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I know it will surprise you but, Democrats want credit for healthcare reform. While I give you a few minutes to collect yourself I will drop another bomb. They feel any reform which does not contain a Public Medicare style plan will not give the Democratic Party proper credit. Additionally, they would like to make the left wingers happy by providing a Medicare style plan which could be converted into Single Payer, although it will never be.
While you are digesting all of the new information, I would like to suggest what might work better. Give the Republicans their health insurance cooperatives.
If the Democrats are really interested in making our healthcare system better, should they care what the plan is called? In general, I would say a plan, let’s call it the I’m Tired of Getting Screwed by the Healthcare Establishment Cooperative (or ITGSHEC for short) should have four functions:
1. To reduce healthcare costs
2. To stop rationing for profit
3. To change the healthcare fee structure so it rewards health instead of sickness
4. To allow citizens economic independence from the current healthcare system
If the entity could perform the above functions, who cares what it is called. Democrats should take the power given to them in the last election and actually fix the broken system. The electorate is pretty smart. We can figure out who is really on our side. We can go to the websites and find out which politician is in the pocket of the Healthcare establishment. If you check your favorite Democrat on the linked site, you might find the Democrats are not always on the best side of the healthcare debate. Perhaps the Medicare style public plan is a way to get real reform killed.
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Yup, many Republicans feel a handout to the insurance industry will fix our problems. These are the same companies whose profits have grown by 43 percent over the last five years. This plan is funny because Republicans usually feel more tax money is not the answer. Right wing Republicans don’t even want to offer a government option. They justify this denial by saying the insurance companies will go out of business if they have to compete with a non-profit government sponsored version. They tell us semantics are important and insurance cooperatives would not doom our current system. Most of the co-ops I have seen are non profit too. Semantics don’t seem that important unless they plan to water down any bargaining power a co-op would have thereby killing any cost reduction.
While they kill any hope of cost reduction, they don’t tell us the insurance companies will get the mother of all windfalls when healthy young people are forced to buy insurance from them. This is because covering the 47 million uninsured will begin with forcing these rainmakers to buy insurance. Republicans will do this while they give government premium subsidies for people who might actually get sick. Instead of spreading the risk, which insurance was designed to do, healthy people will only add to health care insurance company profits while sick people are covered by the government. Somehow, as usual, the Republican Party has been taken over by the right-wingers. They want so bad to have a plan which seems to be a free market approach, they are willing to provide enough government intervention to make someone unfairly rich. They seem to want to continue to redistribute as much wealth as possible to the insurance companies.
The other unintended consequence of insurance co-ops will be cross state regulation. Since Republicans want people to organize across state lines in cooperatives they have cut out the existing system of state insurance regulators. You can bet Democratic control of the House, a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and control of the White House will not let that happen. Regulation is coming and it will be the kind of big brother federal regulation from Washington which conservatives say they hate. Again, Republicans gone around the mountain to placate the right-wing fringe of the party. Republicans will get us more government for their trouble.
LEFTY LEANINGS NEXT
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This article will be reminiscent of an AA meeting. If you read the previous article and admit we have a problem with healthcare, then you might be looking for solutions or a way to make amends. It seems like solutions are organizing neatly into two camps. The engineer in me always makes me cynical when people try to fix complex problems with easy solutions. I however, think a discussion on this point in the healthcare debate deserves some scrutiny. It deserves scrutiny because the arguments seem sort of like the last debate. Labels are being affixed, slippery slopes are being greased and politicians can’t wait to tell us what lurks in the minds of their opponents.
If one listens closely, one might think the debate was more about party than actually fixing healthcare.
Some even feel the very existence of our political party system may be at stake. So says the Cato Institute’s Michael F. Cannon. He tells us blocking President Obama’s healthcare plan is the “key to the GOP’s survival.” As important as I believe reform is, Cannon might be a little melodramatic even for me.
The stakes however, are obviously pretty high.
The Huffington Post tells us health insurance companies spent over 35 million in the first quarter of 2009 which is already 10 more than last year. They must feel the extra insurance, pardon the pun, is necessary to get friendly legislation. Left wingers are ready to derail the Obama Presidency over single payer. Many hold opinions similar to the left wing blog CounterPunch.
