This Is Why Getting Rid of Obamacare is Next to Impossible
Public support of government-run health insurance continues to grow
Congressional Republicans are currently engaged in an embarrassing struggle to revamp Obamacare. When revamping didn’t work, they turned to repeal, only for members of their own caucus to balk.
We’ve explored the procedural issues with repealing Obamacare, but there’s still another reason we’re likely stuck with the bones of government-run health insurance for the foreseeable future — much of the public wants it this way.
Omnibus spending and Obamacare were once repulsive enough to birth the Tea Party movement, but in the years since Obamacare has taken root, voters have warmed to the idea of some form of state-sponsored health insurance.
Historically, the solution to bad, or poorly conceived government programs is not eradicating the problematic program, but more government intervention. And it looks like Obamacare will be no different.
A poll released by Pew last month shows a frightening uptick in the number of Americans who believe it’s the government’s responsibility to ensure everyone has health insurance.
Even among those who self-identify as conservative, a mere 9% believe the federal government should get out of the health insurance business.
From Pew:
Currently, 60% say the federal government is responsible for ensuring health care coverage for all Americans, while 39% say this is not the government’s responsibility. These views are unchanged from January, but the share saying health coverage is a government responsibility remains at its highest level in nearly a decade.
Among those who see a government responsibility to provide health coverage for all, more now say it should be provided through a single health insurance system run by the government, rather than through a mix of private companies and government programs. Overall, 33% of the public now favors such a “single payer” approach to health insurance, up 5 percentage points since January and 12 points since 2014. Democrats – especially liberal Democrats – are much more supportive of this approach than they were even at the start of this year.
And the chart:
Compounding this troublesome and newfound love of state-subsidized health insurance is the belief a single-payer system will be more beneficial than the current cluster. Single-payer remains mostly limited to the Democratic and younger voting public, but support in those groups continues to multiply:
Among Democrats, 52% now say health insurance should be provided through a single national insurance system run by the government, while fewer (31%) say it should be provided through a mix of private companies and government programs. The share of Democrats supporting a single national program to provide health insurance has increased 9 percentage points since January and 19 points since 2014.
Nearly two-thirds of liberal Democrats (64%) now support a single-payer health insurance system, up 13 percentage points since January. Conservative and moderate Democrats remain about evenly divided: 38% prefer that health insurance continue to be provided by a mix of private insurance companies and government programs, while 42% favor a single-payer approach.
Overall, support for a single-payer health insurance system is much greater among younger adults than older people. Two-thirds of adults younger than 30 (67%) say the government has a responsibility to provide health coverage for all, with 45% saying coverage should be provided through a single national program.
So long as the voting public believes government-run health insurance is the best rememdy, eradicating Obamacare will be a next to impossible task.
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Comments
That’s why it should never have happened in the first place. And the poll results are simply the logical result of all the ‘we’re all gonna die without it’ propaganda spewed ad nauseum by the Democrats/media. Not to mention a poll can get any result it desires, and usually does.
There is a more fundamental problem.
If you don’t like the present interstate expressway system, you don’t just blow it up and build a new one. That would be disastrous. You have to have something to replace it.
If we were to just out right repeal Obamacare, the system would not go back to what it was. To many structural changes to the economy have taken place, biggest being the changes to insurance companies.
So you have to have something to replace it.
On top of that we have a very slim majority which we need for everything. I would like to tell McCain to go change parties, but to do so would endanger so many nthings it would be foolish.
As I see it we need to do several things.
1) Grow the Republican lead in the Senate. Not hard to do with the given demographics in 2018.
2) Replace GOPe with our people. Do not hesitate to primary people. Replacing GOPe with Democrats won’t work.
3) Get Trump reelected. If Ruth Bussy doesn’t croak this term or Kennedy retire, Trump will not get more SCOTUS choices unless he gets reelected. They will just get pushed past the next election.
4) Drain the swamp. But kill those critters coming out.
No, you privatize the roads. Obamacare is going to fail. There is nothing going to stop it and the price tag for a shiny new single payer system will be repulsive to people. As long as people don’t think that they are paying for something they want a lot of it, as soon as the cost becomes apparent then … not so much.
