let us pray.
Republicans are accidentally paving the way for single-payer health care
By Eugene Robinson Opinion writer May 8 at 7:31 PM
Sooner or later, we will have universal, single-payer health care in this country — sooner if Republicans succeed in destroying the Affordable Care Act, later if they fail.
The repeal-and-replace bill passed by the House last week is nothing short of an abomination. It is so bad that Republicans can defend it only by blowing smoke and telling lies. “You cannot be denied coverage if you have a preexisting condition,” House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said — true in the narrowest, most technical sense but totally false in the real world, since insurance companies could charge those people astronomically high premiums, pricing them out of the market if, as often happens, they let their coverage lapse. “There are no cuts to the Medicaid program,” Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said — a bald-faced lie, given that Republicans want to cut $880 billion from Medicaid in order to offset a big tax cut for the rich.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted that an earlier version of the American Health Care Act, as Trumpcare is officially called, would result in 24 million Americans losing health insurance over the next decade, with 14 million of those unfortunates losing coverage within the first year. Republicans rushed to vote Thursday on the final bill before the CBO had a chance to score it, doubtless fearing the projected decimation could be worse.
I can’t think of a more effective way to drive the nation toward a single-payer system. In their foolish haste to get rid of Obamacare, Republican ideologues are paving the way for something they will like much less.
The country will ultimately be much better off, though. Every other rich industrialized nation has found that truly universal health coverage is like what Churchill said about democracy: It’s the worst system except for all the others that have been tried.
more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/republicans-are-accidentally-paving-the-way-for-single-payer-health-care/2017/05/08/3fc40ab2-3422-11e7-b4ee-434b6d506b37_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-f%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.62dbcb7c905b
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