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At the End of the Day We Get Socialized Medicine
The voices of those discussing health care on the Sunday shows are lambasting Obamacare costs and problems yet are also discussing the poor in their states being covered. Susan Collins let out a tremor-laden lecture for bipartisanship as a solution while calling for a haircut on Big Pharma. She is unwittingly calling for socialized medicine because of her refusal to reel in any of Obamacare in the name of Medicaid in Maine.
This bill, about 10 percent of Obamacare repealed but covered by the word “repeal” isn’t going to happen. The usual players are jumping on the grenades for their fellow GOP and entrenching our stagnation regarding the coming crisis. The crisis will be massive before being addressed out of necessity. The decision will be made that all our citizens (perhaps non-citizens?) get coverage. Exactly how doesn’t this scenario come true?
Rand Paul has his principles and he also has millions of poor in his state and the hospitals/doctors who treat them breathing down his neck. I guess Rand doesn’t mind crap being the enemy of perfect.
John McCain has his overriding principle in place still, namely glorifying himself. He will go down in history as a narcissist jerk, disliked by conservatives plus laughed at by the Dems who used his ego and feeble mind for their own ends. He will vote against the President at nearly every turn until he’s passed away and even then I see the invisible thumbs-down from the grave, a final digit from narcissist to narcissist.
Lisa Murkowski hula-hooped her way amidst flowers and hugs from the Dems in her state as Alaskans boldly stood up in declaring health care a right. Somehow I see this “right” concept not working out so well.
This O’Care skinny repeal won’t happen, nor would it work in the long run anyway. The repeal would however help the GOP pass some other legislation based on momentum. Far be it for McCain, et al., to give some mo’ to The Donald.
These GOP heroes of Democrats are doing their fellow senators a favor, as the GOP really never expected to have the federal goodies get removed from their constituents. That would require leadership. Better to hide under their desks, duck-and-cover style. If they really wanted repeal they’d do something. Obviously our President hasn’t been an ideal leader (insert favorite insult or painful truth here) but he’s willing to sign almost anything.
Maybe giving money to the states and letting them figure it out will help some of this fiasco but I doubt that happens. Our leaders don’t have the stomach for this. Guess where their cowardice and incompetence ends? The rough socialized beast slouches toward DC to be born.
Published in General
I wonder if it will arrive before Medicare goes broke ?
Doc, what we will actually end up with will be Single Payer non- health care.
You have to give Obama credit for being the best apostle of Saul Alinsky. He (along with his millions of enablers in our electorate) has made it practically impossible to bring free market forces to bear on health services going forward.
GOP members should be mounting primary challenges wherever possible and vigorously contesting entrenched Democrats. If this Congress cannot pass a repeal bill, make the next Congress do it. If that still doesn’t work, keep trying. All conservative and liberty-minded people in this country need to fight the status quo.
No. Medicare is already broke, it’s just that no one is prepared to wind up our global ponzi scheme. But someday something will happen to push a giant reset button. I suspect in ages to come humans will be puzzling over what wiped out an ancient civilization that left crumbled skyscrapers and concrete paths and plastic everywhere.
Back in the 80s everybody was paralyzed by fear of “socialized medicine”. And what we got was “capitalized medicine”: the HMOs, etc.
What we need is to return to the profession of medicine. The ways in which health care was provided, and to whom, used to be governed by a professional creed of ethics.
I know it can’t happen. Hilllary destroyed the nation’s faith in physicians for good and all when she jawed about her first “listening your” as Flouts. Oddly enough, pillorying doctors for wanting to make a living just at the time when their incomes were plummeting.
But I can dream about the days when medicine was neuther a benefit program nor a business venture, but a calling.
Trump needs to draft a memo that ends the Congressional/staff waivers for O. care that was enacted by Obama, despite the fact that the law explicitly states that Congress will adhere to Obamacare.
Circulate it, and tell Congress: if you fail to repeal, you’ll be forced to live under the laws you’ve imposed on these United States. Bet we’ll see some bi-partisanship then…
This is terrible. It will kill innovation and reward the mediocre status quo.
Eventually it will bring progress to a complete stop.
Everyone on the left extols the wonders of socialized medicine in the Scandinavian countries and Western Europe. Meanwhile, they are euthanizing patients rather than striving to conquer disease and heal or mitigate disabling conditions.
Bureaucrats are not committed, and they are not creative. They live to go home at five o’clock no matter what.
So the system will take money from the hardworking taxpayers who think they are helping their fellow human beings while the system has actually ground to halt. And the wealthy Washington, D.C., executives will head to Taiwan where all the good doctors will end up.
I wish someone would study innovation and discovery in the socialized medicine countries and compare those results to those of the United States.
When the Iron Curtain fell in 1991, thanks to the persistence of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, it was quite noticeable and very funny to see the first escapees: all the rich bureaucrats and Communists with their long black limousines. They had saved up their rubles for just this event. Communist survivalists. Who knew? Well, actually, we all did.
