How often have we heard the left-wing blogs blather about the greatness of Medicare. How often do we hear how happy people are with Medicare, and how that proves that government run health plans should be extended to everyone.
But there is a big, ugly lie underneath those arguments. Medicare underpays doctors and hospitals, who make up the difference from private insurers and private insurance patients. That’s why hospitals are apoplectic over the emerging “compromise” to extend Medicare to people below age 65. And even with those underpayments, Medicare is not sustainable in its present form.
The big lie underneath the current “compromise” proposal is that extending Medicare is not an option. Rationing, the elixir of choice for the “one nation, one plan” crowd, is not politically acceptable — which is why Democrats run from the word “rationing” like it were the plague.
And lost in the shuffle is the expansion of Medicaid already built into the bill. As one left-wing blogger correctly notes, adding 15 million people to Medicaid is the reason “progressives” are not fighting Harry Reid’s Senate bill harder.
The expansions of Medicaid and Medicare are designed to put us on a clear path to a single payer system, without Democrats having to own up to it.
If Democrats really want Medicaid or Medicare for everyone, then let’s put that issue front and center. Democrats can man- and woman-up and defend their goal of a single payer system. And the public can decide if low reimbursement rates, with the inevitable hospital bankruptcies, doctor shortages, and rationing, are a “feature not a bug.”
Enough of the stealth attempts, the nods and the winks, and the “get it done by Christmas or the world will end” nonsense. Democrats should come out for single-payer, and then deal with the reaction.
Hearkening back to an earlier day, “What’s the doughboy afraid of?”
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Liberal Doughboys Afraid of Tea Parties
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