The time to win single-payer has never been better. We are going to keep fighting like hell to destroy the corporate killers, not create a faux option that allows them to live another day.
So what is all the fuss about? Why are liberals ready to disown a President who many feel brought the party back from the wilderness? Why is the heath care industry spending so much money on politicians they have already bought and paid for?
Well, there are two facts driving the debate. The first fact is Americans have begun to understand double digit increases in healthcare insurance premiums is unsustainable. The second fact is the healthcare industry makes a hell of a lot of money. There are plenty of other side issues like 50% of bankruptcies being healthcare related and healthcare being one of the few job creators in a rotten economy. Add all issues surrounding healthcare reform together and the war is on.
Someone once said, in war, truth is the first casualty. The war over healthcare reform is no different. The arguments, which have a “Tarzan good, Jane bad” feel, seem dumber than the usual left-right shouting match. On the left, lawmakers are so bent on a single payer system which would resemble Medicare for all citizens they forget as much as 85 percent of us are pretty happy with our healthcare. The same percent however, is worried about the rising cost of their healthcare premium. On the right, free market worshiping politicians are preparing to give an insurance industry an obscene new kind of corporate welfare.
THE TWO SIDES NEXT
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I was about to write about the 47 million who don’t have healthcare insurance. I could have written about the 20 million who might be underinsured. Any good discussion about healthcare would also have to include the 43 percent increase in profits for healthcare insurance companies in the last five years. Since our economy is in the crapper, I guess I should also say over 50 percent of bankruptcies are due, in some part, to crippling healthcare costs. There are so many statistics that should be discussed. If you however, have read my articles before, you know how I feel about statistics.
So I think I will discuss what you know to be true. This will be a kind of what do ya know article.
I will start by betting your health insurance premium went up this year. So, did it go up like the cost of a bag of grapes or more like a gallon of gas? For most Americans, it was more like gas. Did it go up last year like gas too? Well, you probably won’t be surprised to learn it has gone up (adjusted for inflation) since 1995. Ironically, that was only a few years after the health insurance companies took Hillary to the political woodshed for her effort in health reform. In other words, you or your employer has paid more every year as a percent than other items like groceries and rent have gone up. What might surprise you is the percent increase has also gone up. So, it went up the first year a couple of percent. The second year it went up four percent and so on. You already know this however, because you have seen your check stub.
You have probably looked at that check stub and done a little math too. You have multiplied the percentage increase and calculated the increase over a few years. You probably called someone in the room and showed them your calculations. The next question you probably asked was, “what will we have to give up to keep our health insurance?” I’ll bet that same question has been asked in millions of households.
I bet you or someone you know has lost all their life’s savings trying to pay their healthcare bills. They weren’t deadbeats. You saw them go through life in much the same way you do. They would get up, go to work, carry the kids to soccer practice and do what is expected of them. They could have been you. One day, they got sick. They couldn’t work. They lost their health insurance. They found themselves in a position where they had to lose everything to get Medicaid. You know this person. You could be this person.
I bet you know someone who has been to a funeral lately. I bet the one in the box could have been saved by some life saving treatment which their doctor recommended. The insurance company stood between them and their doctor and told both of them the treatment was not necessary or not proven. Sounds like rationing to me. It’s hard for me to justify that kind of denial of treatment when the insurance company makes a 22 percent profit. Sounds like pure and simple greed to me.
Finally, I bet you or someone you know has made an economic decision based on health insurance. Free market worshiping capitalists should hate this trend. You know, it’s and old story, a person who has a great idea to start a business or would like to go back to school to be a rocket scientist and can’t because they would lose their health insurance. Ok, maybe you haven’t considered going back to school to be an aerospace engineer but, you get the point. Concepts of supply and demand are gored on the alter of a broken health insurance system. Our economy and yours suffers.
