disagree with that view, but I think we’re in the minority
If Obama threatens to shut down the government unless he gets his single payer budget amendment, will these people change their minds?
We may not always agree, but darn you have a sense of humor. A ‘temporary’ handout. You are killing me with this temporary talk.
Defined as not indefinite. Happens all of the time.
Really? Name one.
I worked at Vermont’s largest hospital in the budget office. Single-payer would essentially destroy insurance since what’s offered in payment by the insurer (the state) doesn’t cover cost. Medicare/Medicaid cost shift. That cost shift still exists because the gov’t isn’t getting rid of either of those things.
There will never be single payer – there will only be ongoing cost shifts onto other vehicles of insurance. That co-ops failed with massive infusions of tax dollars tells you all you need to know about gov’t in action regarding health care. Blue Cross still offers insurance. Why? Because it’s not the gov’t.
Pretty sure that was the intention all along. They didn’t want to fix the old system, they wanted to destroy it and make such a mess that people will be clamoring for single payer.
We’ll never see Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Durbin, et al, or their familes, standing in a govt healthcare line though.
Why do we even elect Republicans to Congress if they’re not willing to take the blame for Democrat governmental failures?
The difference is it’s Obama making the explicit threat. Under most circumstances, the Republicans are the ones who allow the government to shut down because they won’t raise the debt ceiling, which I question ever being a useful bargaining chip.
How does Obama shut down the government when there’s enough money to run it and no debt limit? The government still opens tomorrow whether or not Obamacare is underwater.
Not all government shutdowns are about the debt ceiling. Obama can shut down the government by refusing to sign a budget that doesn’t have what he wants in it, like funding for Planned Parenthood. Then, with the help of the media and more than a few Republicans, he would blame the Republican congress for the shutdown.
It is through that method that Obama can force the House to add items to the budget, that they would otherwise not.
If you look at the second to last paragraph of the post, you’ll see that I’m talking about the next budget.
I think this is not a risk under Obama. Republicans, even with this Congressional leadership, will block it. It’s a potential problem only if Trump becomes President.
I hope you’re right.
On the other hand, if Trump becomes President, I hope you’re wrong.
I don’t fear single payer at the state level. That’s Federalism. If a state wants to oppress their citizens in the name of fairness, well, that’s why we have other states. What I fear is FedGov trying to impose it, a’la Social Security. When Vermont tried it, it quickly failed. Not even the Bernie Sanders state could afford it, and the most liberal of liberals had to admit defeat. Single payer in states will mostly fail. But the FedGov, with a Federal Reserve that can print endless dollars in our federal Ponzi Scheme economy…. if it ever gets single payer going, we’ll never get rid of it.
Irony enhancement: There were roughly 30,000 or so Vermonters without insurance, for various reasons. The state spent 200 million on a website that still does not work. They could have insured the 30,000 with that money. For at least two years (almost $7,000 per person based on the above numbers).
And the bulk of the uninsured were already qualified for one or more existing insurance plans. You tell me if Vermont’s actions make any sense at all.