The dumbest criticism of single payer health care

[DonViejo]

By Paul Waldman July 6 at 12:59 PM

Democratic politicians are rapidly embracing single payer health care, and as they do, they’re being met with an utterly bogus criticism. Unfortunately, it’s coming not only from Republicans but also from misinformed members of the media.

So before this goes any farther, we need to get a few things straight.

To see how this is happening, take a look at a recent exchange between some CNN personalities and Randy Bryce, the mustachioed ironworker challenging Paul Ryan in Wisconsin, as reported by the Post’s David Weigel. Bryce favors single payer, and has said he supports a plan that Rep. John Conyers has been offering in Congress for years:

<< This week, Bryce beamed into CNN to keep up the momentum — and ran straight into a question about whether he, like a growing number of Democrats, supports European-style universal health care.

“You want to raise $32 trillion in taxes?” asked CNN’s John Berman.

“There’s a lot of people not paying their fair share in taxes,” Bryce said. “There’s corporations getting away with a lot.” >>

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/07/06/the-dumbest-criticism-of-single-payer-health-care/

[Wellstone ruled]

1. Notice how Berman

regurgitated the Heritage/Chamber of Commerce line of Bullshit.

[Eliot Rosewater]

2. Remarkable how the rest of the world can do it, but we cant.

[Hoyt]

5. All it takes is for Congress to say we are going to pay European rates, subscribe to European

utilization policies, say "no" like Europeans do in treating hopeless cases, etc.

When politicians are ready to stand up to doctors, pharmacies, suppliers, their local hospitals, testing companies, the nurse association, respiratory therapists, investors, etc., and even patients, it might work here.

Heck, even Elizabeth Warren called for repeal of a 2.5% tax on medical devices like implantable defibrillators when her local CEOs called her up and said something like, "Senator Warren, the ACA taxes our products to fund health insurance coverage for those who cannot afford health insurance premiums, your state has a lot of medical device manufacturers, and you need to tell President Obama to go screw himself and call for repeal of the 2.5% tax." She basically did just that, calling for repeal. You have to get past that to adopt European or even Canadian single payer.

Theoretically, is is the way to go. Politically, good luck.

[pangaia]

3. Look folks,, we here must understand CNN and all the others

are in the business of paying shareholders, executives, employees, etc.
truth, accuracy mean nothing.

Whatever brings in the clicks..

I was at the gym today as usual.. while in the eliptical, up on the wall on the center teevee, as usual, C freakin N fucking N...

For 45 minutes --- video of the cops in Hamburg chasing protesters,, same video over and over... crawler going by at the bottom.. changed from Protesters in hamburg to something about herr fuckwad.. all the time the.. jeeze , what does one call the star of the show... moderator? script reader?, flunky, sucker? whatever,... 'interviewing' people about other stuff..
VIDEO of violence continues, totally unrelated to the words.........OVER AND OVER..

First moderator was some guy I didn't recognize(cause I don't watch TV).. then the women with the blond hair just past her neck and professionally curled in toward her chin.. the one with the absolutely, perfectly symmetrical face--- you know the one-- I only recognize her because of the time I am often at the Y.... she never says anything does she? Just stares straight ahead at the camera, as far as I can tell..

Every time I looked up....Same video..


So..my point being.... shit I don't know. I typed so much I forgot...but you get the idea....

Ciao...

[Turbineguy]

4. This discussion always goes off the rails on taxes.

Society pays the bill for healthcare in one form or another. Whether it's through insurance premiums, Federal taxes, local taxes, interest rates, overcharging, absorbed bankruptcy costs, whatever, it's gets paid for. And because of the way our economy is arranged, most of the costs are absorbed by the middle class.

The primary benefits of the GOP plan are that the maximum number of people suffer and it costs society the most. There is another benefit and that is that a very few people will be paid enormous sums of money to make sure others suffer.

It's this third benefit that republicans are focused on and seek to perpetuate. It's important that people who do not provide actual health services, are never the less, well paid. The screams of those who do the suffering is supposed to drown this out. BTW, outlier Shkrelli was stupid and made more noise than the sufferers and so was exposed.

The problem of course with the European healthcare system is that it's European. Europe is an awful place where people pay more taxes than they do in the U.S. (don't look at their benefits! Like masturbating, you'll just go blind!) and they are way too happy to vote for somebody like Trump.

[elleng]

6. Right, off the rails on taxes because none EXPLAIN

you/we can pay it here or there, one way or another it will be paid. PROVIDERS of goods and services are entitled. Want to pay insurance companies? No thanks.

[IronLionZion]

7. The problem in our country has always been costs

it's such a big part of our economy and so many people are invested in keeping costs high. Some are rich millionaires but there are also lots of workers in the healthcare industry who benefit from keeping costs high. And they invest a lot of lobbying efforts to derail efforts that might lead to lowering the prices providers charge for things.

Single payer only impacts the payment side of it. Any effort to use Medicare to negotiate lower prices and the next argument would be government bureaucrats are rationing health care.

But back to the OP. Yes, single payer opponents are deliberately claiming that the taxes would be on top of what we are paying now, instead of replacing what we pay for insurance. Anyone with a job has already been paying payroll taxes for Medicare/Medicaid. And anyone who pays taxes has been paying for the military and federal employee health insurance systems and Veterans Affairs. So I doubt our taxes would increase by much if so much of our health system is already paid for by our taxes.

[yurbud]

8. or say we're now paying more than we would for single payer to for-profit insurance