Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

Teddy Kennedy is putting up a new Healthcare Bill… Not Single Payer.

Before we get into this discussion, go toTruthout.org and get the background on Teddy’s Bill: http://www.truthout.org.

Now this is a real winner for the Insurance Companies that are already sucking the money out of the Healthcare system and making it more expensive for the majority of us. For one thing, EVERYONE would be required to buy insurance… and those who couldn’t afford it would get a government subsidy… your tax money in Insurance company pockets.

While the ICs would make somewhat less than they are gouging now, they would be guaranteed continued profits… money that would not go back into the “Health” part of the Healthcare system. This, of course, is opposed to the Single Payer system where the government is the insurer of choice for the masses and the commercial companies can compete for the rich if they want to (it is NOT, I repeat, NOT SOCIALIZED MEDICINE.)

One comment on the Truthout summary of Teddy’s plan came from a poster named BillyDoc, who I acknowledge with sincere appreciation:

Now, instead of the “off the table” but oh-so-reasonable “single payer” option that the entire rest of the world uses with success we get “and require everyone to purchase insurance.”  How nice for the insurance industry.  And it only cost them a pittance in bribes.

My personal feeling is that Teddy has caved to the Insurers because he wants to get a reformed program through before the Cancer he is carrying kills him. It is his Legacy. I wish his Legacy would be the Single Payer system he originally supported (as did the Campaigning Obama)… Teddy needs to listen to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

Under The LobsterScope


Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 35 Comments

35 comments

  1. HappyinVT

    We’re lucky a public option is even on the table.  Obama, during the campaign and at a town hall a few weeks ago, said he would prefer single-payer if we were starting from scratch but, given that healthcare is 6% (I think that was the number) of GDP, it isn’t feasible.  I ain’t smart enough in this area to argue with his point but not enough Dems (think the conservadems) will support single-payer.

  2. Chris Blask

    If I’m not mistaken it involves putting ICs out of business, so if that 6% of GDP is right then you can assume about 6% of the US workforce being laid off.

    I guess I am one of those Conservadems (cool!  a new label to wear!) – having the gov’t decide which treatments it will  (or won’t) pay for doesn’t make me overwhelmingly more happy than having ICs decide which treatments they will (or won’t) pay for.

    And I remain confused about the real difference between Single Payer and Socialized medicine.  Single Payer just means replacing the insurance industry with a single gov’t insurance company, but leaving all the rest of the medical system private (other than the public hospitals, public research…)?  Doesn’t that still basically describe almost all socialized medical systems?

    I remain – like, I believe, most Americans – firmly rooted in the middle of this debate.  It’s hard to imagine any change being overall for the worse, but I am overwhelmingly skeptical of the enthusiastic panting that Single Payer is going to make the flowers bloom and the birds sing.  The best I hope for is a system where more things are better than they are worse.

  3. creamer

    It might have helped to push the people in the center to right-center to be more accepting of a “public option”. But with Obama discounting it as an option even that was poably not posssible. An I’m not blaming the President, I think he was just being honest in his assesment.

  4. creamer

     The socialized government programs of Social Security, FDIC insurance and the Federal Highway commission seem to be functioning. ( I admit the roads are rough and underfunded.)

    The banks and Wall Street where too big to fail. And now the insurers are too big to fail or be changed? My healthcare depends on the ability of an insurer to reap huge profits and employ lots of people?

    We have an industry that directly effects the well being if every american yet is by and large been allowed to police itself. Where have we’ve heard this song before?

    Oh yeah, it was the tune coming from Wall Street before they drove the world economy into the ditch. Over and over again Reaganomics and government on vacation as been proven to be a dismal failure. It’s time to move on.

    “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

    its time for: Don’t let right be corrupted by the convienent.  

  5. anna shane

     single payer should be on the table for discussion as a possibility.  Just like a public health plan will perhaps keep private insurance honest, having single payer will let those on the sort of left know what some of us really really want, and the fact that we won’t get it isn’t a reason to exclude our voices and our desires. and if the plan that gets adopted doesn’t work as prescribed, then single payer will have more credibility.

    I have kaiser insurance, and boy has it improved over the last few years. Sure the co-payments go up with more and more ‘fee’s one has to pay on top of the monthly subscription, but the service has greatly improved, such that it beats the others in service and convenience.  Of course kaiser was the first blue-collar  everything under one roof insurance plan that was cheaper and that covered mostly blue collar workers, and kaiser was accused of being communist in its early days, but now it’s a model.  Maybe private insurers can complete with a public plan, but we don’t  know that, and it’s too early to cave and leave single payer out of it altogether.  My opinion.  

  6. nrafter530

    I never once heard him campaign on single payer…if he did, I wouldn’t have supported him in the primaries.

Comments are closed.