Repeal is much less painful, but no one will be interested until the cost has become astronomical, but alas then people will want the government to fix it. This is how we got here. Offer goodies hide price tag for as long as possible and then when the cost becomes clear offer more goodies … ad nauseaum.
What companies are gonna pay for the roads when they might be taken away again in four years?
What do you mean Obamacare is GOING to fail? Mate….its totally f89ked up and HAS failed! People ARE dying because of it…hell, people are going to die regardless of what health care system you are operating under regardless.
BUT that isn’t justification to keep a system that has never worked! Just repeal the damned thing and move on! You can always come back later to put something else in, that everyone has worked together to produce OUT IN THE OPEN instead of hidden behind closed doors where the legislation had to be passed before anyone could see what was in it.
I know of at least 1 rabid Trump supporter who calls it ObummerCare but would be dead or bankrupt from congestive heart failure without it.
Our “friend,” Mr. McCain has just been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, in which people over 55 have a 4% survival rate after 5 years.
Of course, his soul being tied to being senator, he won’t resign and allow the Republic the ability to have an additional GOP vote actually present in the Senate.
He won’t retire with grace because of his hatred of Trump. He realises that if he retires then the person who will replace him will be a Trump appointee and he can’t abide by that!
Um, what?
You make a fine pair with “TheFineReport.com”, who thinks Palin was “the first women vice presidential candidate”. Let nobody say the left has a monopoly on ignorance.
Good grief, when was the last time you saw a president appoint a senator…when was the first time?
How accurate was the Pew poll during the last election cycle? So accurate that I should believe this poll?
Oh stop. The public doesn’t even know what was in the latest bill to begin with. If they did, support for it would skyrocket. The problem is that you have Rand Paul running to the media and debating the bill there. He gives them talking points and people nod their heads like zombies.
The proper way is to vote yes to consider the bill. Begin debate, let each Senator discuss the merits and, if they disagree, offer amendments. Let the Senators vote on the amendments. When there are no more comments, McConnell can invoke cloture and you will have the final vote.
If it passes, it still has to go to conference where House and Senate conferees have to reconcile the differences. Then it gets voted on by the conference.
That is the version that goes to the President for his signature.
What I object to is that certain Senators won’t even allow the bill to be considered knowing full well that it still will be debated and amendments offered and voted on before cloture is invoked. THEN they can vote no if they want.
Saying to cut off any debate is sleazy given how high the stakes are.
That last line should read “Saying no…”
ok now it gets very tricky because John McCain’s office was forced to admit he has a brain tumor and an aggressive form of brain cancer
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/19/senator-john-mccain-has-a-brain-tumor-his-office-says.html
So did George Soros fund this poll?
The GOPe probably did. There isn’t much difference anymore. Except soros is more of a winner.
No, it was Emmanuel Goldstein
Obamacare destroyed the insurance market and I don’t think there’s any going back. The system evolved over decades and was destroyed in one fell swoop by Barack. Insurance for a married couple with no pre-existing conditions and who are in good health shouldn’t cost more than their mortgage. That’s where we are today.
“Obamacare destroyed the insurance market and I don’t think there’s any going back…”
Of course there is!
All that needs to be done is repeal obamacare.
We were doing very well before that obscene law was passed by the left – and enabled by that jerk, Roberts.
The individual market is the one I’m concerned about. I’m sure those of you who get your insurance through the corporation you work for will be just fine. The individual market has always been unprofitable and risky for insurers. If you’re a small biz owner in a small pop state, you’re pretty much screwed.
The answer is the same as always. More free market, not less. More government is never the answer.
I don’t know. I am awfully happy with Medicare. Until I was old enough for that I spent a fortune for lousy coverage in the individual market.
Probably not because corporations are also concerned about bottom lines and anything that impacts those numbers and Obamacare with its increased insurance premiums for staff will have an effect on those numbers.
Which insurance companies are gone? All the ones I used to deal with are still in business. They’re still there, and still fully functional. Exactly which insurance plans they offer in which areas have changed, but that’s true of insurance which has nothing to do with health care, too. Basically, business as usual, ObamaCare or not.
