Tag: Single Payer

My Early Days With Health Care

Ding Dong……Health care is dead!

I cannot wait for the strong anti-McCain rhetoric….that he is a RINO….a traitor….on and on….I am sure the Trump will Tweet something derogatory.  WAIT FOR IT!

This quickly resurrection of the dead GOP health care bill looks like it will go the way of the dodo…..McCain once again may be the guy with the final nail……

The latest Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act may very well be dead after Sen. John McCain announced his opposition to it Friday, the AP reports. “I cannot in good conscience vote for the Graham-Cassidy proposal,” CNN quotes McCain as saying in a statement. “I believe we could do better working together, Republicans and Democrats, and have not yet really tried.” This would be the second time McCain has put a nail in the coffin of Republican efforts to end ObamaCare.

McCain said he couldn’t vote for the Graham-Cassidy bill without a CBO score, which wouldn’t be available until later this month, to let him know “how much it will cost, how it will affect insurance premiums, and how many people will be helped or hurt by it.” Republicans could only afford to have two senators side with Democrats in opposition to the bill. Sen. Rand Paul was already opposed and Sen. Susan Collins was leaning that way. A recent poll found only 24% of Americans support the Graham-Cassidy bill and 50% disapprove of it, the Hill reports.

Back in 1989, before all the health care debacle of the Clintons and onto today, I sent an idea for health care to my representative, Gene Taylor, for his consideration.

 My idea was that since doctors usually owe millions for their schooling that they should set aside one day a week to treat people that were poor…..they could deduct the price of the visit and supplies that they use from the bill they owe for their schooling.  They could do this every week for at least 40 weeks per year.  (This is as simply put as I can do in this post)
Keep in mind this was in the days before any substantial work on a health care bill.
My Rep. did not have the courtesy to reply to my idea…..I would have excepted anything but instead he sent me a donation card for his next campaign….needless to say he lost all support from me.
Soon after this I started supporting the single payer system….a Medicare For All….if you like.
And I still think it is the best idea to get ALL Americans the health care they need and deserve.

On The Road To Single-Payer?

WE have been having the same debate for a half a century about health care in this country…..in all that time the one policy that made more4 sense than any of the others put forth was the single-payer plan or Medicare for all……

Sander has also been pushing the idea of a single payer all his years in Congress….with little enthusiasm shown by his colleagues….but is that about to change?

Bernie Sanders rolled out his vision to overhaul the health care system on Wednesday, one in which everybody would get their insurance from the government through Medicare instead of through their jobs or a private insurer. Sanders calls it the Medicare for All Act of 2017, but you’ll also hear phrases such as “single payer” and “universal health care” used to describe it. One key part missing: details on how to pay for it, though Sanders plans to release a separate paper on that, reports the Wall Street Journal. Coverage:

  • The basics: Per CNN, everybody gets a “Universal Medicare card,” which would be used to cover all health bills, from surgeries to dental care to substance abuse treatment. Co-payments would go away, and people would pay premiums based on their incomes, reports the AP. Private insurers would still exist, but for things such as elective plastic surgery or, sometimes, to act as middlemen between the government and hospitals or doctors.
  • A ‘right’: Sanders makes his case in an op-ed in the New York Times. “Guaranteeing health care as a right is important to the American people not just from a moral and financial perspective; it also happens to be what the majority of the American people want.”
  • ‘Single payer’: David Leonhardt of the New York Times has a Q&A on the fundamentals, including the basic question of what the term “single payer” means. In short, it “describes a system in which only one entity—the government—pays medical bills. If all Americans had Medicare rather than insurance through their jobs, it would be a single-payer system.” Vox says Sanders’ system is far more generous than single-payer plans in Canada and elsewhere.
  • The cost: This could cost hundreds of billions of dollars more per year, per the Journal. Details are yet to come, but Sanders envisions a progressive tax increase, with the wealthy paying more income, capital gains, and estate taxes, reports Newsweek. The senator says higher taxes for families would be offset by the fact that they no longer have to buy insurance. Still, in regard to single-payer systems, “no one—including Sanders—has truly reckoned with how to pay for whatever system they might support,” writes Mike Allen at Axios.
  • Litmus test? By all accounts, the chances of it passing a GOP-controlled Congress are precisely 0%. But it’s turning into a political litmus test of sorts for Democrats, reports the Washington Post. Sanders has the support of 15 Democratic senators so far, including all of those seen as potential 2020 presidential candidates. Co-sponsors include Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker, and Kamala Harris. But many prominent Democrats are not on board, at least yet, including Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and those in tough re-election fights, reports Politico.
  • The politics: No, this isn’t going to pass, “but here’s the big question,” writes Perry Bacon Jr. at FiveThirtyEight. “Is it going to become one of the central goals of the Democratic Party and a defining feature of the campaign of whichever Democrat is the party’s nominee in 2020?” As of now, this “seems very likely,” as the Democratic party seems to be gravitating to the left. But Bacon lays out the political and policy reasons why Democrats might avoid “becoming the party of single payer.”
  • Relishing the fight: Republicans see a chance to pounce. “We welcome the Democrats’ strategy of moving even further left,” says Katie Martin, spokesperson for the Senate GOP’s campaign organization, per the AP.

Let the fight begin!

If someone would spend more time checking out how single payer really works then the answer would be as easy as a straight up vote…..and this national nightmare could be over.