“One of the most traditional methods of imposing statism (totalitarian authoritative rule) or socialism on a state’s people, has been by way of controlling their medicine.” – President Ronald Reagan
Millions of Americans were financially crushed by COVID and its many job and income losses. The disruption of their personal and professional lives was compounded by state economic lockdowns of vital economic sectors. Replacing events in their lives with government mandates due to COVID left voters crying for socialized medicine before the 2020 election. But America’s love-hate opinions about single-payer health care vanished with educated voters after the pandemic.
Then why are progressives trying to pass single payer health care in blue states, considering the total failures of Obamacare? When Barack Obama touted his infamous Affordable Care Act, he made “bah humbug promises:” We can keep our insurance and our doctors. All we’d see is a 35% cut in premiums. And we’ll enjoy the marvelous benefits of personal choice and competition. But he spoke with a progressive tongue. All those who drank his sour Kool-Aid now have buyers’ remorse.
Since 2014, millions have lost their health insurance. Enrollment in private health-care plans has declined and the ACA’s mammoth expansion of federal health welfare Medicaid is only for the poor at the expense of almost-as-poor taxpayers. Due to ACA’s shrinking networks of doctors and hospitals, personal choice and competition evaporated. According to the COL index, premiums and deductibles have gone up over 100% for the middle class who have the worst health insurance in history.
”I believe my biggest achievement was passing the Affordable Care Act.” – Barack Obama
Obamacare lowered the bar for American health care. The cuts Obama made in future payouts for Medicare are the industry standard used for private insurance payouts. Specialties that Medicare did not cover were picked up by private insurers. But they have disappeared.
The jury ruled when Obama proposed socializing U.S. health care. They said, “hell no!” That’s how we ended up with “ObamScare,” the Christmas booby prize nobody wanted. According to a recent Gallup study on health care, 36% of Democrats want single-payer medicine. A total of 51% liberals and conservatives are dissatisfied with Obamacare. Progressives squeal, government didn’t go far enough while conservatives cry foul, claiming that the federal government violated the Constitution.
Last election, Kamala Harris’ far left agenda included Lenin’s socialized medicine and Joe Stalin’s Soviet-style price controls on most everything. To end a losing streak with voters during her lost campaign, she adopted Trump’s talking points to hide her radical past. But her voters still ran away from her.
“I got news for the GOP. I’ll run again, since my plan is best for America.” – Kamala Harris
You’d think since Trump won a majority of the vote in the biggest political turnaround in history that the far left would realize they are beating a dead horse preaching the merits of single-payer medicine in state legislatures.
“Medicine is the keystone of the arch of socialism.” – Vladimir Lenin
The blue state of Washington is seeking to establish a socialized medicine system for all residents. Senate Bill 5399 created a Universal Healthcare Commission (UHC) to do this. Mary Fosse and Julio Cortes, two progressives. wrote the legislation saying it meets a “fundamental human right.”
“This bill provides equal health care for everyone, regardless of income in this state.” – Mary Fosse
Like all “progressive rainbows,” financing for this “castle in the air” is harder to determine who gets the shortest stick while navigating blindfolded though a carnival’s house of mirrors. Unlike Nordic countries whose single-payer medicine is financed with a 45% minimum income tax, Washington’s bill places a huge tax burden on the wealthy and businesses and adds new taxes on everything in tax Nirvana. Even in blue state Washington, both the left and the right dislike this progressive incubus! State Health Committee GOP Rep. Joe Schmick says HB 1445 is DOA before it gets to committee.
This is not the first state to try and pull a fast one on working middle-class health care. In 2011, blue Vermont passed single-payer health care with the help of socialist Bernie Sanders. The governor refused to sign the bill due to bi-party negative feedback over its massive income tax increases.
In 2022, on Vermont Public Radio, lawmakers reported they remain extremely perplexed about the huge costs of government single-payer health care. There is no way to finance it without a gigantic tax increase. One Democratic senator said, “I’ll vote no! I have to run for reelection in three years.
In 2023, progressive California presented a socialized medicine bill, but didn’t have the votes to get it to the floor. But, in the nations most progressive state, socialized medicine will rear its ugly head again and again.
“SB 770 will lead the nation in government health-care reform.” -Gavin Newsom
In 2020, a University of Pennsylvania Law study found lawmakers in blue and swing states have made 66 proposals in 21 states for single-payer health care. They had no success getting a bill to the floor. The left filed bills in two red states, Ohio and Iowa, that were killed in the first committee.
Erin Brown and Elizabeth McCuskey, authors of a report on single-payer healthcare, blame these failures on Obamacare’s blunders. They pointed out: What do these proposals have in common? “They’ve all failed due to fiscal costs. Only wealthy progressive California might make this work.”
It’s a given, the empirical record for single-payer healthcare is lousy. Single-payer systems limit access to providers and treatments and suppress the use of new technologies. Simply put, the middle class suffers dearly, particularly those who can’t afford to pay out-of-pocket for health care outside the single-payer system. The wealthy will always have private health insurance, but not the middle class.
“We can’t socialize the doctors without socializing the patients.” – Ronald Reagan
Those who don’t realize how Obamacare ruined our free market health care are victims of Orwellian “New-Think.” Their only saving grace is they experienced government run health care at its worst. If they feel putting Obamacare out of its misery and replacing it with a single-payer system would be better, think twice. Why can’t progressives do this in their highly coveted liberal blue states?
Our states are laboratories for democracy, yet they won’t euphonize Obamacare? And they won’t fire politicians who are in love with single-payer health care. The left feels if they can pass single-payer in a blue nanny state, they can do it nationally. We all know that is illogical. But don’t tell a Bay Area progressive this, if you value your life!
“Socialized medicine fails for the same reasons socialism always fails: it offers no system for rationally allocating resources, and instead, it promotes the over-utilization of total resources, ending up in bankruptcy.” – Llewellyn Rockwell
This article was originally published at www.thecentersquare.com
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