What insurance company hasn’t undergone a massive reorg because of Obamacare? You think that can all be undone after four solid years we just go back?
I’m not saying repealing is impossible, but it has to be repeal and replace.
Think about America just before and after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11.
You think repealing obamacare would be a big deal? It’d take a couple of months, the market would correct itself, and we’d be free from the tyranny of that fascistic law, passed and enabled by fascistic people – and one blackmailed Supreme Court justice.
And you’ve just exposed yourself as a paranoid conspiracy theorist. There is not even the slightest shred of a hint of a suggestion of anything like a reason to suppose that Roberts was blackmailed, or has anything to be blackmailed for. This “theory” is exactly the same as 9/11 trutherism, or the theory that the CIA invented crack and AIDS. In fact the current paranoid theory held by so many Dems, that Trump conspired with Putin to phish Podesta and the DNC in return for favors to be delivered later, is actually more plausible than the “Roberts blackmail” theory.
How is there no going back? The market will correct to the new conditions just like the market corrected to the old conditions. Millions of people making millions of decisions. I am shocked how quickly the market corrected with the thought that Trump and the Republicans would be pro-market even though that have really done nothing economically to help the market. Surrendering to evil just lets evil continue on unabated.
What somebody wants to convince us the public thinks it wants at any particular moment has nothing to do with anything. Such matters are not decided by plebiscite.
ObamaCare is not a success. It will never be a success. And we all know what Single Payer will look like; it will look like the VA administration. It will not be a success either. No matter what another bogus poll says the public prefers, these are simply not options. Nothing which we already know won’t work is an option.
What we do know is that the insurance business has long since figured out how to insure things in a way which works. We insure our cars, our houses, our voices (if we’re in show biz), we insure the stuff we fire off into space, we insure pretty much everything. And health care is just another “thing” which actuaries know how to handle. Leave it to the pros. And if they bungle it, then is the time for government to step in. (And bungle it even more, perhaps.) But not until then.
Congress is a bunch of lawyers. Don’t ask them how to intercept a missile, how to generate electricity, or how to cross the street. Or how to insure anything.
Insurance companies know how to insure houses only because they’re not burdened by ridiculous regulations, e.g. forcing them to insure every house at the same price regardless of its condition, even if it’s already on fire; or forbidding them from offering insurance against fire only, without including earthquake, flood, tornado, blizzard, falling masonry, peeling paint, feng shui, and without including outbuildings and vacation homes at no additional cost. If we were to impose such conditions we’d soon find home insurance prices skyrocketing too. But when you talk to people about pre-existing conditions, or about requiring basic policies to include treatments most people know they will never need, almost everyone — including those who call themselves conservatives — says these are things 0bamacare got right, and any replacement must include them.
Apparently you know little about the home insurance industry.
1. It is highly regulated
2. Housing must follow a highly regulated building code
3. Anyone with a mortgage is mandated to buy insurance.
4. The industry funds studies and experiments to scientifically determine best practices
5. They lobby constantly and hire consultants to testify at rate hearing and in court cases.
None of which even attempts to address what I wrote.
It’s still astonishing to me that so many people believe .gov is fit to run our medical care. I know, right, I shouldn’t be surprised after 50 years of this creeping socialism? These are bureaucrats who have troubles putting their pants on in the morning before they show up to the office with their lattes.
I got it, why not turn over our entire medical care to these fools! This can’t end well.
I know plenty in the private sector “who have troubles putting their pants on in the morning before they show up to the office with their lattes.” I won’t presume, but you don’t seem to have spent much time in a Fortune 500 company.
BTW, the health insurance companies are all Fortune 500 companies.
“Next to impossible” doesn’t mean impossible.
If those two coward-rats ryan and mcconnell were handed their walking papers, the thing would have been done already.
No one takes mcconnell or ryan seriously – they’re hacks in the best of times. In the worst of times, they are disasters of boehner proportions.
