But that's the problem I'm trying to address. Universal Healthcare has proven successful in 29/29 industrialized nations, while corporate healthcare has proven the most unsuccessful in 100% of industrialized nations, but Americans are still afraid of change towards Universal Health care. It's not Obama, nor his policies, it the American people (and probably people worldwide in general, but since others adopted UHC, American people) being so easily swayed by catchy slogans. Second, Obama tried numerous times to take leadership of the Health care debate and when all he's greeted with is "rising insurance premiums," "Higher taxes," and my favorites "DEATH PANELS;" then how can he advance the debate?
Universal Healthcare has only been proven one thing in 29/29 industrialized nations: fiscally insolvent in the long-term. That is not a success any more than using a catapult to make a brick ascend over a building and calling it flight. The brick is not flying, it's drag simply hasn't caught up to it yet. Research stagnation and fiscal insolvency are not success, they are failure.
Medicare is America's underfunded mandate, and mercifully it does not eat up all of our health sector. There were stories as recent as yesterday about the British NHS "decentralizing" away from government panels to local physicians, and also cutting services. In Massachusetts we have attempted to implement single-payer through the Commonwealth Connector. The only problem is our 90%+ Democratic legislature did not include a cost containment element. Meaning that, as predicted, premiums have risen. You claim to care about "advancing the debate." Cold, hard realities about UHC's ineptitude are sufficient for me to conclude the debate is over, and UHC is a doomed, inefficient system destined to drag down doomed, inefficient nations. By emulating their failed system in America we would only be advancing our decline at an ever greater pace, not avoiding it.
We are already borrowing 40 cents of every dollar the federal government spends. We cannot afford another massive entitlement. Here in America we don't turn away anyone for medical treatment, despite the, what do you call it? Oh, "Fearmongering" the left uses. One of our greatest burdens on the system is the use of emergency rooms by illegal aliens. That's right, even if you're dead broke, can't speak English, and aren't even a US citizen, big bad "unsuccessful" American health care doesn't deny you treatment, and US citizens foot the bill for it (begrudgingly, but we still do). And you get treated in short order. And we have enough beds for your premies. And you get treated by whoever is on call, whether its the newbie or the medical staff director. And we can hook you up with a specialist fairly quickly too.
"Unsuccessful?" What a crock. We have the best medical system in the world, hands down. We are the most innovative, and we do what a health care delivery system is supposed to do: Treat the sick, not queue the healthy. Only when "unsuccessful" is a code word for "non-socialized" does such an analysis hold water.
I remember last year the forums were discussing this and proponents did not call it "Universal Health Care." They called it "
Free Health Care." As if the most expensive entitlement dragging down every world economy was cost-free. Effectively they were promising to satisfy infinite demand with zero supply (Governments are non-productive. They have no money, it must all be transferred from productive citizens with non-infinite incomes). UHC is economic nonsense. You can't meet infinite demand with zero supply.
My earlier point hardly needs reinforcing. The innate assumption of the left is that people are falling for buzzwords and fearmongering instead of analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of proposed policies. I always assume that I am the baseline for the average adult. I am 24 years old and thus lack the life experience of my elders, and I have never been a standout genius in comparison to my peers. Nor am I the most industrious person I know.
I still want to make my own decisions regarding my own life. I do not have the sneering, self-important arrogance to suggest that anyone else, much less the "person of average intelligence" is beneath me in this basic adult capacity.
There are several Republican proposals that have been put forward. Acknowledging this would of course undermine your contention to the contrary.
Rep. Paul Ryan's is merely one of many.
Here is what I would propose:
1. Expansion of HSAs:
Health Savings Accounts are a brilliant "corporate healthcare" innovation. What you do is set aside a certain amount of pre-tax dollars to spend on your health care needs, apportioned out of your check each pay period. You are already going to spend the money anyway, this benefit allows you to also gain tax benefits from purchases you were already going to make. Because you individually control the amount you want to put in, you make much better health care decisions. Most people can discern what their health care usage and its cost is going to be a year in advance. The HSA maximum allowed by an employer may not be able to cover all of this, however the tax savings in such a maximum will make the actual purchasing power of the individual greater than it otherwise would be.
Moreover, HSAs can only be spent on actual medical expenses and not used as a generic bank account. Any non-used HSA expenses should be accumulated for use in later years. Combined with the proposal below this will make the early, healthy years of life a massive guard against catastrophic or chronic illness later in life.
