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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This bill, about 10 percent of Obamacare repealed but covered by the word “repeal” isn’t going to happen.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
Hold the bastards accountable.
Whoever edited this article had some work to do. Sorry for whatever needed fixing. Also, thanks for leaving McCain’s claw , thumbs down, voting from the grave. The man should retire before he embarrasses himself with the consequences of his illness. He won’t though. His politics are obviously different than mine but even if they aligned perfectly I’d advise him to quit before things get ugly.
Socialized medicine will bring about a two tiered system.
Wildly expensive (to the taxpayers) rationed inferior quality government run medicine for those without the means to afford quality medical care provided privately run outside the government medical system which will be the choice for those with the means and who are willing to effectively pay for medical care twice.
A similar system currently exists with private K through 12 education, although many public school systems while often wildly expensive are still able to provide a quality product.
Does anyone else think this bill was done simply to have the GOP tell its base that it tried real hard even though they all knew it was a giant waste of time?
One thing I have noticed is, it’s almost impossible to discuss the ACA and the prior system on Talk Radio or a town hall or whatever, because the issues are so complex and we got used to a very bad system prior to the ACA. This 100% works to the advantage of the left. The GOP never dealt with that head-on.
So basically, Obama and Gruber spread a bunch of lies, the thing passes, and now we are locked into a path of dependency and the destruction of the private and semi-private structures that are needed for a more free system.
Employment based group insurance is very bad for the country as a whole, but the ACA is just a worse version it because the young and the healthy get punished way, way more. Then throw in all of the extra Medicaid dependency it created. Gruber is a criminal.
The whole system has to be wiped out. Do what the Swiss did except learn from their mistakes.
I don’t think I’d go so far as to say “unwittingly”.
This is dead-on.
Look at Mises.org. What are they ever wrong about? Seriously. If you don’t like those guys, look at Learn Liberty.
Keynesianism + excessively centralized government + government actuarial science = The West Is Doomed
ALL COMRADES PROCREATE FICA SLAVES FOR THE LBJ COLLECTIVST PROGRESS!
The state needs you to procreate taxpayers. Get on it.
Who is going to “pay” for the Illinois retirement system? The Fed. That is how all of this stuff is going to get “paid” for. Can you think of a less politically destabilizing way? There isn’t one. Our system is about rent seeking, graft, inflation, and dependency and we are going to get it good and hard very soon. The Boskin Commission CPI is bogus and the inflation is in asset markets right now. That is the only reason their isn’t total chaos.
Would Kelly Ward have beaten John McCain if the AZ GOP knew what they know now? He ran on repeal. Just asking.
He didn’t just run on repeal, he ran on *leading* repeal.
Yep, then to deal with the long queues and deteriorating quality, the government will open up medical schools, and practices, break up some of the cartels, make it easier to become a health professional and to bring new drugs on the market. Since many Americans will be going to India, Mexico and Colombia to get complex procedures, we’ll allow some of those hospitals to open in the US and import their health professionals; With an expanding supply of physicians, nurses, medical assistants, private out of pocket clinics will replace the long queues in the official system, insurance companies will offer plans to cover catastrophic problems, eventually government hospitals will only be used by the really poor. This is your approach isn’t it, it’ll just take a generation or two longer to get there.
I like the waiver idea but there needs to be more from GOP Leadership
could you imagine if Obama had come in and said he wanted to repeal something Bush did, and a couple of Democrats truly balked, that Harry Reid wouldn’t be stripping these Senators of plum committee assignments, especially if it was a cornerstone issue such as repeal has been for the GOP?
Most of the problem here is Collins/Murkowski/McCain can “vote their conscience” without the receipt, as quoted by Butchie of The Wire, “Conscience do cost”
Of course. Thank you.
Representative government turned into a scam 100 years ago.
Centralized government is worthless.
One other thing about McCain.
I saw Louie Gohmert on “Hate TV” this morning. He said that the Democrats will never cooperate under the “regular order” he demands. #EverythingMovesLeftAllTheTime
Guy tweets out a brutal Blue Cross increase.
I agree entirely. Cartels always have cheaters. Politicians who forbid the public school choice that put their children in private schools.
I think it was done in haste to beat the September 30 deadline. I know a lot here don’t like Lindsey Graham, but when I have listened to him explain his views (his SCOTUS hearing statement was great), I find he is an integral person. I don’t agree with him all the time, but think his name on this bill was probably sincere. Cruz has said he doesn’t like it either, so momentum against it has grown.
Democrats had a veto proof majority, and it does make a difference. Also Republicans don’t play on a team as well. We have a big tent that let in people like Collins and Trump. Any solution that appeals to all will be very little in moving the ball down field. If repeal were to happen, it would be by littles, inches, not yards.
