Republicans ran advertisements noting they had voted 70 or more times to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and they would do it as soon as they had control of Congress and the White House.
Voters gave them just that. And now Republicans, who had used the word “repeal” like a meditation chant, act like the proverbial dog that caught the car. The plan they all liked in 2015 — one that would have ended the law’s mandates, subsidies and Medicaid expansion — would not pass today.
.. Mr. Trump’s voters supported a man who promised a government-run health care plan that would provide universal coverage. In other words, he promised more than Obamacare. For that matter, Mr. Trump promised more government involvement in health care than Hillary Clinton did.
.. Mr. Trump’s voters want Obamacare, but they want Mr. Trump’s gold-plated branding on it.
.. Democrats were far more focused on expanding coverage and ensuring every American could get insurance than they were on making coverage affordable.
.. Instead, they should focus on cost.
.. Increasing competition and choice would lower prices for all kinds of insurance.
.. Watching many Americans demand repeal, while voting for a man who promised a government-run, universal coverage solution, only increases politicians’ cynicism about the American voter.
Close Trump friend says ditch Paul Ryan’s plan and embrace universal health care
Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy calls for Medicaid for all.
A key Trump friend and ally is urging the president to dump Paul Ryan’s Affordable Health Care Act and embrace something that sounds sort of like a lightweight version of a single-payer health care system.
.. Reject the phony private health insurance market as the panacea. Look to an upgraded Medicaid system to become the country’s blanket insurer for the uninsured.
.. Get Democrats to agree to modest tort reform to help lower medical costs.
.. Yet despite the program’s limitations, the evidence is overwhelming that people who receive Medicaid like it.
Indeed, surveys tend to show that people who obtained Obamacare coverage via Medicaid are happier with their coverage than those who get subsidized private insurance on the new marketplaces.
.. But Trump really did campaign on a promise of universal coverage. And as he told CBS’s Scott Pelley back during the primary, “the government’s gonna pay for it.”
Fiscal Conservatives Should Love National Health Care
The other advanced countries with universal coverage manage to buy significantly better outcomes at the expense of 11 or 12 percent of GDP instead of America’s 16 percent.
.. Perversely, the effort to keep government out of health care has empowered health care to consume more and more government dollars. Where government has been deployed more effectively than in the United States, health care has consumed less.
.. However, our costs are high because we pay more for everything: doctors, nurses, pharmaceuticals, hospital stays, etc. Politically, it’s impossible to adopt a system that would suddenly cut everyone’s pay by a third. If America were to adopt national health care, our per capita costs would almost certainly start out right where they are now: far higher than any other country in the world.
.. Frum is right. It’s ironic, but it turns out that central governments are a lot better at keeping a lid on health care costs than the private sector. The reason is taxes. National health care is paid for out of tax revenue, and the public pressure to keep taxes low is so strong that it universally translates into strong government pressure to keep health care costs low. By contrast, the private sector is so splintered that no corporation has the leverage to demand significantly lower costs.
.. Besides, if health care costs go up, corporations can make up for it by keeping cash salaries low. This is part of the reason that median incomes have grown so slowly over the past 15 years. Corporations simply don’t care enough about high health care costs to really do anything about it.