BS. The votes simply aren’t there. Remember that the only reason 0bamacare exists in the first place is that the Dems had 60 senators. If they’d only had 59 we would not be dealing with this mess. (And no, Reid would not have gone nuclear over it, because he didn’t when they lost a senator and could no longer make the amendments they wanted.) So how do you expect McConnell to do with 52 senators what Reid couldn’t do with 59?
actually it had nothing to do with the 59+ votes the dems had, it had to do with the side deal that were done, e.g. ‘Louisiana purchase”, and the “Cornhusker ???” not sure the exact name for it, and who know how much arm twisting went on behind the scenes. the only way to get it repealed would be to do the same thing.
You are wrong. The Louisiana and Nebraska deals reinforce my point. Even with 60 senators, the Dems had to bribe some of their members to vote with them; without 60 votes there would be no 0bamacare. So what can you possibly expect McConnell to do with only 52 senators?
I guess you didn’t notice that the repugs had to bribe, too. A provision was added in the House bill that required NYS to pick up the Medicaid costs of all the counties in the state except for NYC. That was an explicit bribe to upstate congressmen. Silly boy – Did u never hear that you should never look at how they make sausage or legislation?
That’s the only one I specifically know about. But that is because it was relevant to me.
They’ll get there. The same as the votes ‘got there’ for Donald Trump.
Leadership is lacking in Congress. They need to make hard calls to begin rolling back, fully repeal, or ANYTHING in the right direction and they are truly incapable as all they worry about is how the press will cover it
Seems reasonable to me. As the program ages more people are given free stuff and increasing benefits without cost. Those who must pay some or all and suffer higher and higher deductibles are a minority, maybe under 10%? And the fact that no one in the political class that opposes it is making a public case about alternates. After the past few elections no speeches, editorials, or other effort is made. They won the vote and that’s all that matters.
If socialized health care gets booted, the chances for socialized food, clothing, housing and transportation are greatly reduced. The continuous expansion ‘rights’ can brook no delays.
Breaking: John McCain has brain cancer. I won’t post what I said to my wife when I heard the news.
Oh dear, Snopercod!
Oh my gosh!
I laughed out loud!!!!
I’m SOOOOOO BAD.
McCain has a brain?
I laughed. I’m going to hell now.
tl;dr You can’t fight Santa Claus.
Obamacare was based on the mistaken selling point that the average taxpayer would be paying X, but getting X+1 back from the program. That ain’t the way it works. It *costs* to take money away from taxpayers, buy all those fancy DC jobs, and return a fraction, so the average taxpayer is getting back X-5.
The same stupidity is on display with the ‘Basic Income’ scam, where everybody would receive $14k or so every year. Robbing Peter to pay Paul is remarkably popular with Paul.
Actually the “basic income” or “negative income tax” idea was originally Milton Friedman’s, and the premise is that this would replace all other welfare programs, including Social Security, and it would be cheaper than them for the exact reason you give — if everyone is getting it administration becomes very simple, and getting rid of all the administrative overhead for all those other programs would more than pay for the additional cost of paying people who are currently ineligible for anything.
You mean it would be cheaper *IF* reality did not exist. There is no way a program like that would not promptly be tweaked to death with locality increases (to rip off the red states and pay off the blue ones), restrictions based on income (because class warfare is buried deep in the heart of all Dem programs), and special rates for special conditions until it bloomed into a giant ball of yarn.
Just as a broken clock is right twice a day, even Milton Freedman can be wrong once.
Social Security is not a welfare program. It is an insurance policy. The fact that participation is compulsory doesn’t change that.
BS. It is not and has never been an insurance policy. It is a welfare program, and FICA is an unrelated income tax that creates no entitlement whatsoever for the taxpayer to eventually receive anything. Congress may at any time alter or abolish Social Security, and FICA payers have no standing to challenge it, because the government has no obligation to them.
Aye, in spite of the accounting gimmicks and personal ‘accounts’ set up by the bureaucrats, Social Security is classified as welfare by economists. It’s wealth redistribution from the young to the old. That’s the most flattering interpretation of it. At worst, it’s considered a Pyramid Scheme.
It’s the same with the education system, with housing, with elective abortion, with [class] diversity, with catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, with clean wars (e.g. social justice adventures that force catastrophic anthropogenic immigration reform), etc.