2. Individually Based Health Care Accounts.
The greatest weakness of the current system is that most people get their health care from their jobs. This worked back in the golden age of Big Auto and Big Tech where you had the same job for 40 years. Now job changes are common. Your health coverage should thus be attachable and detachable to each of your employers, and the amount you wish contributed to your premium a contractable negotiation with each employer. You may have to pay a higher percentage if your employer cannot compensate such a percentage, but you could bargain to pay the premium yourself in exchange for a higher gross pay. Again this policy would be to maximize individual control. If done from the time you get your very first job you should never run into any pitfalls regarding things like previously existing conditions.
As an individual account that can only be used on health care expenses, it bears repeating that the generally healthy early years of employment, combined with payments over time and a possible internal interest mechanism will be a massive safeguard against end-of-life costs. Upon your death, you could transfer any balance of the account into a "Health Trust Fund" for your beneficiaries. Meaning if you and your entire family are healthy for basically their entire lives and later generations end up marrying someone with less favorable health genetics, there will be more than enough money to cover any medical expenses.
3. Minimal governmental involvement.
In administering and tracking these private accounts, the government's only role should be to investigate fraudulent use. As an entity with no ability to make payments, its only useful function is to act as the long arm of law enforcement to ensure accounts have not been stolen or fabricated. Contracted non-inheritance transfers should especially be monitored for fraud.
The net result of these three policies is a maximum individual benefit at minimum cost. The control lies entirely with the patients and their doctors. Should indeed people be "too stupid" to adapt to this system they do not become a burden on others, and in fact the transferable nature of balances should allow for health trust charities to be readily available among goodhearted people who also have good health.
All of these proposals fit within the general conservative mold, which should be the Republican mold but is not because establishment Republicans are essentially as inept as establishment Democrats. Nobody knows how to swipe defeat from the jaws of victory better than establishment Republicans. The only reason they survive is because nobody fumbles the ball in a wide-open field better than establishment Democrats. What ends up happening is the Republicans make a shitty throw leading to an interception, which the Democrats proceed to fumble with no ground gained.
Unlike most Americans, including most lifelong Democratic voters, Obama does not live his life as a conservative. He looks down his nose at those of us who are not "world citizens" like he is. Unlike us with our real or attempted fiscal restraint, he throws lavish parties and treats the US taxpayer as his free ticket to celebrity. Judgmental to the core, he resents there still exist people who "cling to their guns and religion." He is an impulsive cowboy in many ways worse than George W. Bush because he lacks even basic humility common to most Americans. He has no respect for the tradition even of the office he holds. He believes himself transcendent to all we jingoistic plebeians. It should come as no surprise then that his is a thin-skinned, reactionary administration full of like-minded radicals.
Finally, his complete lack of experience in any private endeavor leads him to badly mangle situations requiring real leadership. Any crisis he himself has not fabricated he cannot look in control of. The Gulf Oil Spill took him entirely by surprise as his first action, after awoken from his 10 day slumber, was to prepare the Gulf for an invasion of lawyers. Instead of repealing the Jones Act to allow foreign ships to offer aid, he doubled Louisiana's economic hazard by placing an offshore drilling moratorium. His demeanor was entirely flippant as he partied and golfed and occasionally claimed he would literally find some ass to kick. (My bet would be on Tony Hayward in such an ass-kicking contest)
This is a pattern within his Administration which led to the hasty firing of Shirley Sherrod. His first big mistep was characterizing the Cambridge Police while publicly admitting he did not have all the facts. He doubled the laying low of the Presidency by then proposing a "beer summit" to make up for his own stupidity. Later he stood by Van Jones, swearing not to be hoodwinked by his own haste again until it was revealed that yes, Van Jones is essentially unfit to be a serious administration official. Nevermind that "green jobs czar" is merely one of Obama's fabricated, entirely unaccountable new czardoms (and I doubt it "saved or created" anything). It would seem Obama has an even greater fondness for the unitary executive than his predecessor. Now Obama has gone back to his original model of extreme haste, coming full circle. His campaign slogan was "Judgment to lead." He can take solace that "down and out" is, at least, an actual direction.
Obama has no one to blame but himself for his position. He has squandered the largest amount of goodwill and political tailwinds offered to any president in living memory. The Sherrod mess is just the latest incarnation of his incompetence, and he and his lackeys classic lines of "FOX NEWS! ITHE RIGHT-WING!" ring hollow. No one believes a man and a party with no credibility. It is good to criticize a sitting president. I suspect none of the liberals here had any problem that George W. Bush was savaged daily, in ways both fair and unfair. If I were to hazard a guess, at the top of the initial thoughts would be "he deserved it." So does Obama. So does any person who wants to be the president of this heterogeneous nation of opinionated loudmouths.
