Conservatives are running like a pack of wolves to pull down and kill Obamacare, while they dream of killing Medicare afterwards. What they don’t recognize is killing Obamacare will promote socialized medicine, not kill it. Obamacare was designed with Republicans in mind. It’s the free market solution to universal healthcare. When Republicans get their way and Obamacare is destroyed, the only solution left will be socialized medicine, and Medicare will become the model.
Most of the world has moved to universal healthcare, Americans are just slow to see that. It’s an idea that it’s time has already come, we don’t see it because we cling to outdated notions about capitalism. Wake up and smell the roses, capitalism is constantly evolving and it’s incorporated aspects of socialism to be more efficient. Sooner or later as universal healthcare becomes a success in all but the poorest countries, Americans will realize they have been left behind.
Obama and the Democrats designed the healthcare system we call Obamacare based on private insurance to appease the conservatives. Obamacare is the experiment to prove free market capitalism can do the job when it comes to universal healthcare. Killing Obamacare means killing the belief that there is a non-socialized solution. That’s okay by me, I never liked that idea, I always thought Medicare was a better model.
What’s going to happen is conservatives are going to kill off Obamacare and we’ll be forced to expand the scope of Medicare to cover the poor and uninsured. Most people with jobs will stay with private insurance – for a couple decades. Over time more and more private businesses will stop providing health insurance as more and more of the population will shift into a Medicare type system.
Sooner and later Americans will wake up and realize the rest of the world has a better solution. Obamacare was the Republican solution, they just don’t remember it.
JWH – 3/29/12
Auxiliary Memory 
I feel kind of bad for Obama in that the Health Care reform that his name is attached to doesn’t make much sense.
It was all over when the public option disappeared. What is the point of forcing people to get healthcare if there isn’t a low cost option?
The original problem is that healthcare is too expensive, so the solution is to force even more people to buy something they can’t afford?
And the Supreme Court doesn’t seem to get it. The other day when they were discussing the mandate they kept correcting the lawyer that “it isn’t a tax. It’s a tax penalty.” But it will amount to a tax, because people that can’t afford healthcare will end up paying the penalty as it will be cheaper than healthcare coverage!
John, not long ago, I was reading about how ‘Obamacare’ has already started to slow the rate of health care cost increases. At least, Medicare cost increases were slowing.
I was going to write a blog post about it, but I didn’t get it done. I’m just swamped these days. And I don’t remember where I saw that, now. Sorry.
Note that costs weren’t decreasing, just not rising as quickly as had been forecast. There aren’t any easy fixes for this, but if we refuse to make even the most timid start to health care reform, we’re clearly not going to get anything at all done.
Personally, I’d like to open up Medicare to everyone, just making younger people pay premiums that cover the full cost. After all, conservatives claim that government can’t do anything right and that private industry is so much more efficient. So the insurance industry shouldn’t have anything to worry about, right?
Obviously, if the conservatives are right, then no one would choose the Medicare option, because the premiums would be too high. So let’s see them put their money where their mouth is. Let Medicare compete with private insurance companies, if it’s really true that the government can’t do anything right. 🙂
I would be interested to see that article. It seems strange that Obamacare is already affecting costs when really not much of it has gone into affect yet.
And I would be happy if I saw this as a baby step forward, but all I see is a band-aid.
Yes, this plan will lower costs because it is going to flood the system with new money. But where is that money coming from? It’s coming from 18-30 year olds that didn’t have the money or didn’t want health coverage and are now being forced to pay for it.
And I call it a band-aid because there is no plan to expand Medicare or a public option or even statewide healthcare co-opts, and there is little increase in regulations. So all that’s going to happen is the new money will flood in, costs will be lower for a little while and then we’ll have all the same problems, and America’s 20 somethings get to foot the bill.
Watch this video from CBS Sunday Morning called How GOP Candidates Get Europe Wrong. If America is so rich and successful, why are we getting less than Euorpeans? It makes me feel something is wrong with our system.
I don’t have time to look for the article, John, even if I thought I could find it. I’m just swamped. (I’m a week behind with the posts in the Classic SF group, too.)
But the point about making young people buy health insurance is because they need it, too. They don’t need it as often as the elderly, true, but that’s not really why they don’t get health insurance. They just don’t have the assets to protect.
When you’re young and you haven’t accumulated much yet, bankruptcy isn’t such a big deal. If you get sick, hospitals will care for you, anyway, so you don’t have much to lose. But that makes the rest of us bear the cost.
When you’re older, and you’ve accumulated a nest egg, you can’t do that. Bankruptcy is a much bigger deal, then. So older people tend to get insurance.
Now, Republicans suggest fixing this problem by letting people die. At their presidential debates, the crowds cheered the idea of people dying from lack of health insurance. Well, these are the same people who want to make fire departments private. In some places, firemen just stand around and watch homes burn, if they haven’t purchased protection.
Personally, I want to use tax money to pay for public fire departments, so that we don’t have such waste. And I want an equitable way to pay for health care for everyone, too. Requiring people to buy health insurance is a very conservative, free-market solution to that. It might not be ideal, but it’s far better than the status quo – and far better than just letting people die, too!
Good point, Jim. But Republicans know this about ‘Obamacare.’ After all, it was their plan before the Democrats adopted it.
It was developed in right-wing think-tanks in the 1990s as the free market solution to health care reform, and it was widely supported in the GOP. But it wasn’t supported very strongly.
I mean, Mitt Romney was praised by Republicans for getting Obamacare (not called that at the time, of course) in Massachusetts. But Republicans didn’t really care about health care reform, not like they cared – really, really cared – about tax cuts for the rich.
So the plan never went anywhere during the Bush administration. Indeed, it was mostly developed as an alternative to the Clinton health care reform initiative, and when that failed, Republicans lost interest in it.
But they still supported it, right up until the Democrats decided to adopt it, too (ironically, as a way of compromising with the GOP). Well, that was a complete failure, because the GOP sees compromise as treason. Even when they get their own plan, the fact that Democrats agree to it, too, tarnishes it in their eyes.
So a right-wing Republican plan became “Obamacare,” that dire threat to America. Crazy, huh? And this free market solution became “socialism.” How insane is that? Buying insurance on the private market is “socialism”? What next?
But note that Republicans aren’t concerned about the future. They’re concerned about returning to power now. Nothing matters past November, 2012 – literally nothing. And since, to them, the end justifies the means, then whatever they do to regain power is OK.
It’s absolutely beyond belief that we Americans would go along with this, after the complete and unmitigated disasters of the George W. Bush administration. But we seem to be stupider than even I thought (and my opinion of my fellow citizens has been dropping steadily for decades).
You make some good points in this post. If the slow expansion of medicare happens the way you postulate, I really worry about what happens to the folks who earn too much to go on to expanded medicare; but not enough to pay co-pays, co-insurance and deductibles. I would like to see medicare for all be a choice. Those of us who want it can go on it. Those of us who really think for-profit healthcare is the way to go, can go for it. Thanks!