Why do we continue to suffer? Do we like seeing healthcare pirates rape and plunder our economy and personal well-being? Do we like paying the most in the world for our healthcare coverage? Do we like playing by the rules and being screwed by the system for our trouble? When we have these thoughts we must be some kind of left-wing weirdo, right? After all, right-wing, free market worshiping politicians parrot the healthcare industry’s stance which tells us 85 percent of Americans are happy with our healthcare.
Of course we are happy! We are happy until the moment we look at our check stub. That is what those groups don’t tell us. Along with the 85 percent who are happy, there are about 85 percent who worry the current healthcare insurance premium is unsustainable. If you think about it, you know the emperor has no clothes and some skillfully worded poll question can’t change the truth.
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Average Joe has completed his first novel and about to send it to the editor. I am in the process of asking a lawyer about the copy write ramifications of publishing a chapter or two on this site.
I would like to take a moment to thank you for your continued support for the American Silent Majority and this site. My statistics tell me many of you have religiously logged in during my little sabbatical. I appreciate your loyalty and will attempt to continue to repay it with thoughtful articles long on information and short on ideology.
My return will be marked, ironically, by the official start of the healthcare reform debate. As you are probably aware, I will certainly have a few comments regarding this critical debate. This complex issue will require the input many honest brokers of which I hope this website will be included.
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As many of us finished our taxes, there were “Bipartisan” groups who told us we were wasting our money. These groups, who were mostly conservative, demonstrated anywhere they could find a camera. They called the gatherings tea parties. I find the allusion to the actual Boston Tea Party both scary and a disservice to the real patriots who participated in the historic event at their peril. The question in 1773 was being taxed without the ability to elect the representatives who would levy the tax. The last time I checked, everyone who wished to vote in the last election voted.
Did they serve a side of sour grapes at the tea party in 1773?
Conservatives seem a little sour right now. They told us everything from bailing out banks to healthcare reform was a waste of money. They told us the deficit the Obama Administration proposed in this budget was obscene. They told us we were mortgaging our children’s future. Did they have a tea party during President George W. Bush’s Administration? Many conservatives continue to defend President Bush’s optional war which ran up over a trillion dollars in deficits. Did they forget about the Reagan deficits? I guess, if you’re buying bullets and lasers, deficits are ok.
Conservatives are trying to get some free press on a day which is painful but necessary. They want to tap into the usual angst which accompanies tax day. Conservatives like Senator Judd A. Gregg (R-NH) send us mixed messages which they to try pass off as philosophical differences worthy of a tea party.
“The budget is reasonably honest, and in fact, I give them credit for having brought on line and made clear the costs of the war,” Gregg told NPR’s Melissa Block.
“But the budget itself has some real serious problems, in my opinion, because it is a massive expansion in spending and a massive expansion in taxes. And the real problem is that in the out years, not only does it increase spending in taxes, but it passes on to our children a government that can’t be afforded, and that’s a big problem.”
One of the major items of the budget is the 650 million dollars set aside for health care reform. This might be our best hope of reducing entitlement costs which balloon the very out year deficits Gregg and others have mobilized the tea parties to fight against.
The irony is that Gregg is probably more interested in killing the set aside than the actual deficit. It turns out his number one contributor in the 2006 election was Blue Cross Blue Shield. In a career, his top three donor industries have been insurance, pharmaceuticals and health professionals. This is the kind of thing right wingers do.
Right wingers like to drag out a bunch of poor kids with their piggybanks on tax day and tell us the evils of deficits. They want us to starve the budget of any chance of real reform. They want us to demand this so their fat cat contributors can continue to make obscene profits. Americans got to vote. They decided Gregg and others needed a little break from power. They can whip up all the tea parties they want but, America has voted. Fifty-two percent of us want to spend a few bucks more today to keep from paying later.
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The New York Times sold my paper today and one of my friends lost his job. My paper was the Times Daily in Florence, Alabama. I will keep my friend’s name to myself. I call it MY paper because I have subscribed, bought or stole it for more than 26 years. I, for a brief time, even delivered it. My wife did too. A paper route is a character building experience full of life’s lessons. You learn people will turn off their lights and stay quiet to keep from paying the paper boy. It was also a lesson in advanced finance. A paper carrier has to do a credit risk calculation before he throws every paper. Customer service, you find, is the key to a Christmas tip. My paper and those tips helped pay for my Volkswagen.