My husband is watching the Patriots. He said, “You gotta give Tom Brady credit. He stood and covered his heart during the national anthem.” “I’m not surprised,” I said. “Yeah, but about nine of the Patriots players ‘took a knee'”–which got me to fuming out loud. They wouldn’t have a knee to take in the socialist medicine countries the Democrats want us to be more like.
My husband also said that Brady has broken another record this year–he’s the oldest quarterback in the NFL. He’s forty years old.
If that is not an American achievement in and of itself, I don’t know what is.
And Belichick is sixty-five and still coaching.
This is the healthcare system that these idiots want to destroy. And will if we let them.
What we have achieved in healthcare in the United States since World War II is every bit as miraculous and exciting as our landing on the moon and winning World War II.
Socialized medicine will end all of that stupendous progress.
Obama was right about one thing: none of us got to where we are completely by our own effort. We are the recipients of hundreds of years of sacrifices our forebears have made. We should be grateful and figure out how to pass the torch. Not put it out.
I hope you are wrong. Our only hope is that we can push this issue to the states, who certainly have the constitutional right to try single payer, provided it doesn’t violate any individual rights set aside in the constitution. Ah, but there are the poor! The best thing we can offer the poor is a reasonable chance to overcome that state. In fact, most of us will be “poor” from time to time in our lives as the economy suffers inevitable cycles and jobs come and go. But we lean on friends and relatives, persevere and carry on. The government’s involvement in any industry is destabilizing, creating bubbles and causing economic instability. Yet our peers who push these schemes and the politicians who in their quest for authority, encourage them, are either ignorant, stupid or cynical. Our children and grandchildren are the ones who will suffer the aftereffects. The medical profession is to blame as well, drunk as they have been on their own arrogance, vanity and self-aggrandizement. The comeuppance will be staggering if the government takes over health care.
Welcome to the bureaucracy.
To quote the Bard.
The amazing thing about all of this is that if it would have worked out the way McConnell, Trump, and Ryan wanted it would have just slapped a coat of paint on the already crumbling structure that exists. I guess for a few years it would have looked fine or better, and then we would be back in the same spot with the same problems.
Obamacre was designed to screw the country’s healthcare system so bad that most voters would wind up preferring (and voting for) single-payer. It is undoubtedly one of the left’s most stunning achievements of the last 40 years. Now that Republicans are in charge, they will do what they always do, make permanent the achievements of the left.
We were a proud nation once.
Afternoon Doc,
I hear Germany’s system isn’t so bad, is that true. Or my basic question, is there any thing or things we can do to mitigate socialized medicine?
Yes, I wish California would adopt single payer. Not because I think its right, but as a conservatarian Californian I am prepared to make the sacrifice on your behalf. (It’s not a big problem for me as I am in Medicare so I am functionally in a single payer system already.) It will implode the state and become the US’ “Venezuela”. Maybe then the country will turn back to a free market.
I dunno. I’ll be out of the Biz though.
I suppose using a Swiss or Singapore or other decent country’s system will be better than U.K. or Canada.
This, exactly. Thanks, Boss.
Indeed. If there ever was a president crazy enough….
IMO, a completely stripped down version of the Swiss system is the only way out. Tax credits and large HSAs only. Wipe out Medicaid, employment based, groups, etc.
Single payer will happen before we actually do something bold and intelligent like that.
The ACA was the greatest Cloward and Piven maneuver in history. It’s breaking private, and employer based insurance while it gets millions dependent on it. They told a bunch of lies to get people’s guard’s down about losing whatever good and semi-good insurance they had.
Obama and Gruber should be in jail.
Trump and the GOP should have done a one year road show of education first to deal with that, and all of the dependency created by the ACA, head-on.
Too much centralized government doing too much; constantly moving to the Left. We are doomed.
ANALYSIS: True
Punish the crap out of them. Do it.
I’m on record here begging the GOP to do weekly fireside chat like discussions about health care from all perspectives. Too smart of an idea though. Let’s just let our social scientist politicians sort it out in private.
Winner-winner-chicken-dinner, Boss: Big pain, we gain.
Yeah, quick just like Obamacare was. That turned out well. Politicians are such clever, clever people and they will certainly know how to reorder a sizable chunk of the American economy.
I reworked this article. Then I decided to insult more politicians. I hit publish instead of save this am and had to work for a while. Our leaders are failing us. That’s my big emotion today.
A worthy investment of time, that.
Proud of you Doc. How many physicians can work Yeats into an essay? That would be a Krauthammer moment.
I’m going to go to a corner and cry now, thanks.
Well I’m pretty pessimistic so don’t let me get you down.
Boss Mongo’s reality test may be fun to watch. Let’s see what comes of the political goodie train being cut off.