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Should Republicans Embrace Universal Healthcare?
American Thinker ^ | 01/31/2014 | By Wes Schellenbaum

Posted on 01/31/2014 8:43:56 AM PST by SeekAndFind

Voters have been primed to blame the rich for their woes and expect medical insurance as a right, so the next logical step will be to morph ObamaCare into a vessel that achieves those goals: socialized medicine.

The Republican alternatives of self-reliance and invisible hand manifestations are like a Beethoven concerto played for a strip club audience demanding heavy metal to accompany overt gyrations by a near-naked entertainer.

Can Republicans entice the majority without selling their souls, not to mention the future of our great Republic, or will they allow further slide into the unsustainable, inefficient transfer-of-wealth Democratic vision?

To get logically to where I believe Republicans need to be on this issue, let us consider the status quo.

Government employees have great medical insurance. Lawmakers have legislated the best insurance for themselves, but all "public servants" have also been ordained to deserve superior insurance. While teachers, for example, complain about being underpaid for their nine months of work each year, they happily accept their twelve months of excellent health insurance.

As union members, many government employees, including teachers, overlap the second group with generally great insurance. It isn't a coincidence that unions, as big Democratic supporters, received special exemptions from ObamaCare.

In addition, Medicaid has been expanded by Obamacare, and while this insurance has never been championed as the best in the land, it does provide free coverage to an increasing number of people.

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: gop; healthcare; republicans
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To: SeekAndFind

Why? Healthcare is meant to be individual, if it is universal and we all must fit into the same pattern.

Perhaps instead of MyRA they should have MyHealthcare for the poor to buy into.


21 posted on 01/31/2014 9:05:04 AM PST by Irenic (The pencil sharpener and Elmer's glue is put away-- we've lost the red wheelbarrow)
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To: SeekAndFind

Why not? They’ve already embraced Amnesty.


22 posted on 01/31/2014 9:07:00 AM PST by Count of Monte Fisto (The foundation of modern society is the denial of reality.)
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To: SeekAndFind

simple answer is NO NO NO


23 posted on 01/31/2014 9:08:01 AM PST by Nifster
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To: SeekAndFind

That’s my biggest question for Mark Levin.

In an era where so many of our fellow citizens seem to feel that they have a RIGHT to health care, do we REALLY want to be opening up an Article V Convention?


24 posted on 01/31/2014 9:08:27 AM PST by Buckeye McFrog
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To: SeekAndFind

Government involvement is generally not an ‘improvement’. I can’t even begin contemplate how this would work and I’m not even going to try.


25 posted on 01/31/2014 9:09:59 AM PST by Qiviut (It's hard to be a donk if you're sane & it's hard to be a pubbie if you have any integrity.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Sure, just let islamocommunism sweep over the land. We were only supposed to be America, evidently.


26 posted on 01/31/2014 9:10:25 AM PST by onedoug
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To: MNnice

Again we come back to the definitions.
What is a “Republican”? Do they mean the GOPe that’s entrenched in DC? Probably.

They certainly don’t mean the base, the conservatives, because “universal healthcare” is antithetical.


27 posted on 01/31/2014 9:12:11 AM PST by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter admits whom he's working for)
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To: SeekAndFind

Cruz’s effort was the last chance to kill Universal Health Care.

It’s all about how to do it now.
This fellow has a lot of misconceptions.
Basically, it requires the greatest degree of economic freedom: national private plans with coverage as desired by their customers. and, of course, subsidies for the shiftless and stupid.


28 posted on 01/31/2014 9:14:02 AM PST by mrsmith (Dumb sluts: Lifeblood of the Media, Backbone of the Democrat Party!)
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To: SeekAndFind

How yuh gunna pay for it?


29 posted on 01/31/2014 9:18:11 AM PST by Graewoulf (Democrats' Obamacare Socialist Health Insur. Tax violates U.S. Constitution AND Anti-Trust Law.)
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To: SeekAndFind

The writer seems to be operating under the assumption that socialism and freedom are just different ways of achieving the same good results. If that were true, then everyone should be a socialist. The problem is when mean old reality sets in. We live in a world of scarce resources. Don’t like it, take it up with God, or at least with Adam and Eve. What forces can more efficiently allocate those scarce resources to their highest and best use? Government/coercion? Or markets/freedom? Hong Kong or Cuba? North Korea or South Korea? East Germany or West Germany?

This is not like picking who you are going to support in the Super Bowl. His analogy of playing Beethoven to a heavy metal-loving strip club crowd is too crude to make much of a point. This is not all just a matter of taste (or of getting elected for the sake of getting elected). There are real world consequences. Really.


30 posted on 01/31/2014 9:26:00 AM PST by cdcdawg (Be seeing you...)
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To: SeekAndFind
Egalitarianism and making something free to the individual and chargeable to the group as a whole is to make consumption of the individual virtually costless, which leads to the abolition of cost in the spending of income, which leads individuals to demand everything.

The increase in demand leads to:

1) an overall increase in cost of medical care as a whole to the taxpayers.
2) a decrease in quality and quality of medical care supplied by doctors to individuals.

