United Liberty
Nationalizing Health Care
Tue, 09/23/2008 - 4:31pm | posted by Shana Kluck
Nationalizing any sector of society is a bad idea, but nothing makes me cringe like the idea of government-run health care. I’m old enough to remember when Bill Clinton was in office and the nation expelled a breath of relief when Hillary’s attempts at universal health care were abandoned as impractical and unwanted. Well, a decade and a bit later, not much has changed. Hillary is still pushing for government mandated healthcare, and it’s still impractical and unwanted.
A recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that 17% of Americans would prefer to buy their own insurance and another 39% want to continue buying it from their employer. Hardly a resounding mandate for the government to take over the industry. But that’s not stopping our elected officials from making it a reality.
Sixteen senators have formed a committee with the goal of having legislation ready to begin implementation of mandatory health care, despite who becomes the next president. This coalition is led by Oregon Democratic Senator Ken Wyden, but is fairly equally split between the two parties, inluding Republicans Arlen Spector of Tennessee and Bob Bennet of Utah. Bennet’s participation in this is surprising considering he was one of the biggest opponents to HillaryCare.
Bennett said that their bill is “a starting point” for the new president to launch his assault on comprehensive health care reform. He says everything in the bill is negotiable. But playing party politics, he believes, will doom health care reform.
“Whether it’s Obama bringing ‘change’ or McCain bringing ‘reform,’ if they run into health care and offer an ideologically pure solution that appeals only to base of the party, you’re going to see the Clinton thing repeated,” said Bennett. -MSNBC.com
The legislation is a shoo-in if Obama wins in November (or December, depending on how long the Supreme Court takes this time to decide); but hopefully McCain would stay true enough to his roots and put that veto power to good use.
Errr… did you actually read Wyden’s press announcement? Can you quote where in it he speaks to nationalizing or socializing health care?
You keep using this word “Nationalizing.” I do not think it means when you think it means….
If we were to go the Canada route when it comes to health care, it would be illustrate a very strange political tide in the US. Whereas Europe and Canada seem to be moving towards the political right (with urban London electing conservative mayors and conservatives being elected in France, Germany, Italy, Canada and possibly the United Kingdom) the United States would be moving towards the political left.
Nationalize means to bring under the control of a nation- the government requiring it’s citizens to buy insurance is certainly a step in that direction. Do you really believe that they will stop with just this? We already have nationalized health care with medicaid and medicare.
With the amount of money that the government has spent in Iraq, we could have funded healthcare for every man, woman and child. If Japan’s system, Canada’s system, is any indication of how a nationalized system will work, I think we are way over due. Spend our tax dollars within our own country for once…
I don’t know whether we should nationalize or not. I’m a Republican and I see the pros and cons of the issue. However, Canada, Japan, Great Britain and all the industrialized nations that have nationalized health care enjoy higher life expectancies, lower infant mortality rates and lower obesity rates than the U.S. Not propaganda, mind you, but fact supported by every statistical study you can name.
That should give us pause when we try to politicize this issue. I don’t know if it’s there systems, but obviously they are doing something better than we.
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