The stages of my life have been, in part, defined by my paper. At first I looked for my name on the honor roll. I looked and looked. The next stage of my life was seeing who got married followed by seeing who had a baby. Now regretfully, a few of my friends are showing up in the obits. My paper, and the M*A*S*H reruns mom sent were the hottest commodity in my Army barracks in Germany. However, I think my buddies really only wanted to see the commercials dad didn’t delete on the M*A*S*H videotapes. The paper was a unique resource for the cost of everything from a used Chevy to who won a ball game. When I ran an engineering business I wanted to know if my firm got the contract at the council meeting. Since I have begun blogging, I am always interested in what and how the professionals are writing. In general, the paper has been a part of my whole life.
Life is what a paper is all about. I guess when the New York Times bought my paper and sent a new guy to help run it, I was concerned. Turns out however, the last guy was a pretty good egg. He began going to my church and his unassuming nature made he us instant friends. You could tell he loved the paper business. He knew how important a human touch was to my paper. He wrote a column each week which usually dealt with some mundane part of everyday life. Invariably, the column was a situation my family and I had experienced. The column was a break from all bad news. I think my friend understood we needed a break. He probably told his editors the same thing from time to time.
Only time will tell if the group who bought my paper will give it the same love and care as my friend. Love and care seems to be the first casualty of the national trend of sagging circulation. The papers seem to only respond with consolidation and the elimination of people like my friend. My friend bucked what I am sure was a hallmark of the New York Times papers. He really tried to find out what living in the Shoals was all about. He hired reporters and editors who cared about how to serve people like me.
Serving might be the key to the crisis in newspaper circulation. Instead of transferring papers to the internet, maybe papers should look to the people who grew up reading and printing the dead tree version. Maybe the newspaper business should look into the things which make a daily paper useful to the people who buy the subscriptions and not people who would rather read two lines of a story on the internet. Maybe they should keep people like my friend who are older but, have lots to give before retirement. Instead of spending time on the business of papers, maybe they should spend time on the art of the paper business. They can blame it on circulation and money if they want. Part of the problem however, might be papers are getting rid of people like my friend.
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What does an obscure lawsuit surrounding the gay marriage ban in California have to do with the current bingo question in Alabama? Maybe more than you think. Recently, there was an attempt to keep the names of donors a secret in the fight over gay marriage in California. Some argued that donors to the campaigns in support of a ban could be threatened if their names were made public. Furthermore, they argued it was a free speech issue. They told us publicity and sunshine were limits on speech. People would not speak out with their money, they said, if they had to identify themselves. I personally believe this argument is a stretch. I think the framers of our Constitution had stump speeches on the town square and handbills on trees in mind when they wrote our First Amendment. This idea has little to do with the obfuscated political action committees and slick TV commercials that are our political system today.
So what does this have to do with the latest tiff in Alabama over electronic bingo or slot machines?
Well, we already have a problem with sunshine in our state. Our problem is with the political variety of sunshine and not thermonuclear radiation. Once again, Alabama ranks 49th in campaign disclosure by the respected campaigndisclosure.org. So along with being ranked 45th in education, 29th in being safe from crime and 43rd in highway conditions among all states, Alabama may also be near the bottom in political sunshine. We already have de-facto secrecy among political donors. We have this situation without a court’s ruling. The political sun doesn’t shine in Alabama.
So what does political sun have to do with Bingo? Well, if history is our guide, Alabama voters may be voting counter to their wishes. Voters could be confused because they are not able to associate donors with causes or candidates. A great example might be a 1999 push for video poker in a few counties. Polls showed in the August before the vote that 61 percent were in favor of video poker. By August only 51 percent were in favor. So what changed?
