Paul Krugman 2007: ObamaCare can “evolve” into single-payer

HotAir.com ^ | August 26, 2009 | Ed Morrissey

[WhiteCastle]

"The debate over the public option has, as I said, been depressing in its inanity. Opponents of the option — not just Republicans, but Democrats like Senator Kent Conrad and Senator Ben Nelson — have offered no coherent arguments against it. Mr. Nelson has warned ominously that if the option were available, Americans would choose it over private insurance — which he treats as a self-evidently bad thing, rather than as what should happen if the government plan was, in fact, better than what private insurers offer."

Evidently, for Krugman, his own argument circa 2007 that it might lead inexorably to a government takeover of health insurance isn’t an argument “against” the public option. Nor, I guess, is the fact that ObamaCare might land us another trillion or two deeper in the hole.

[WhiteCastle]

Krugman is a Nobel prize winner, bu then so is Al Gore. He doesn;t realize that the post office, which Obama admires as a model, is the "public option" of mail delivery.

[absalom01]

All they need to get this year is a universal mandate. Once they have that, everything else will follow.

[RC2]

If the government gets their hands on health care, it will surely get bigger and they will have more and more control as time goes on. The best they can do is work with the insurance companies, hospitals, etc to drive down costs. But who we get our insurance from is up to us. If the government controls everything, my big question is “Who in government, is going to profit from it?” It surely won’t be us.

[ScottinVA]

Krugman is only saying those things the 0bama Administration plans for but won’t say. As detestable as Krugman is, at least he’s serving as a window to the inner workings of the socialist mind.

[TigersEye]

Like most government run bureaucracies it not only will but is intended to grow exponentially. Who ruined insurance by prohibiting cross-state sales? Who further wrecked it by mandating work place coverage?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I oppose Health Care Reform (HCR) because it is a direct assault on individual liberties. I think that is its main purpose.

HCR is not just about rationing and wealth redistribution. It's about the end of all individual rights as the corrosive effects of the new collectivist basic human right to health care spreads throughout the legal and political system like a virus.

Congressman Anthony Weiner says that health care is not a commodity. If health care is not a commodity then doctors and nurses are not free and sovereign citizens. If health care is a right then health care workers are slaves to that right who must serve it. No health care worker could refuse to provide their services, for any reason, because that would violate the patient's basic human right to health care.

That means that health care providers have no individual rights. The collective right of the people to receive health care would supersede the provider's individual right to set their fees, their hours or change their occupational status or even decide how to apply their skills and knowledge. A collective right, by practical definition, is a state right because it is a right that is provided by the government to all not protected by the government as something possessed by each person. It is also a state right because it supersedes the individual rights of others when the two come into conflict.

It isn't stated in any of the bills that a patient's rights to care supersedes a provider's right to set fees and hours etc, but it doesn't need to. Rights are always adjudicated in the courts. The legislation simply establishes the foundation for the courts to rule in favor of the patient's collective right to health care.

Weiner’s view is collectivist, fascist and totalitarian. Collectivist because it is superior to an individual right. Fascist because it is overseen by one entity the Federal government. Totalitarian because the Federal government is the true possessor of this collective right and the administrator and enforcer of it as well.

Congressman Weiner's view is the underlying philosophy of the entire Health Care Reform legislation the House and Senate have put forth. Consider the setting up of community watch dogs to monitor various health parameters of citizens in the Senate version of the bill. Look at pages 382 - 393.

TITLE I—QUALITY, AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE FOR ALL AMERICANS

Even the citizens themselves will be subject to state set regulations on their behavior in order to fulfill the human right of universal health care. It isn't the individual's liberty that is being protected by that it is the state's control over its health care system that is being guarded. How much clearer can it be that these bills abrogate the concept of individual rights?

Health Care is a Liberty Issue Conservative Underground - 18 August 2009 - Tim Dunkin

Second Bill of Rights aka FDR's economic bill of rights (An early attempt to embed collective rights into American politics and society.)