Obama open to single payer health insurance.

[SirNitram]

Link

Barack Obama said he would consider embracing a single-payer health-care system, beloved by liberals, as his plan for broader coverage evolves over time.

“If I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system,” Obama told some 1,800 people at a town-hall style meeting on the economy.

A single-payer system would eliminate private insurance companies and put a Medicare-like system into place where the government pays all health-care bills with tax dollars.

Many liberals have long embraced the coverage plan, saying it would cover everyone, take the profit out of health insurance and allow for greater efficiencies. But Republicans cringe at such deep government involvement in the private sector, calling it socialized medicine. And many Democrats, including Obama and former rival Hillary Clinton, have taken a much more moderate approach.

Obama’s health-care plan aims for universal coverage by offering a new government-run marketplace where Americans could buy insurance, mostly from private plans. He would offer subsidies to individuals and to small business owners that offer their workers coverage. His plan also would require that parents get insurance for their kids. And he aims to lower health-care costs to make coverage more affordable. His plan includes one small step toward single payer. His new marketplace would create a new government-run plan, like Medicare, to compete against the private plans.

But Obama repeated that he rejects an immediate shift to a single-payer system. “Given that a lot of people work for insurance companies, a lot of people work for HMOs. You’ve got a whole system of institutions that have been set up,” he said at a roundtable discussion with women Monday morning after a voter asked, “Why not single payer?”

“People don’t have time to wait,” Obama said. “They need relief now. So my attitude is let’s build up the system we got, let’s make it more efficient, we may be over time—as we make the system more efficient and everybody’s covered—decide that there are other ways for us to provide care more effectively.”

[Netko]

Love how it just states the parts of "liberals" beliefs about UHC which are exactly the ones that enrage the Republicans (OMG TAX!) without mentioning anything about why they hold those beliefs - namely, that the system works and is more efficient in practically every other first and second world country. Almost as if the part of the article was designed for republicans to go "Dem dirty liberals want to take my hard earned money to pay for their newest hairbrained scheme"...

As for Obama, wasn't this his stance for a while? I remember him saying similar things back in the primary debates (UHC if going from scratch, unrealistic in current situation).

[Glocksman]

Yeah, I've seen him quoted as saying basically the same thing several times earlier on.
It's a nuanced answer and a good one, but you can look for the usual suspects to latch onto this part:

“If I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system"

and ignore the rest of the answer and scream 'OBAMA WANTS SOCIALIZED MEDICINE AND TO SPEND YOUR HEALTHCARE MONEY ON CRACK WHORES', or some other such drivel.

In fact, I bet within 2 days Sean 'Parrot' Hannity will do just that.

[K. A. Pital]

A single-payer system would eliminate private insurance companies and put a Medicare-like system into place where the government pays all health-care bills with tax dollars.

That's a "master of the obvious" quote, and slated slightly negative towards even such an issue! Why not mention that this system would cover everybody and contract the costs? Oh that's right, because that's what negrocommunist Obama thinks with his partisan mind.

"Calling it socialized medicine" - wow, I didn't know "socialized medicine" is some sort of evil scary term. I guess Republi-speak is different from normal language.

[FSTargetDrone]

"Calling it socialized medicine" - wow, I didn't know "socialized medicine" is some sort of evil scary term. I guess Republi-speak is different from normal language.

Heh, in the USA, "socialized" is a dirty word to a lot of Conserva-publicans. I

[Glocksman]

I guess Republi-speak is different from normal language

Having been one up until the last year or so, I can tell you that it is.
On a normal US political scale, Obama would be considered a moderate who leans slightly left socially.

In Republi-speak, Obama's a 'radical socialist' because he doesn't believe in tax cuts for the wealthy while doing nothing for an ever shrinking middle class.

My two best friends who are still Republicans are divided themselves this year.

One, the more sane of the two, gets his news from FOX, listens to Rush, Laura, and Hannity on the radio, doesn't read newspapers or haunt news websites, and considers himself well informed, is supporting Bob Barr because he sees McCain as a hypocritical RINO.

The other guy is just as 'well-informed' as the first, but is supporting McCain because Obama is a socialist who'll raise his taxes.
Never mind that he's not making even a fifth of the income needed to have Obama's tax plans raise his taxes. In fact, he'd get a bigger cut from Obama's plan.

When I try and point it out, he says his mind is made up and he doesn't want to discuss it.
Heck this guy has swallowed the Kool-Aid to the point where he believes the income tax itself is 'immoral'.