One of the things that changed was media blitz by Ralph Reed and the Christian Coalition. The Coalition pointed out moral issues associated with gambling and went on a state-wide get-out-the-vote campaign. This is where sunshine in funding and the messenger become important. If Alabamians had known the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians were funding the Christian Coalition’s moral outrage about video poker, Alabamians may have been a little less receptive to Coalition’s message. A congressional report on the subject outlined how Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition and Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Relief were used by the Choctaws to insure their casinos in Philadelphia, Mississippi would not have Alabama competition. There were even plans to use Jim Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, a multi-media Christian group, in ads bought with over a million dollars of Choctaw monies.
You can bet, pardon the pun, the Choctaws and other gambling interests are gearing up as we speak. They won’t contact you directly over slot machines or bingo. They will use someone you trust like Jim Dobson. What’s worse, we won’t know the difference because Alabama politicians don’t want you to know. Some of the people in those issue groups like the Christian Coalition won’t know either. The money will be transferred from political action committee (PAC) to PAC, washed and laundered through so many people we won’t know where it came from. Websites which easily hash out who gave how much to whom in other states won’t be able to make sense of the Alabama system. In the upside down world of Alabama politics, the politicians and groups most adamantly against slot machines may be ironically taking the most money from out-of-state gambling interests.
Editor’s Note:
I went to the Focus on the Family website and asked for a response to this article. I will leave it you to decide if the question was answered.
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Can you respond to this article about Doctor Dobson
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Discussion Thread
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Response (David Johnston)
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03/25/2009 09:15 AM
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Thank you for your e-mail to Focus on the Family.
We appreciate the time you’ve taken to seek clarity regarding the allegations posted in the article you forwarded. Originally, these accusations app reared in television and print advertisements that attempted to tie Dr. Dobson to the charges brought against former lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, which included fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy to bribe public officials. Mr. Abramoff represented the Choctaw Indians in an initial 2002 effort to block a competing casino from being established in Louisiana. Given Focus on the Family’s opposition to gambling in the very same state, claims were made by a now defunct online organization called Campaign to Defend the Constitution (DefCon), that Mr. Abramoff “must have been” behind Dr. Dobson’s efforts because it is “very rare that Focus on the Family involves itself against a specific casino in a far-flung state, far away from Colorado and Washington, D.C.” Such a misinformed statement flies in the face of Dr. Dobson’s extensive campaign to combat gambling across the country. In fact, since 1999, Focus has contested gambling expansion in 43 states – making our efforts in Louisiana hardly a singular occurrence. Moreover, DefCon admitted that their accusations are completely unsubstantiated. Max Blumenthal, a writer for _The Nation_ who represented DefCon in a press conference, said himself that “there is no proof” that there ever was any connection between Dr. Dobson and Mr. Abramoff.
In order to set the record straight, Dr. Dobson discussed DefCon’s accusations on a past broadcast, “DefCon’s Attack on Dr. Dobson.” If you have not yet had an opportunity to hear his candid remarks and would like to receive a complimentary copy of the program, please respond to this e-mail with your full name and mailing address along with your request. In the meantime, we invite you to read an informative article on this issue, which is available on our Web site at http://www.citizenlink.org/CLFeatures/a000000109.cfm.
We hope this information proves useful. If you think there is some other way in which we can help, please don’t hesitate to ask. May the Lord make your path straight and grant you the desire of your heart.
David Johnston
Focus on the Family |
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When the American International Group or AIG announced bonuses this week, it brought two basic problems with finally fixing the credit markets in perfect focus. AIG said it was lawfully obligated to give millions in bonuses to employees who had contracts which said a bonus was due. After receiving bailout monies from the taxpayer to forestall the pending demise of the company, these bonuses were both counter to common sense and seemed to be an obscene gesture toward the taxpayer who bailed them out. The responses to this act might be an excellent study in how complex fixing our credit markets will be.
Many who spoke about the credit markets on the Sunday news shows fell neatly into two camps. One camp, mostly Republicans and the Obama Administration, told us forcing AIG to violate those contracts was against the law. Furthermore, they explained how AIG reneging on those contracts would destroy the legal fabric of our society. It might even make nervous markets fall off the cliff. The second camp made the strangest bedfellows. They consisted of conservative politicians like Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) and left-wing free-market haters. They seemed to be more Old Testament in their approach. “An eye for an eye,” seemed to be their response. “Let’em fail”, Shelby told us.
