Krauthammer has been a consistent #nevertrumper.
Obamacare needs to be repealed and replaced, and I’d prefer steps 1, 2, and 3 all be at the same time.
However, Krauthammer doesn’t actually want any of it.
The best time to kill a new movement is at its very beginning. The same with an entitlement.
Kill it now.
Trump is your problem not the Kraut. Trump doesn’t want it killed either. He preserved it with his utter idiotic endorsement of keeping the provision of excluding prexisiting conditions. That settled the notion that we would return to having a health insurance market, we cannot. Instead we now have a debate over health care taxation and spending.
Complain all you want about never trumpers but Trump is getting the plan he has endorsed and lobbied for. If you do not like it blame Trump.
Totally agree. Kraphammer is no longer sufferable.
“Krauthammer has been a consistent #nevertrumper.”
That has to be the first consideration when listening to Krauthammer.
You’re right that the best time to kill an entitlement is sooner rather than later. And maybe Krauthammer is a NeverTrumper but that doesn’t make this any less true:
“Moreover, the idea that you can eradicate Obamacare root and branch is fanciful. For all its catastrophic flaws, Obamacare changed expectations. Does any Republican propose returning to a time when you can be denied health insurance because of a preexisting condition?
“It’s not just Donald Trump who ran on retaining this new, yes, entitlement. Everyone did. But it’s very problematic. If people know that they can sign up for insurance after they get sick, the very idea of insurance is undermined. People won’t sign up when healthy, and the insurance companies will go broke.
“So what do you do? Obamacare imposed a monetary fine if you didn’t sign up, for which the Ryan bill substitutes another mechanism, less heavy-handed but still government-mandated.
“The purists who insist upon entirely escaping the heavy hand of government are dreaming...”
He’s right. You, and everyone else reading this are indeed dreaming if you believe the REAL heart of Obamacare, the real reason it is such a cancer on our economy and health care industry, will ever be repealed.
Indeed, there are some on this very site who defend this notion, say it’s necessary that insurance companies be forced to insure everyone despite preexistjng conditions. To so many “conservatives” not only here but also in the real world, the main “problem” with Obamacare was/is the individual mandate.
The individual mandate was/is a natural OUTCOME of the forced insurance of millions of people with preexisting conditions! And THAT is what even the great Donald J. Trump himself is still promising to keep. Forcing insurance companies to insure anyone no matter what.
FRiends, THAT is what is going to destroy the health care in this country, THAT is what is going to make every insurance company here back out of the industry all together, or become part of some giant government sponsored “marketplace”. It won’t be “single payer” in name, but in effect it will.
You can’t get something from nothing and that’s what forcing insurance companies to insure those with preexisting conditions tries to do. When (not if) it fails the “solution” will be merely a reinvention of Obamacare with some “across state lines” marketplace devised to fool those with no economic sense. The “solution” will be to have those in the marketplace government subsisdized and while not single payer in name it will be in effect.
The entire system was broken as soon as that obvious free market demarcation was crossed. And that NO ONE is talking about the need to get rid of forced insurance of those with preexisting conditions makes me more convinced than ever that no one understands the real problem with Obamacare.
Not even Donald Trump.
Because if anyone did, you’d have someone with the guts to say: I’m sorry for any caught in such a sad situation, where one may have a condition that prevents both employment and insurance, but it’s not financially workable in reality. We have to be obedient to reality.
For the sake of our future generations.
But of course no one has such courage. Because it’s just as Krauthammer said: the idea of forced insurance of those with preexisting conditions has already become ingrained in many minds as a “right” or a “duty” of the govt, the insurance companies or both.
So this whole lot of nonsense is completely nauseating to me and anyone else who understands the real problem with Obamacare. Because the real problem isn’t being solved!! But no matter.
I knew this full well when I voted for Trump. I voted for him to stop the Witch (done) and to slow the decline of this once great country. Because under the Witch the US (and the world) was guaranteed to fail, economically, in my lifetime. Now, there’s a possibility the charade may continue for another 30-50 years.
Good luck to anyone younger than 30 though! Any of you reading this fall into that age group? You’ll be living in economic hell on earth in your lifetime. And you can thank, in large part, this insolent, obtuse, selfish refusal to let go of this economic fantasy known as forced health insurance for those with preexisting conditions for that future hell.