I do think we are looking at some type of single payer, and I am sort of looking at it that most everyone I know will then be in the same boat as I am now. I had an individual policy I can no longer afford, so have to pay a fine. I am self employed. Getting the majority off employer paid health care is a positive, and I think the faster the better. I’d like to see it done overnight and not phased in. Because the majority are comfortable with the status quo (employer based) will get the shock they need to get smart fast. It will be slow because it is such a huge chunk of the economy, they want to ruin it without being blamed for it. People seem to think everything congress does has an immediate result, yet Obamacare was phased in over years to protect political futures.
I work deep in the bowels of the German healthcare system. It actually does work pretty well, but it’s a highly socialized system.
In fact, it’s nearly a de facto single payer scheme, except that it’s built in the most Byzantine manner possible such that it doesn’t appear to be single-payer from the outside looking in. From the inside looking out, it’s possibly the most complex bureaucratic construct I’ve ever witnessed, making the 2,000-page PPACA look like a set of IKEA instructions.
The only reason the system works well is because Germans are strangely genetically predispositioned to run incredibly dense bureaucracies in a relatively efficient manner while avoiding the huge temptation to exploit loopholes to their own advantage. Even then, the system is nearly constantly threatening to collapse under its own weight, and requires new laws to “patch” the system about every 2 years.
Oh, and everyone except high earners pays 15% of their income for healthcare.
That’s when the major damage was done. How do you overcome that?
I forget who said this, but the “beauty” of the ACA is they lied about destroying employer based insurance, using Cadillac tax among other things. No one had tried that before.
A completely stripped down Swiss system is the only way out now. (The ACA is basically a very stupid Swiss system that is funded regressively).
Good post Doc. The rules prohibit the language I used when it came to McCain and Rand Paul, who I completely don’t understand any more. I have this sinking feeling that we will eventually go single payer. All it takes is the next Obama-esk Dem to implement.
No, I think it was a real attempt. I think the incompetence is real.
Watching them on every other issue, it’s hard to argue against this.
The GOP never dealt with the Cloward and Piven nature of the ACA. Increased dependency and graft, while destroying everything.
Nah man that will be the Tax Reform Bill. But hey they confirmed Gorsuch so you can’t complain.
Nothing is going to get repealed, nothing will be replaced.
Well there we go. All we need now is to have our bureaucracy run by Germans. I knew God made them for a reason.
Evening Mendel,
My information came from the doc who did my knee. He had spent some time in Europe trying to see what worked, what he liked was that the committees which had oversight were composed of a large group of stake holds including patients. The English NHS is miserable, the docs are fine but care at all levels is delayed and nearly content free. The one benefit England has is that there are private health care choices. Thank you for your information, is there any thing you learned that we definitely should do, and is there anything we should definitely not do, if we are going to end up as the Doc says.
Not entirely. The ACA was actually built to expand employer-based insurance, which is why there was originally an employer mandate coupled to the individual mandate. Of course that mandate was never enforced, but the percentage of Americans insured through their employer has only dropped from about 59% before the ACA to 56% today, so it certainly hasn’t been destroyed.
In any case, the problem with the employer-based market is that the real enemy is ours but we haven’t met him yet.
Even though both right-leaning and left-leaning economists agree that we’ll never really reform our healthcare system until we wind down the employer-sponsored market, most people on employer insurance really don’t want to switch, don’t think their insurance is part of the problem, and in many cases don’t really understand how their coverage is paid for or how much it costs. It’s that deep intransigence and ignorance at the voter level that will keep us from switching to any superior method of medical care provision.
So really, the only way to get a meaningful reform passed (in any ideological direction) at the moment would be to lie to voters.
Funny you mention this, as my job mostly entails working with these committees (on behalf of pharmaceutical companies) to determine what gets covered and what doesn’t at a national level.
These committees are precisely what Sarah Palin termed “death panels”, so I’m not sure they’d have much chance of catching on in the US.
At least on the committees I work with, the patient groups are invited to sit at the table and comment, but don’t get an actual vote. In my opinion, this is actually a benefit. Since it’s other people’s money that’s being spent, and since patient groups aren’t medical experts, their position is always “more coverage at taxpayer expense” regardless of how well a treatment actually seems to work.
Where the German system excels in this regard is by placing a great deal of the central decision-making power over coverage in the hands of MDs – usually a mixture of docs in private practice, at academic hospitals, and representatives from specialist associations. These MDs have enough contact with patients to have a genuine desire to improve their care, they’ve read enough studies to know which new claims are actually promising and which ones are BS, and they’re close enough to the pharma/medical device/whatever industry to understand that you need to throw even the money-grubbers an occasional bone if you want them to keep innovating.
So the system works okay for Germans. But again, the question remains: would Americans really be willing to turn over decisions about what treatments their insurance pays for to unaccountable government experts?