Would expanding Medicare for all be essentially single-payer, just under a more palatable name?
This. He will be the puppet of the Republican Congress.
If Trump can deliver the greatest sales pitch of his life and use shame and patriotism to make single-payer sound Republican - *"How **dare *we have a health care system not as good as Canada’s? Where’s the pride? USA must be No. 1!" and Democrats wisely stay quiet or even feebly protest a’la Brer Rabbit - it could be done.
I sure do hope so; I have a great interest in this subject.
I’ll say this, single payer is far more likely to pass if recommended by a Republican. The question is, while trying to repeal the ACA, is single payer the only way to do it without making 10 million people lose their insurance?
I think the combination of the above two is the easiest path. There would be some Democratic congresspeople who would vote for it wholeheartedly, some who would vote against it in committee due to the cost but then vote for it on the floor, and maybe a couple who would vote against it on the cost. Since Republicans don’t care about the debt, some might go along with it as long as taxes don’t increase. Not that it would be good for the nation due to the staggering increase in the debt.
It would be the modern version of, “only Nixon could go to China”.
Fun to imagine, but I seriously doubt it.
You haven’t been following congress very well. The Repubs in the senate got a dry run of an ACA repeal passed through the Senate this year via a budget reconciliation. The key was to get the Senate parliamentarian to agree that repealing the ACA can be called a budget action and so allowed as part of the budget reconciliation. The wording was key and the Repubs worked hard at getting the wording right. They succeeded. Under Senate rules a budget reconciliation cannot be filibustered. All the groundwork for and the votes for repeal are in place. The only question is whether the Senate majority can wait until mid-2017 to pass the repeal. It will take that long to pass the routine bills (such as a budget resolution), so that there is something to reconcile.
The ACA is gone. The Republicans have made it such a goal that repeal by itself is not only tolerable but will be considered a success. The hard part-replace-can be left for later. All they have to do is promise a replacement, not deliver one.
There is one part of the ACA that will survive. The last Republican budget plan showed the ACA insurance repealed but the funding, which comes primarily from cuts to hospitals, remained to help balance the budget. So the Republicans will cut the benefits but keep the money for their priorities.
Hopefully someone like Ravenman will come along and correct/clarify the above, but I believe I have the basic idea correct.
Ironically enough, in addition to going to China, Nixon tried to enact single-payer health coverage. (Strictly speaking, universal single-payer isn’t insurance. It’s more of a public utility or service)
I don’t think there’s a ghost of chance Trump would enact single-payer UHC but this is an area where I’d be happy to be wrong.
I’m not sure anyway why single-payer healthcare is considered the goal when it should really be universal healthcare. For example, if the federal government gave an adequate medical insurance subsidy to every citizen (directly to either their employer or their insurance company), I’d declare victory. It’d overcome most Republicans’ objections to the ACA and give some amount of healthcare to everybody who wanted it.
The goal should be everyone gets healthcare. The means could be single-payer, but it could be something else, too.
Oddly enough, that’s actually the system I get healthcare under now - my state of residence subsidizes my health insurance, which I choose from participating provider companies (we currently have two choices). Also oddly enough, enacted under a Republican governor (Mitch Daniels) and Pence didn’t do anything to oppose or gut it when he took office. Actually, it was expanded to cover dentistry and vision last year.
Yeah, OK, I can see that working out.
There are other ways. The biggest problem is making the insurance affordable. That’s very hard to do, with many big-money interests wanting nothing other than trying to increase their profits. Insurance companies, drug companies, and hospitals want to be able to make the most money possible (drug companies have been hiking prices for years; the Epipen controversy made headlines, but that’s happening to all prescription drugs – even generics).
The best tradeoff would be to allow those on Obamacare to continue with some sort of insurance, though any type of cost control wouldn’t get off the ground in the current legislative climate.
The Weiner speaks:
Weiner and Trump are a lot closer in terms of sensibility than you would think. Both hard core New Yorkers and compulsive chick molesters. Trump has probably heard the case that Weiner made in the video from Weiner himself.
I suspect republican single payer health care would be really simple. You want health care, you pay for it. Alone, by yourself, you know…single. There you go. :rolleyes:
I know, I know, what would the poor insurance companies do?
iokiardi.
its the same here in ca … even if they repeal the aca gov brown has already said nothing will change much here health wise