Can we end this charade that the SCOTUS is deciding the constitutionality of the Obama-Care mandate and admit that Justice Kennedy is, for the time being; the 3rd branch of government?
Newt Gingrich Used To Love Individual Health Insurance Mandates
Citizens should not be able to cheat their neighbors by not buying insurance, particularly when they can afford it, and expect others to pay for their care when they need it.” An “individual mandate,” he added, should be applied “when the larger health-care system has been fundamentally changed.” […]
“Finally, we should insist that everyone above a certain level buy coverage (or, if they are opposed to insurance, post a bond). Meanwhile, we should provide tax credits or subsidize private insurance for the poor.”
“People whose income is too low should receive Medicaid vouchers and tax credits to buy insurance,”
From Newt Gingrich Used To Love Individual Health Insurance Mandates
When Newt Gingrich suggests a mandate its about Personal Responsibility. When the Dems do the exact same thing its a godless socialist federal power-grab that puts us all on the road to serfdom.
The Rationing Switcheroo
reformers argue that Medicare needs to make choices about what it will pay for; people like Huckabee then scream that the government is going to tell people that they can’t get medical care it disapproves of.
But nobody is proposing that the government deny you the right to have whatever medical care you want at your own expense. We’re only talking about what medical care will be paid for by the government. And right-wingers, of all people, shouldn’t believe that everyone has the right to have whatever they want, at taxpayers’ expense.
From NYTimes.com
Krugman on the cynical death panel arguments.
Thomas Jefferson and Government Run Health Care
Greg Sargent, today reports that it wasn’t only John Adams who supported the notion of government run health care. According to Georgetown University history professor and noted historian of America’s early days, Adam Rothman, Thomas Jefferson –the iconic hero of the Tea Party – also supported the legislation. Sargent reprints the following email he received from Prof. Rothan on the subject –
Alexander Hamilton supported the establishment of Marine Hospitals in a 1792 Report, and it was a Federalist congress that passed the law in 1798. But Jefferson (Hamilton’s strict constructionist nemesis) also supported federal marine hospitals, and along with his own Treasury Secretary, Albert Gallatin, took steps to improve them during his presidency. So I guess you could say it had bipartisan support.
Ezra Klein adds to the debate pointing out that:
…it was a payroll tax that all sailors on private merchant ships had to pay, and in return, they were basically given access to a small public health-care system. But it was, in essence, a regulation against a form of inactivity: You were not allowed to not do something, in this case, pay for sailor’s health insurance.
I don’t think this proves Jefferson would have approved of Obamacare. It does prove the futility tinged with intellectuality dishonesty that the Tea Party folks demonstrate when they claim to speak for the founders. From beyond the grave no less.
The Triumph Of Romneycare
the healthcare exchanges set up for those shut out of the employer system have seen premiums decline 40 percent, even as all premiums have risen 14 percent nationwide. The power of the market. If the GOP were a serious governing party, they would focus on strengthening those exchanges in the federal bill, and working to break the employer-based healthcare system.
From Andrew Sullivan
I’m still perplexed how otherwise sane people can look at a market based system with private insurance companies, private sector doctors and hospitals and declare it socialism.
The Triumph Of Romneycare
the healthcare exchanges set up for those shut out of the employer system have seen premiums decline 40 percent, even as all premiums have risen 14 percent nationwide. The power of the market. If the GOP were a serious governing party, they would focus on strengthening those exchanges in the federal bill, and working to break the employer-based healthcare system.
From Andrew Sullivan
I’m still perplexed how otherwise sane people can look at a market based system with private insurance companies, private sector doctors and hospitals and declare it socialism.
Mass. bashers take note: Health reform is working
PUNDITS and politicians who oppose universal healthcare for the nation have a new straw man to kick around – the Massachusetts reform plan that covers more than 97 percent of the states residents. In the myth that these critics have manufactured, this state’s plan is bleeding taxpayers dry, creating nothing less than a medical Big Dig.
The facts – according to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation – are quite different. Its report this spring put the cost to the state taxpayer at about $88 million a year, less than four-tenths of 1 percent of the state budget of $27 billion. Yes, the state recently had to cut benefits for legal immigrants, and safety-net hospital Boston Medical Center has sued for higher state aid. But that is because the recession has cut state revenues, not because universal healthcare is a boondoggle. The main reason costs to the state have been well within expectations? More than half of all the previously uninsured got coverage by buying into their employers plans, not by opting for one of the state-subsidized plans.
URL:
TheBostonGlobe –
Mass. bashers take note: Health reform is working
The real test will be on how this plan work over the next five years or so. If Massachusetts manages to cover virtually everyone, control costs and maintain quality health care, it will be all the more difficult for right to protest it. And it will make it all the more easy to convert whatever passes as Obama-care into the Massachusetts plan.