whoooooooooooooshhhhhhh!
Well, isn’t one definition of politics “the art of compromise”?
In this case, the 2009 Democrats crafted a fine compromise with the 1993 Republicans - by adopting the Republican plan.
This link from Kaiser Health has a table that shows that the 2009 Healthcare reform is essentially the same as a 1993 Republican proposal from Senator Chafee of Rhode Island - with exception of coverage for children to age 26, medicaid expansion and lifetime caps.
Seems that the Republican party just isn’t what it was in 1993.
Was this really a Republican plan or Chafee’s plan? Because Chafee was one of the most liberal, if not the most liberal, Republican in the Senate.
I can’t argue the Republican ‘purity’ of Chafee, but here is another cite - which says:
*In 1993, 23 Republican senators, including then-Minority Leader Robert Dole, cosponsored a bill introduced by Senator John Chafee that sought to achieve universal coverage through a mandate that is, a mandate on individuals to buy insurance. *
I got it…it’s just old.
I think it is better than nothing at all. For nearly a decade I (American citizen) have been unable to live in my own country because I can’t buy insurance there. Since July 1 I can, but it is 4 times the price I pay here (and no, my current insurance is not subsidized). The big killer is that under the Obama rules I first have to go uninsured for 6 months to be eligible. So I won’t be moving back to the US any time soon.
I believe that in 2014, you won’t have to wait 6 months - as long as you sign up during the initial enrollment period. If not, you may have to wait for an annual enrollment period - just like Medicare (and almost all current employer plans).
As an aside, I mentioned the 1993 Chafee bill to a friend who commented that back then Republicans must have been socialists 
It would be “universal single-payer health care”, a.k.a “government takeover of the health care system”, a.k.a “socialized medicine”…i.e., not politically feasible.
The irony is that Medicare for seniors is not ‘socialism’ but Medicare for everyone is. Providing universal K-12 education does not make us a Socialist country but universal health care does :rolleyes:
I’m speaking as an outsider here (so sorry if this seems harsh and/or misinformed), but a baseline level of health care (along with a minimum wage, unemployment benefits, comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation, reimbursment for pharmaceuticals etc) is so taken-for-granted over here that anyone running on a campaign which even hinted of removing health care in favour of some sort of Darwinian laissez-faire approach would be looked at as a raving loon.
Can someone explain to me how discourse has been polluted to such a degree that modernising and publicising the health care system is being read as an assault on American values? How allowing the ill to go without fundamental treatment (in one of the wealthiest countries in the world) can be seen as virtuous, or in the best-interests of the country (I’m pretty sure even the most callous economic analyses come down in favour of keeping people healthy, if only to keep them more productive)?
In the interests of fairness I am pretty much a lefty bleeding-heart commie pinko, so my opinion might not be entirely impartial. Even so, I doubt even the most ruthless free-marketeer in Australia would dream of announcing s/he’d let the working class go back to being toothless and riddled with illness because we’d all be better for it - the idea is so ludicrous to me that I have a hard time comprehending how this debate is even occurring.
Socialist!!!
It doesn’t take much here in .us, does it?
Hah! Rupert Murdoch loves it here in the US for a reason…
I’ve pondered this before.
Right-wing attitudes in the USA today are not that much less humane than right-wing attitudes in the UK 150 years ago. So it’s not that alien to English civilization, it’s just that we evolved in a different direction being out of the Empire.
Further, the USA seems to have been sort of weirdly scarred by its militaristic history in several ways:
a) As the arsenal of anti-communism, we needed propaganda to keep fighting Marxist “socialism”–this played into the hands of those trying to fight socialism (the humane First World variety) at home.
b) We do in fact have public hospitals–for military veterans. Those who do not serve in the military are not considered worthy of such largesse. And the massive cultural split between the Cold War materialists & the McGovern peaceniks translates into a belief that “liberals” & “progressives” aren’t even Americans in a cultural sense. Want health care? You should have “served.” Stinky hippies can buy their own.
c) There’s some misplaced pride in US difference from Europe, rooted in our one-time revolutionary status. Doing things the way “those princes & dukes in Europe” do them would be seen as conceding our sovereignty & democracy, our Liberty, supposedly. And to concede to “Old Europe” without firing a shot would be to sell out the Revolution. This is what the Tea Party seem to be saying. Of course equating Europe post-1945 with Europe pre-1900 is absurd. But not to a Yank.
Nobody can explain it, except to say that history happened differently here.
I can explain it. It’s because of something they put in our drinking water. It’s gotta be.
Pee, mostly. Its why people who live on the upper reaches of the Big Muddy tend to be more rational and sane, they pee away the contaminants into the river, where it flows and concentrates until it reaches Mississippi and Louisiana, to toxic effect.
Eh, its not like we don’t provide for anyones healthcare except veterans. Everyone who gets inusrance through their job gets a tax-subsidy that dwarfs the size of Obama’s plan. The poor have Medicaid, the elderly Medicare, the disabled Social Security, gov’t workers are on one of a plethora of gov’t plans. The end result is that the US actually pays a larger chunk of its GDP in public healthcare spending then do most countries that have completely gov’t run healthcare systems.
So I don’t think the problem is so much that we heartlessly turn our backs on providing healthcare, but that we do so in a massively disorganized and hodge-podge way that costs nearly twice as much as most other industrialized nations.
T.R. Reid of the Washington Post wrote a book called “The Healing of America” that describes that ‘hodge-podge’ quite well.
A Businessweek review of the book said:
*… he learned that almost all countries use one of four health-care models: Germany’s Bismarck system, in which hospitals and insurers are private entities and financing comes from payroll deductions; Britain’s Beveridge Model, with the government providing health care financed by taxes; the Canadian plan, where private doctors and hospitals are paid by the government through taxes; and the out-of-pocket care found in most poor nations, where those who can afford care get it, while the rest suffer or die.
Unlike any other country, the U.S. combines all four models. The employer-based coverage most workers get follows the Bismarck Model. Veterans and soldiers are treated under the Beveridge Model (which conservatives often call socialized medicine). Medicare is so similar to Canada’s system that they share the name. And the 47 million uninsured do as Cambodians do.
I was thinking of that explanation yesterday & wondering where I could look it up. Thanks, jasg!
It’s the first shaky, compromise of a step toward fixing a huge, long standing problem. I would have liked a more thought out, comprehensive plan, except that I don’t have any more wise solutions to offer than most people. Otherwise it was a useful and necessary first step. The provision that allows one to keep kids on the family insurance plan until age 26 has an immediate benefit for me, so I like that part.
Ah, so perhaps that’s why the former pays out more welfare benefits tax dollars than they take in, and the latter consumes more welfare benefits tax dollars than they contribute: it’s karma!