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Charles Krauthammer: "In Less Than Seven Years, We Will Be In A Single-Payer System"
RCP ^ | 05/05/2017 | Ian Schwartz

Posted on 05/05/2017 8:20:19 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

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To: FredZarguna

Thank you. The thing that surprises me about Game Theory is the predictions are always accurate. People may claim they are motivated by all sorts of things. Patriotism, chivalry, altruism, etc. but they ALWAYS behave as though they are selfish two year olds.

No wonder Nash went mad.


41 posted on 05/05/2017 9:32:45 AM PDT by wastoute (Government cannot redistribute wealth. Government can only redistribute poverty.)
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To: SeekAndFind

The Stupid Party needs to employ these talking points for EVERY MEDIA event/interview:

OBAMACARE was/is a DYING system. The QUALITY of healthcare was/is DETERIORATING all the time.

OBAMACARE is like the Titanic after it struck the iceberg. Dead in the water, listing, and always sinking. Republicans hear the SOS being sounded and have responded. SHAMEFULLY, the Democrats instead of looking to help save lives content themselves with just “rearranging the deck chairs” and singing silly songs heard in grade school.


42 posted on 05/05/2017 9:38:51 AM PDT by LeonardFMason (426)
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To: Louis Foxwell

Sorry to disappoint you but I have been an MD for 33 years. I even went back and did a second residency in Primary Care at age 50. So I have had a lot of contact with other doctors and especially young doctors in the last decade or so. In the doctors under age 35 you literally cannot find a conservative. You cannot find one who understands that single payer will be the death of the profession.

I went so far as to go to the microphone at a large meeting and try to explain to them how “healthcare as a right” was an impossibility and their dream of single payer was a dystopian nightmare for all. Crying in the wilderness...just call me Jeremiah.


43 posted on 05/05/2017 9:39:26 AM PDT by wastoute (Government cannot redistribute wealth. Government can only redistribute poverty.)
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To: SeekAndFind

The only way to pay for uninsurable risks, eg. pre-existing conditions is to have everyone in the country pay something to subsidize those risks. That means the federal government will have to have a small (hopefully) healthcare tax added on to social security to pay for it.

Krauthammer is right, the country now views healthcare as a right which must be provided for by the government IN ADVANCE. The local governments and charity hospitals used to provide healthcare to the poor without any federal layer of bureaucrats but the country was sold on the need for pre=paid “insurance”


44 posted on 05/05/2017 9:47:04 AM PDT by wildbill (If you check behind the shower curtain for a slasher, and find one.... what's your plan?)
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To: SeekAndFind

“After three years of single-payer, we will agree that it marginally works....ensures we have a lesser degree of health coverage than ever before....and learn that there’s really nothing left on the table. At that point, some people....with real incomes....will just go and sign up for 4-star healthcare beyond what single-payer will offer, and just go on with their life. The rest will be stuck with the marginal threshold.”

This could well be correct, that’s exactly the way it works in the UK. The bulk of people won’t be happy about what they’re getting but it will be too late to do anything about it. Right now the US is kind of safety valve for the rest of the world when government health care doesn’t provide what people want but that will be gone so most people will be stuck with the mediocre.


45 posted on 05/05/2017 9:50:06 AM PDT by Bayan
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To: lump in the melting pot; Tac Double Tap; pepsionice
Look at the terms of the debate. Republicans are not arguing the free market anymore. They have sort of accepted the fact that the electorate sees health care as not just any commodity. It's not like purchasing a steak or a car. It is something people now have a sense that government ought to guarantee.

Yep... Sad, but true.

Regards,

46 posted on 05/05/2017 10:02:39 AM PDT by alexander_busek (Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.)
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To: Louis Foxwell
Third, not to beat a dead horse, but, if I can pay for a Cadillac and want a Cadillac, why would I be willing to pay the same money for a Honda?

You'll be forced to pay for a Cadillac, though it won't be made clear to you for just what, exactly, you are paying - the taxes squeezed from you will be poured into the General Fund.

And for that, you will get a Honda.

Regards,

47 posted on 05/05/2017 10:07:17 AM PDT by alexander_busek (Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.)
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To: LostPassword
This is the scenario both Ds and many Rs seem to be going for. Rs just don’t want to admit it so hide it in the complex money flow they are setting up.

Exactly correct!

Regards,

48 posted on 05/05/2017 10:09:27 AM PDT by alexander_busek (Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.)
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To: vette6387

Seems like misguided faith.

Who in power is pushing to fully repeal Obamacare? As in repeal, not as in fix or replace?


49 posted on 05/05/2017 10:14:08 AM PDT by Theo (FReeping since 1998 ... drain the swamp.)
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To: SeekAndFind

That would be a terrible idea, but the GOP plan, like 0bamacare, leads us away from the free market and thus in the direction of single payer.


50 posted on 05/05/2017 10:24:59 AM PDT by TBP (0bama lies, Granny dies.)
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To: TBP

The GOP have no choice but to go down this road, Pandoras Box was opened up by OCARE and NOW to many people, including MANY people on this site who consider themselves VERY conservative, BUT think they should NOT have to pay more for insurance and deductibles with a pre exsisting condition!!! When WE have conservatives that are VERY WILLING to let the government subsidize high risk pools for pre exsisting conditions THEN what the HELL is the congress supposed to do??? Many on this site have been SCREAMING to REPEAL this law, BUT also think the government SHOULD subsidize insurance companies for high risk pools WE can’t have it both ways government is either IN or OUT of healthcare once you open the door to have them SORT OF IN we LOSE the freedom of our healthcare!!!!


51 posted on 05/05/2017 10:38:46 AM PDT by Trump Girl Kit Cat (Yosemite Sam raising hell)
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To: wildbill
Requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions was the death knell for private insurance.

