Paul Craig Roberts On Why We Won’t Really Fix Health Care
The best fix is a non-for-profit single-payer system, says Paul Craig Roberts, who worked as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. Max Baucus’s plan, which forces everyone to have insurance or be fined, creates 30 million more customers for the insurance industry. And if you can’t afford the insurance how are you going to pay the fine?
The main feature of the health care bill is the “individual mandate,” which requires everyone in America to buy health insurance. Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., a recipient of millions in contributions over his career from the insurance industry, proposes to impose up to a $3,800 fine on Americans who fail to purchase health insurance.
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What the U.S. needs is a single-payer not-for-profit health system that pays doctors and nurses sufficiently that they will undertake the arduous training and accept the stress and risks of dealing with illness and diseases.
A private health care system worked in the days before expensive medical technology, malpractice suits, high costs of bureaucracy associated with third-party payers, heavy investment in combating fraud and pressure on insurance companies from Wall Street to improve “shareholder returns.”
Stop funding wars and fund health care instead.
I have heard this from highly intellectual people, too. They gave very good reasons for it, that I couldnt refute.
Fact also is, lots of people who make profits off the lack of existence of single payer system will resist their darndest any move towards single payer.
So, will require some spine to make move towards single payer.
Dont believe Obama has the conviction to believe in a single payer system anyway.
average james Reply:
September 22nd, 2009 at 3:56 pm
It’s a shame, but I think you are right.
phillipd Reply:
September 22nd, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Almost all politicans with half a brain know this to be true, regardless of their party affiliation. It won’t be a choice in a few more years. But in the meantime, the game for the insurance companies is to extract as much as possible for as long as possible, with members of both parties loading the health insurance companies vaults with the people’s money.
But again, it will become an economic necessity for the country, so the teabaggers better get used to the concept.
jasperjava Reply:
September 22nd, 2009 at 4:34 pm
We need to start thinking about healthcare the way we think about fundamental infrastructure. We have government-run roads, military, police, fire departments, and these services are on the whole very well-run. There’s no reason we can’t do it with healthcare. It’s something everybody will need eventually, if not in the near term.
Single-payer is the most logical alternative: right off the bat you save billions of dollars and millions of headaches in administrative costs. Doctors aren’t juggling with dozens of different forms and private insurers who cover different sets of procedures. You can choose your doctor and your hospital, and the government picks up the tab. You pay for it through the progressive tax system, so that the costs are borne over a wide section of the population and divided up according to ability to pay.
There’s no downside. There’s none of the cruel “rationing” that we have now, and the private, for-profit “death panels” of faceless money-grubbing bureaucrats who find any excuse to deny your claims or cancel your coverage or jack up your premiums if you get sick.
Call it “socialism” if you want, just as you can call the highways and the fire department and the Pentagon “socialist”.
If we can find a trillion dollars to pour into a bottomless sandpit in Iraq, why can’t we fund a healthcare system for a trillion dollars over ten years? There never seems to be any complaints about giving the Pentagon a trillion dollars for a whizz-bang Star Wars fantasy weapons system, but paying for doctors, nurses, hospitals to take care of sick people? That’s such a waste of money!
flap Reply:
September 22nd, 2009 at 4:21 pm
“Dont believe Obama has the conviction to believe in a single payer system anyway.”
Obama himself said at one point he supported it. It has nothing to do with his conviction, he just knows that it’s not practical. Good grief, do you all think any of this stuff will pass that’s being proposed now? If it passes in even close to its intended form I think it’s a huge victory for the President.
It’s like taking on Social Security or the IRS. Even if the intentions are good, even if it’s the *right* thing to do, people resist because it’s like moving a mountain.
It would be irrational for the President to try to pass a single payer when even a public option might not get through. I don’t necessarily agree with him, but I respect the fact that he is willing to take on the system and try to alter it in a way that he believes is positive.
karthiks030977 Reply:
September 22nd, 2009 at 4:23 pm
“Obama himself said at one point he supported it.”
Flap: Obama has said many things to get votes. What he truly supports, he throws his weight behind, as shown by his record.
So, to put it differently, our President does lie sometimes *figuratively speaking*. Not using this to justify Joe Wilson’s stupid accusation, which had no basis.
jasperjava Reply:
September 22nd, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Flap brings up an important point. You’ve seen the mad, shrieking hysteria over the public option. Can you imagine if Obama was trying to institute single-payer? Blood would be running in the streets.
Even though single-payer would be the best option, Hannity and his cohorts of mindless zombies would try to convince frightened little old ladies that hospitals are going to be converted into Auschwitz-style extermination camps.
I mean, this is happening now, even with President Obama’s fairly tame proposals. Imagine how much worse it would be if the Democrats were talking about real change for the better.
karthiks030977 Reply:
September 22nd, 2009 at 4:51 pm
“I mean, this is happening now, even with President Obama’s fairly tame proposals.”
Well,if a public Option exists, and it works, the users of healthcare(which is the citizens of USA)will take the next logical step sooner or later, and move towards a single payer system.
In any case, any reform will only hurt the Insurance companies;their resistance is understandable, as is those politicians in their pay.
The resistance of some common people (*get your Gov hands off my medicare*)…that’s the kind of thing that baffles me…how could you get so deluded that you dont realize health insurance is a 0 sum game, your gain is their loss and vice versa?
EricG Reply:
September 22nd, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Flap –
You and I agree on this point 100%.
I have a pile of data and lots of people standing behind me when I say that single-payer is the best and most effective way to solve the crisis of health care coverage and provision of care.
But in the end we are getting a single-payer system in this country any time soon, if ever.
“Moving a mountain” is a good way to put it.