The argument for the bonuses goes something like this; it would be illegal for the taxpayer, who arguably owns most of AIG at this point, to force the company to forgo the bonuses. It is ironic how many who make this argument also wanted to see United Auto Workers or UAW contracts and agreements destroyed in bankruptcy. They also ignore the “cramdowns” banks are about to have to take on foreclosed mortgage contracts in personal bankruptcies. Other things like how Wall Street pays based mostly on a bonus and not in a normal paycheck are also argued. This too is ironic because some on the Sunday shows claimed many of the bonuses were to be paid to the derivative and credit swap traders who helped drive AIG in the crapper.
Some just want AIG and unhealthy banks to die. They envision a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or FDIC style takeover. Give all the depositors up to a quarter of a million dollars each, pay off the taxpayer loans and whack everything else which is left into partial payments for other creditors and bond holders. No one knows who all will have to take less than what is owed them by AIG or the banks in a so-called “haircut”. That uncertainty has led some to call these institutions,” too big to fail.” Those who say too big to fail fear a Great Depression style collapse in which it will take years to recover.
It is time to get over it.
Our financial system has ground to a halt and it has to be fixed. There will be both undeserved winners and losers. If we insist on punishing the guilty, there will be plenty of punishment to go around. We can sit around and wait on all the culprits of this mess get it. We can wait on a fix which gives us an iron-clad guarantee that no one who was the least bit careless gets a dime of bailout. We can wring our hands as we contemplate the deficits and debt it will take to fix this mess.
We can wait to fix this mess as our economic crisis relegates the United States into a third world country. If my calculations are right, we are losing two million dollars in gross domestic product and 361 jobs every minute we wait. People talk about the next generation owing China. We already owe China and once we wait for dust to settle from the failure of megabanks like Citi, Chase, Bank of America and all those they owe it might take a generation to dig out of the hole. By the time our economy recovers, we may have lost our place as the world’s largest economy. The vengeance motive and the duplicity we employ deciding which industries we save might make us feel better. It may give us the chance to settle old scores like a dislike for unions or investment bankers. That satisfaction may still be costing our grandkids in growth and jobs.
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Editor’s Note:
I apologize for the recent lack of posts. I am in the process of finishing up a novel and will be back to my old big mouth self in a few months.
As Republicans decide if they will run Rush Limbaugh for President, there are some who believe the winger rhetoric is destructive. There are others who believe the thrashing in the last two elections was not their absolutist attitudes but the presentation of conservative principles. They think conservative ideas are better.
One of the ideas presented at the annual Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) convention last week was a conservative solution to healthcare. They actually stopped saying “government run” long enough to explain their stance. They feel the problem is access to insurance. They tell us health insurance should not stop at the state border. They want to allow insurance companies to cross state lines to allow larger groups. They believe plumbers, engineers and others will form groups not available to them within state lines.
Conservatives may want to rethink this idea because it may have some decidedly unconservative consequences.
One of the consequences will be taking local and state control away insurance regulation. As state barriers are removed, state insurance commissions will no longer have jurisdiction. Local regulation and governance has been one of the cornerstones of conservative thought. Conservatives usually tell us people are governed better locally and not by Washington. This idea also ignores one of the biggest traumas in recent American life.
Americans still have blood in their mouth from the last free market fat lip. Many Americans blame the current recession on unregulated financial markets. With that in mind, do conservatives really believe Americans will allow an industry they distrust already to be unregulated? Who do conservatives believe will enforce health insurance portability? Another decidedly unconservative consequence of this idea might be a new national regulation directly from Washington. That sounds like government run healthcare to me.
In their haste to bring alternative ideas, conservatives have not done their homework. Again, they have gone out of their way to have a free market like solution. At the end of the day, the ramifications of their proposals are not even true to conservative ideals.
Wouldn’t it be better to give Americans an opportunity to buy national healthcare insurance from the government and leave private insurance alone? Maybe conservatives are afraid private insurance can’t compete. Who knows? We might just find current insurance providers really don’t need increases in premiums at three times the rate of inflation.