The bureaucratizing of medicine and the control of doctor's fees and treatments turns doctors into slaves, and ultimately makes medicine unattractive as a profession, which will lead to a decrease in the supply of doctors and a doctor shortage.

To control costs, the government will have to resort to death panels, a prohibition of many procedures, and opposition to medical advances, in order to save money.

31 posted on 01/31/2014 9:27:09 AM PST by mjp ((pro-{God, reality, reason, egoism, individualism, natural rights, limited government, capitalism}))
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To: SeekAndFind; All
NO!

Republicans are accused of every sort of ill will, stupidity, ignorance, hate, etc. having nothing to do with reality. Liberals do it because the media publishes their views as truth and people at large believe it. IT WORKS1

GOD HELP AMERICA,

NOT ONLY NO! BUT HELL NO! NEVER!

EVEN WHEN WE AGREE WITH THE LIBERALS IDEAS, WE ARE CASTIGATED AS HAVING ALL SORTS OF BAD INTENTIONS.

WE MUST HAVE FAITH AND STAND STRONG DOING THE RIGHT THING. KEEPING AMERICA ACCORDING TO THE CONSTITUTION THAT CREATED THE GREATEST LIFE, OPPORTUNITIES, AND SUCCESS EVER. MO!

WE CAN NOT STOP THE ATTACKS, TWISTED CORRUPTION OF OUR ACTIONS, ETC. STAND STRONG FOR TRUTH. GOD IS TURNED AWAY FROM THE CURRENT LIFE AS LIVED IN America. SAME SEX MARRIAGE, ABORTION AND MANY THINGS AGAINST HIS COMMANDMENTS. RANT OVER.

32 posted on 01/31/2014 9:34:59 AM PST by geologist ("If you love me, keep my commands" .... John 14 :15)
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To: SeekAndFind

Hell no, medical care would wind up as crappy as it is in Europe or Canada.


33 posted on 01/31/2014 9:39:36 AM PST by dalereed
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To: SeekAndFind

It’s a false premise to begin with. You can shoot for universal enrollment, which as we’ve seen, requires curtailing certain freedoms, but achieving a universality of actual care will never happen due to the inherent imbalance of supply and demand. Just look at the UK.


34 posted on 01/31/2014 9:46:36 AM PST by william clark (Ecclesiastes 10:2)
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To: SeekAndFind

Yes, of course they should. They all screamed at Cruz to get off the stage, Boehner gave him the hook and spreads the false pride that Cruz shut down the govt.

He was supposed to shut up and let it fail and allow republicans to come in and fix it after they took power back

I got yelled at for saying that was crazy that the GOP couldn’t be trusted and Cruz knew it

Now they can prove me right then maybe people will start getting good people in there. Dream on I know


35 posted on 01/31/2014 10:06:54 AM PST by stanne
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To: SeekAndFind

If universal coverage had been the goal of Obamacare it sure could have been done cheaper and better. When the Whole Foods article came out basically advocating high deductible plans with health savings account during the debate I did a little research and crunched numbers. Based on what the CMS reported was the per capita expenditure on medical care by the government and what the OPM had as a high deductible plan they offered in every state, I calculated that the government could have bought everyone in the country a high deductible plan and still have saved $200 billion per year. That was before Obamacare was passed. Now we have spent hundreds of billions and have even more uninsured. I think control and not universal coverage is the true goal.


36 posted on 01/31/2014 10:07:49 AM PST by Armando Guerra
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To: SeekAndFind

Not only no, but hell NO!!


37 posted on 01/31/2014 10:19:49 AM PST by Jim Robinson (Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God!!)
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To: SeekAndFind

The GOP is pushing amnesty, wants to downplay abortion and homo marriage, etc, and now is considering pushing socialist health care? What the hell good is it? FUGOP!!


38 posted on 01/31/2014 10:23:46 AM PST by Jim Robinson (Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God!!)
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To: SeekAndFind

It was government getting involved in healthcare in the 1960’s thru Medicare and Medicaid that ruined healthcare and caused prices to go thru the roof in the first place.

It used to be you could get the doctor to visit you at home for about $5, and he might do a variety of things for you for the price—diagnose you with the flu and give you a script for the pharmacy to cut out your ingrown toenail. All for the same price! But once Medicare starting paying, for example, a maximum of $95 for a ingrown toenail that every doctor and hospital started charging $95 across the country for an ingrown toenail procedure.


39 posted on 01/31/2014 10:40:02 AM PST by Alas Babylon!
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To: SeekAndFind
No.

If I were going to have Universal Health care, I would do a two tier system.

Tier 1 is for folks with their own insurance or purchasing their own care. They get best health care that their insurance or money will buy with whatever arrangements their insurance or they can arrange.

Tier 2 is for folks who don't pay for their own health care. They get bones set, wounds sown up, vaccinations, and generic (only!) meds and have to make a copay ($20 for a visit, $30 for ER, $5 for drugs - adjust for inflation). No heroic measures. No cutting edge medicine. No resuscitation. They are also automatically enrolled as organ donors.

40 posted on 01/31/2014 10:48:27 AM PST by Little Ray (How did I end up in this hand-basket, and why is it getting so hot?)
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