Obamacare rolled out all the bennies first before rolling out the costs and penalties. Americans got hooked on the bennies and will never look back.

Worst case we end up with a government run health care system like the UK. Better case is we have single payer with a government-run insurance company that always runs a deficit and increases the debt.

Best case scenario is that health insurance is run something like a public utility where private companies provide similar plans at prices which allow them to run a reasonable profit.

Those plans will be expensive, but if they aren't, then we the taxpayer will still end up paying through tax increases and/or increased interest as the debt swells.

52 posted on 05/05/2017 10:44:08 AM PDT by who_would_fardels_bear
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To: SeekAndFind
He happens to be right. Conservative or not, the healthcare system in this country is collapsing because costs are completely out of control.

I lived in Germany for almost a year. At the time, my wife and I paid about $650/month for a middling PPO plan here. In Germany, we paid about $60/month for the same coverage, in a system that provided about the same level of care as here. They have a fee-for-service system like we do. What they don't have is malpractice lawsuits: they're against the law except in very narrowly defined circumstances and even then the payouts are very limited. They also have a national insurance pool where everyone who works (and their employers) pay in and the state pays for the insurance for the unemployed and retirees. No medicaid. No medicare. No VA system. Not 51 sets of insane regulations. Reimbursement rates are re-negotiated every few years with doctors, hospitals, unions, the government all having a say, so pricing is completely transparent. All the insurance companies do is accept payment and administer the program.

For those who work or employers, medical insurance premiums are treated like a tax: don't pay and you get a tax levy, a fine and/or jail time.

Those who argue such a program is not conservative may be right, but you're simply pissing in the political wind.

Go ahead and run for office on a platform stating that those who make bad lifestyle choices or have preexisting conditions or the aged should just be kicked to the curb and left to die and see how that goes, especially when everyone will eventually get the chronic, preexisting ailment known as old age.

Try to sell a 'medical savings account' to a family scraping by on $40k a year when an office visit, tests and vaccines for little little Johnny will cost $300 - $500, and they don't know when those costs will hit them nor do they know how much they will eventually total.

More importantly this isn't the 19th century: just about everyone with severe illness will receive taxpayer funded medical care when they show up broke at county general or go on disability because they can no longer work. So the notion that a 'conservative' plan will cost taxpayers less is hooey.

I would hope we would get a rational system like Germany's, but I am fairly certain we will wind up with some immensely corrupt and expensive mess called "single payer."

53 posted on 05/05/2017 10:48:13 AM PDT by pierrem15 ("Massacrez-les, car le seigneur connait les siens")
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To: who_would_fardels_bear

What I’m hoping for is a small tax on everyone that could be allocated by the individual into a private company for insurance. A portion of the tax would go to a high risk pool that would take on CURRENT uninsurable risks.

After the tax above is in place, everyone would be paying for the risk pool and for his own choice of insurance plans. It could bring back the private insurance providers into the market.


54 posted on 05/05/2017 10:54:55 AM PDT by wildbill (If you check behind the shower curtain for a slasher, and find one.... what's your plan?)
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To: SeekAndFind
Republicans are not arguing the free market anymore. They have sort of accepted the fact that the electorate sees health care as not just any commodity. It's not like purchasing a steak or a car. It is something people now have a sense that government ought to guarantee.

Sickening capitulation from communists and their fellow travelers. May God bring down this country if they force us into government death-care.

55 posted on 05/05/2017 11:03:03 AM PDT by backwoods-engineer (Trump won; I celebrated; I'm good. Let's get on with the civil war now.)
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To: wastoute

Sorry to hear it. Not unexpected. The MDs I talk with are men and women in practice for at least 10 years. They are to a person extremely opposed to Obamacare, believing it to be the death knell of good patient care.


56 posted on 05/05/2017 11:19:52 AM PDT by Louis Foxwell (The Left has the temperament of a squealing pig.)
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To: FredZarguna
Speak for yourself.

I did and, to be clear, I would never attempt to speak for you. You seem to be quite capable of that yourself.

Nonsense. Republicans are not conservatives. The people who short circuited the original repeal were the only conservatives in this discussion in Congress.

And I believe all but two of them voted for the latest replacement bill so I assumed that since they voted for it, they accepted it as the way to go. I know I did generalize and recognize that to a real, real, real conservative, no one else is really conservative so I will concede on this one.

With the application of energy and human intelligence, it can. Engineers roll things a lot heavier than boulders up mountains literally every day. Spineless poltroons and lazy people unwilling or incapable of exertion will always argue otherwise.

If you will check back, I used the word “fall”, not “roll”. Considerable difference, even for engineers applying energy and human intelligence. As for the spineless poltroons and lazy people dig, have at it. Thanks for setting me straight. I always bow to my betters, even those who might not be.

57 posted on 05/05/2017 11:25:02 AM PDT by etcb
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To: CIB-173RDABN
It is dangerous to make predictions, especially when you just pull them out of your a**.

Worked for The Amazing Kreskin for a couple of decades.


58 posted on 05/05/2017 11:28:22 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: SkyPilot

I don’t agree with Kraut all that often, but I think he has this one nailed.


59 posted on 05/05/2017 11:31:16 AM PDT by Scott from the Left Coast
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To: who_would_fardels_bear
Requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions was the death knell for private insurance.

Then private insurance has been a Dead Man Walking for decades. Endless media coverage of every poor slob who was sick and could not get coverage would have forced things to a head eventually. Every time one of them goes to GoFundMe to cyberpanhandle to pay off a huge medical debt we lose a little bit more of the argument.


60 posted on 05/05/2017 11:33:17 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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