[CaptainChewbacca]

You know, I've decided; If I get the same quality of coverage for about the same cost, I don't care if its the government or a private company. If its easier/better for everyone else, I might even pay a little more.

Then at least people will stop complaining about healthcare...

right?

[Knife]

You know, I've decided; If I get the same quality of coverage for about the same cost, I don't care if its the government or a private company. If its easier/better for everyone else, I might even pay a little more.

Then at least people will stop complaining about healthcare...

right?

Regardless of how you feel about bureaucracy in the government, this will weed out a lot of red tape in health care. Plus it would put some power (theoretically) to the people in the management of the system since they are elected officials rather than businessmen.

Let alone giving health care to everyone.

[Broomstick]

"Calling it socialized medicine" - wow, I didn't know "socialized medicine" is some sort of evil scary term. I guess Republi-speak is different from normal language.

Stas, in the US "socialized" is an evil word even for many liberals and even for many Democrats.

People demonize social security as being "socialized retirement planning".

Something like the Post Office can be deemed "socialized" and may be referred to as such by those who don't like it or are holding it up as an example of government inefficiency.

It's a legacy of the Cold War, and most unfortunate, as it prevents people from considering other options to solve problems.

[Broomstick]

You know, I've decided; If I get the same quality of coverage for about the same cost, I don't care if its the government or a private company. If its easier/better for everyone else, I might even pay a little more.

I have been applying for the Indiana poor people's health plan. One of the qualifications is that you must be without insurance for six months and have NO access to ANY health insurance through work. Because whoever came up with this "doesn't want state insurance to compete with private insurance".

Why the hell not?

If private insurance is so fucking superior why does it need protecting? If it's so superior won't people gravitate to it of their own accord? Can no one else see how stupid this is?

As a matter of fact, the state plan here is better than that offered by many small to medium sized business. Which is why the insurance industry lobbied for protection. Even hamstrung to "protect" private insurance Medicare and Medicaid can be superior to private insurance, how can anyone argue they will be inherent failures if allowed to compete equally, or even take over the system?

Then at least people will stop complaining about healthcare...

right?

Well, they'll stop complaining about access and cost problems... but people will always find something to complain about. If they stop complaining, check for a pulse.

[Patrick Degan]

"Calling it socialized medicine" - wow, I didn't know "socialized medicine" is some sort of evil scary term. I guess Republi-speak is different from normal language.

Stas, in the US "socialized" is an evil word even for many liberals and even for many Democrats.

People demonize social security as being "socialized retirement planning".

Something like the Post Office can be deemed "socialized" and may be referred to as such by those who don't like it or are holding it up as an example of government inefficiency.

It's a legacy of the Cold War, and most unfortunate, as it prevents people from considering other options to solve problems.

Oh, that legacy goes all the way back to the Red Scare of the 1920s, when Thomas Woodrow Wilson and his pet attorney-general, Mitch Palmer, made Americans scared of the Big Bad Bolshevik Bogeyman —and jailed anybody who wasn't.

[Gerald Tarrant]

I guess Republi-speak is different from normal language

Having been one up until the last year or so, I can tell you that it is.
On a normal US political scale, Obama would be considered a moderate who leans slightly left socially.

Incorrect, on the basis of the bills he's sponsored he's rank and file

Obama is a rank-and-file Democrat according to GovTrack's own analysis of bill sponsorship.

These labels come from the Political Spectrum statistical analysis that we have carried out. The statistical analysis puts members of Congress on a scale based on patterns of bill sponsorship, and is blind to party affiliation and the content of bills. From there, I have somewhat arbitrarily divided the image into regions to label as far-left/right, moderate, and rank-and-file, separately for the House and Senate and based on party. For each party, the most extreme 23% of members of Congress are labeled far-left or -right. The most centrist 30% (i.e. those closest to the other party) are labeled moderate. The remaining 47% are labeled as rank-and-file.

Link

[SirNitram]

'Moderate' is 'Democrat', or are you insane enough to think there are actually politicians on the Left in this country?

[Gerald Tarrant]

That's not how he's gone about portraying himself. His speeches are about a "post-partisan" way of doing business. Sort of a "uniter not a divider".