But let’s remember what Kennedy and others have said about this: “Incrementalism is key.”
We may never have a single-payer or even a system that is half as non-wasteful as other countries but if we are ever going to have a better system we have to start somewhere.
I think what you just said is key as to understanding the truth about liberals and progressives and not the noise said about us on neo-con TV / radio.
We are trying to “take on the system and try to alter it in a way that he [we] believes is positive”. Not indoctrinate anyone. Not force anyone to eat things or not eat things. Not to tell people how to live their lives (fascism) or to have the government take over all industry (socialism). All that is false and nobody says that or wants that.
We do want to take on a system we see as corrupt and broken (Wall Street / Washington as well) and change it for the better as best we can while we are alive and have to live with these circumstances.
–
I think I am trying to explain why people on the left get so angry and drop down the slander right back where it came from (O’Reilly).
If someone ran around telling everyone that conservatives are fascists who want to dictate Christianity and morality at the end of gun in the US and won’t stop until you personally swear to Jesus Christ under penalty of death of refusal.
It’s crazy.
And you just laid out the non-crazy side of this.
Thank you. I appreciate it, a lot.
September 22nd, 2009 at 3:43 pm
I hate to be a “Debbie Downer” but single-payer isn’t going to happen. It should, but it won’t.
Baucus has only demonstrated how deeply the lobbyist moles have burrowed under even the Democratic legislative ranks.
Our rulers (notice I didn’t say “public servants”) are firmly in the pockets of the lobbyists and corporate interests. The average American has little influence in DC these days outside of the election cycle and even that’s twisted to benefit corporate America through the evolution of the Fourth Estate into a giant media propaganda machine.
When the final “reform” bill finally goes to the White House for Obama’s signature, we’ll see just what kind of change has come to DC. I, unfortunately, have the gut feeling we’ve only further traveled down a road we started down years ago and we’ll only see our costs go up as our incomes go down and services decline.
Clinton, for all his promise, only brought harm to most of us through his trade agreements and legislative failures and Obama may be no different.
But, there’s always “hope”.
Lee Reply:
September 22nd, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Well said..
The way the wind is blowing in DC at the moment, we are going to get ‘reform’ in terms of getting rid of pre-existing conditions and maybe abolition of ‘caps’.
However, in doing so, the Insurance companies have no restrictions on raising premiums and/or cutting benefits not to mention the windfall of customers that have to buy a premium.
It’s my conviction as well as that of most experts that a public method (whether optional or not) is the only way to significantly bring down the cost which is the primary problem we face.
We need a cavalry charge from the left to insist on either the public option or a clear scenario that triggers one if costs don’t come down significantly enough.
Otherwise once again special interests and big business will win while the average American loses.
TDro319 Reply:
September 22nd, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Clinton went out of his way to kiss republican ass. And they thanked him by impeaching him.
Obama has nothing to lose. The people who hate him now, will always hate him no matter what he does. But I simply think he doesn’t have the cojoles to go single payer.
What’s even more distressing is this: for the amount of money we hemorrhaged paying for these two useless wars, we could have had health care for everybody.
anonymouse Reply:
September 22nd, 2009 at 5:20 pm
“… Clinton went out of his way to kiss republican ass. …”
Remind you of someone else more current? Deja vu.
Rather than kissing R arse, the Ds should be kickin’ R arse. The Rs would fold up like a cheap tent if Obama pushed them.
The root strength of the Rs is on display each time that nasal, whiney Cantor shows up on TV to speak for them. That’s not strength on display, it’s weakness.
TDro319 Reply:
September 22nd, 2009 at 5:26 pm
You’re right. Obama has nothing to lose. He SHOULD be out there kickin’ some republican butt. What’s stopping him? If he decides to go the way of Clinton, he’ll not only lose his base, but he won’t obtain any republican approval.
karthiks030977 Reply:
September 22nd, 2009 at 5:22 pm
” for the amount of money we hemorrhaged paying for these two useless wars”
One useless war.
We did hemorrage money on the 2nd war also, but it wasnt useless when it started. I mean, crazy to not try to put Osama away,and of course, crazier to actually change the battleground as BushCo did.
EricG Reply:
September 22nd, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Let’s talk about that:
In the Constitution it state the President has a duty to protect the “national interests” of the nation and this is reason that a President can wage war. Under those specific conditions.
What I am saying is that if (they never did) they made the case for the war in Afghanistan to the public it would a bold and serious problem to show that.
You could go into Pakistan under those conditions without any trouble, but not Afghanistan.
It’s pretty much the same with Iraq.
One could make the case to invade Saudi Arabia on those grounds and you would be right.
But Iraq … not in a million years.
So it really isn’t that crazy to call them both “useless” wars. I wouldn’t say that but I would use the terms “unfounded” and “illegal”.
Because they are. Just like how Bush / Cheney violated the 8th Amendment of the US Constitution by the approval of cruel and unusual torture.
GuidoVanHorn Reply:
September 22nd, 2009 at 6:12 pm
well, if we’re talking constitution, the president can’t wage war…details, details.
September 22nd, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Get a public option through and then time is on our side to run insurance corporations out of health care entirely. And if that puts some out of business, good for them. That’s pay-back.
September 22nd, 2009 at 5:00 pm
I couldn’t agree more.
We don’t even have to go that far, even.
We could take a percentage, let’s just say 25%, of the war spending and defense contractor spending and just not buy the stuff. Then use that money to provide health care for Americans.
But no, we would rather have weapon systems that rot in the back corner of the Pentagon and make greedy, bloodthirsty millionaires even more wealthy.
September 22nd, 2009 at 5:49 pm