People will continue to believe as long as they maintain their faith in mortal gods serving at the twilight fringe (a.k.a. penumbra).
So, they believe in storks. They believe in the artificial green blight, while doubting the organic black blob, and fearing the inscrutable processes of atomic and nuclear physics. They want to pay more for medical services under Democratic auspices that conflate health care with medical care with progressive leverage schemes (a la Fannie/Freddie) that force recurring domestic and global resets on a decadel scale.
Oh, well. I guess an illusion of “free” is better than affordable. And, apparently, six out of ten politicians, lawyers, and doctors agree.
The DOCTORS do not agree!!!!!
That’s just slander, right there!
You’re the one who can’t recognize reality. Didn’t Trump say HE HAD A HEALTH CARE PLAN THAT WAS BETTER, CHEAPER AND WOULD COVER EVERYONE? Where is it?
Remember when slick Joe Biden said passing ObamaCare was a big “Fng deal”? Democrats knew that the addiction to an entitlement like health care would be virtually impossible to repeal. Hook a population of government handouts and it’s over. Democrats will learn this lesson well next time they have control of the Presidency and Congress. We can only guess what Socialist crap they’ll pass next time. As to the spineless GOP, we need another Tea Party revival to defeat these cowards in Congress. I”m disgusted with the likes of McConnell and his career politicians.
The funny thing is: there are things they can tackle that are not insurance related that can improve things.
Like find out how a company that provides a device which substitutes a ten cent drug and a ten cent delivery device, with a new delivery device that costs $1.00 tto make, and charge $200, and please don’t tell me “free market” is the solution to that. This sort of thing was happening under the radar for a long time before Obamacare, precisely because the market wasn’t free before. No matter won’t replace it, it won’t be the “free market”.
Okay, let’s get to brass tacks. Which someone has already done. But the reason KenyanCare won’t be repealed, is because politicians’ holy grail is Re-election!!!
So, they’ll do what it takes to be RE-ELECTED.
I don’t see more than a handful of statesmen in the bunch. Statesmen and concern for re-election are most likely mutually exclusive.
Well, the joke will be on them: they won’t get re-elected.
Actually, most of the Republican Congressmen WILL get reelected; even if they do nothing. The only way to get rid of them is to primary them out. Replacing them with Progressive Liberal Democrats will accomplish nothing. And, as it will be extremely difficult to defeat these established GOP politicians in the primaries. Also, even if the current crop of GOP Congressmen are replaced, the amount of money being thrown around in DC is so incredibly huge that most of the “new hires” will succumb to the temptation and become just klike their predecessors, bought by moneied interests. This happened to the freshman Congress elected in 1994. Within four years, the GOP Congress was the same as the Democrat Congresses which preceded it.
Cowardice. I don’t buy it. They know what’s right. Leadership isn’t easy. It’s clear to see that government will boondoggle the market. They have to do something NOW. Letting it fester will turn it into a perpetual tug of war over resources and Republicans have been getting their asses handed to them. Move now or RIP health markets forever.
Funny how “next to impossible” so often turns into “gee that wasn’t so hard”.
Winning the Cold War was “next to impossible” until Ronald Reagan called bullshit on that narrative.
Winning the last election was “next to impossible” until Donald Trump made it look easy. And fun.
It’s simply a matter of will.
Reagan did it all by hisself? None of the prep work was done by any other president.
Just 2 examples of hundreds –
1. The Berlin Airlift
2. The Moon Landing
Neither of which had any effect on the outcome. No, he didn’t do it all himself, he had some help from Thatcher 🙂
Wow, whole books have been written about the cold war and they could have just come to you. Is it that simple or are you a simpleton?
The people I know who support Obamacare are the ones with big subsidies. So, retirees who have had company benefits all of their lives and now have low income but plenty of property also have time to visit their Congresscritters.
The problem is we gave these morons the power and they will never release that power. We will just vote back and worth who we want to have that power.
We are screwed forever! Or until the next big collapse which isn’t that far off. With the fed in control we are screwed.
Get the theme, WE ARE SCREWED!