[Battlehymn Republic]

[quote="Patrick Degan]Oh, that legacy goes all the way back to the Red Scare of the 1920s, when Thomas Woodrow Wilson and his pet attorney-general, Mitch Palmer, made Americans scared of the Big Bad Bolshevik Bogeyman —and jailed anybody who wasn't.[/quote]

Nah, pretty sure it can go back to the 1800s, the Americans always thought of themselves as having a distinctly different political culture from Europe's dominating governments. Maybe as far as the French Revolution, with American distaste for its excesses at attempting to bring about economic egalitarianism.

[Drooling Iguana]

That's not how he's gone about portraying himself. His speeches are about a "post-partisan" way of doing business. Sort of a "uniter not a divider".

And how does being a "rank and file Democrat" contradict that? If anything, the average "rank and file" Democrat is too "post-partisan" given their tendency to roll over whenever the Republicans say so.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

How is it possible for someone to be incorrect when judged by the standards of an entirely arbitrary classification system?

[Big Orange]

It seems so hypocritical why America is heavily Neoliberal about healthcare to the detriment of most people, yet for many decades it is not so Neoliberal about the Military-Industrial Complex and so the squandered Federal tax dollars are poured into that instead (it is also mind boggling how America are blowing far more money into Iraq and Afghanistan than its allies).

But I personally think extreme Neoliberalism that is running much of the US (into the ground) seems to be as similarily unworkable as extreme Communism as an economic policy in the long term, with both leading to unnecessary human and environmental abuses and sacrifices for the sake of the economic mechanism. Why apply an unreliable laissez-faire mindset into provided basic human needs and proper civic services?

[Gomu Niwatari]

What the hell is a neoliberal?

[SirNitram]

Neoliberalism, I thought, was what has now become known as Neoconservatism: The 'Freedom and democracy to all.. At the end of a gun barrel' imperialism. I would assume either myself or Orange are mistaken, as NeoCon isn't even vaguely an economic system.

Frankly, one can just call it Conservative economics: Shovel tax dollars at your patrons and vassals as fast as you can before the people vote you out, then mock the Democrats into uselessness when they're struggling the fix the messes.

[Surlethe]

I had thought neoliberalism is economic libertarianism. It turns into the economic version of neoconservatism when it's applied to globalized foreign policy: liberalize ... or else!

[Ender]

What the hell is a neoliberal?

I presume someone will correct me if I am wrong, but I think neoliberalism is a style of economics supported heavily by the University of Chicago, which adapts the market emphasis of Friedman and but tempers it with limited regulations enforcing some social democratic principles. It supports limited restrictions on business and smaller government involvement in the market by advocating things like redirecting public spending from subsidiaries to investments that enhance the economy by allowing greater utilization of the factors of production (eg. infrastructure, education, or health care). It favors increased trends toward globalization and international trade and foreign direct investment. In short, minimal government involvement in the market, but the governments involvement is to invoke restrictions that provide for long term sustainability, while the markets will adapt on the short terms to exploit the benefits provided to them to meet demands.

It was once the core idea behind Reaganomics, but while Reagan and his advisers merged it with trickle-down economics, neoliberalsim calls for the government to invest in the business infrastructure instead of the wealthy. This may be an unfair point, the core theories were adapted and improved upon by economists in the intervening years. Obama's policy appears to be neoliberal.

[K. A. Pital]

It supports limited restrictions on business and smaller government involvement in the market by advocating things like redirecting public spending from subsidiaries to investments that enhance the economy by allowing greater utilization of the factors of production (eg. infrastructure, education, or health care)

As far as I know, neoliberalism, even in theory, is explicitly against heavy public investment in infrastructure, education or healthcare, and advocates a radical and destructive privatization of all three of them for the sake of making them "more effective" and reducing "government waste spending". At least that's the way it has always been implemented in practice.

[Justforfun000]

Wow. Reading Glosckmans personal examples again show me how sadly selfish people are. You'd THINK people would evaluate a candidate's voting worthiness based on their overall moral and generalized sensible policies.

But obviously there are so many that stop thinking any further then "Fuck, he might raise my taxes". That's pretty fucking sad.

[Darth Wong]

Wow. Reading Glosckmans personal examples again show me how sadly selfish people are. You'd THINK people would evaluate a candidate's voting worthiness based on their overall moral and generalized sensible policies.

But obviously there are so many that stop thinking any further then "Fuck, he might raise my taxes". That's pretty fucking sad.

You've obviously never worked in a factory. The majority of the blue-collar population is incapable of thinking beyond narrow personal prejudice and short-term self-interest. They're just too stupid, uneducated, and intellectually lazy. Worse yet, they're proud of it. And they outnumber the smart people.