The following was written by Paul Krugman, who won a Nobel Prize for Economics:
"Let’s talk about the magnitude of the looming health care disaster.
Just about all economic forecasts, including those of the Obama administration’s own economists, say that we’re in for a prolonged period of very high unemployment. And high unemployment means a sharp rise in the number of Americans without health insurance.
After the economy slumped at the beginning of this decade, five million people joined the ranks of the uninsured — and that was with the unemployment rate peaking at only 6.3 percent. This time the Obama administration says that even with its stimulus plan, unemployment will reach 8 percent, and that it will stay above 6 percent until 2012. Many independent forecasts are even more pessimistic.
Why, then, aren’t we hearing more about ensuring health care access?
Now, it’s possible that those of us who care about this issue are reading too much into the administration’s silence. But let me address three arguments that I suspect Mr. Obama is hearing against moving on health care, and explain why they’re wrong.
First, some people are arguing that a major expansion of health care access would just be too expensive right now, given the vast sums we’re about to spend trying to rescue the economy.
But research sponsored by the Commonwealth Fund shows that achieving universal coverage with a plan similar to Mr. Obama’s campaign proposals would add “only” about $104 billion to federal spending in 2010 — not a small sum, of course, but not large compared with, say, the tax cuts in the Obama stimulus plan.
It’s true that the cost of universal health care will be a continuing expense, reaching far into the future. But that has always been true, and Mr. Obama has always claimed that his health care plan was affordable. The temporary expenses of his stimulus plan shouldn’t change that calculation.
Second, some people in Mr. Obama’s circle may be arguing that health care reform isn’t a priority right now, in the face of economic crisis.
But helping families purchase health insurance as part of a universal coverage plan would be at least as effective a way of boosting the economy as the tax breaks that make up roughly a third of the stimulus plan — and it would have the added benefit of directly helping families get through the crisis, ending one of the major sources of Americans’ current anxiety.
Finally — and this is, I suspect, the real reason for the administration’s health care silence — there’s the political argument that this is a bad time to be pushing fundamental health care reform, because the nation’s attention is focused on the economic crisis. But if history is any guide, this argument is precisely wrong.
[...] One more thing. There’s a populist rage building in this country, as Americans see bankers getting huge bailouts while ordinary citizens suffer.
I agree with administration officials who argue that these financial bailouts are necessary (though I have problems with the specifics). But I also agree with Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, who argues that — as a matter of political necessity as well as social justice — aid to bankers has to be linked to a strengthening of the social safety net, so that Americans can see that the government is ready to help everyone, not just the rich and powerful.
The bottom line, then, is that this is no time to let campaign promises of guaranteed health care be quietly forgotten. It is, instead, a time to put the push for universal care front and center. Health care now!"
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this particular blog entry had no class... and no brains!
Vermont?
James, I don't think there is a state in the nation that can go it alone. I guess if all the state's employees were exempt from federal taxes, or at least that portion of the federal taxes that go to fund the $1.4 trillion the federal government spends on health care programs of every flavor and kind, then it might work. A state cannot expect it's workers to pay for federal programs and state programs as well. I don't know what state you live in but they must really be dumb.
As a state employee in Texas, I have taxpayer-funded health insurance. I do not pay a dime for it; except for the taxes that come out of my paycheck. It would be downright hypocritical for me to oppose universal health coverage for all Americans based on this fact alone......I know people who have literally sacrificed financially because of medical bills. My parents' being one of them. My mother has bi-polar disorder and Lupus. She has also survived surgeries for an aneurysm in her brain, as well as an almost lethal kidney infection. My parents have had to file bankruptcy not once, but TWICE, because of medical bills......So, when people say that health insurance is not a right; it pisses me off. You don't have to care! But it pisses me off. Because they are basically saying that my mother does not have the right to live a long life unless it is done so in financial ruin and insurmountable debt.
fng i have been on that failed program, i think i am the cannon fodder of that program
"Healthcare is not a human basic need you don't need it in order to survive." I'm sorry, but I have to chalk this up among the dumbest things I've ever heard here. One of the reasons why I think like I do is because, when I was in fourth grade (circa 1977), by best friend, Bruce, died from leukemia. Doctors said he wouldn't live to the age of five, he lived to ten. He was always bald because of the chemotherapy. I think access to health care had a little something to do with him living twice what the doctors originally told him he world. Jackie might disagree with that assessment. She might also disagree with my mother's access to health care in the form of radiation treatment being the factor that not only decided if she would live, but if she would keep her breast. To Jackie, a kid fighting leukemia is completely a luxury he could take for granted, and a woman surviving breast cancer is a luxury as well. Thankfully, they had insurance and therefore access to the care they needed. How many thousands of children out there in AMERICA are dying because they don't have the same access? How many women are feeling the lumps in their breasts and wondering if they will have to lose their home to be able to afford care that might save their lives? Of course, such health care is a luxury to Jackie. You, kid, who wants to live to see high school, and you, woman, who wants to live without going into bankruptcy, you're all SOL according to Jackie.
It's not about rhetoric, it's essentially about a hard-pressed working class who's health insurance costs are skyrocketing. It's becoming untenable. Employers can't keep up with it either. It's just simply way, way too expensive and there's no other way out of other than a single payer system. Not by the states, but by the federal government, as part of a comprehensive social security system.
if we nationalize it the government will have to pay for 100% of it, rom a pragmatic point of view any government ran heath care fails like it did in my state, really people should move here and actually see first hand of our failed hcare system, but instead they only listen to political rhetoric
If you want to privatize the whole thing, and not spend one government cent on health care, then I guess I'll go along with that too, but you are exceptionally delusional if you think that's the way forward. Government already pays for 65% of health care costs in this country one way or another. Furthermore, taxpayers have subsidized a huge portion of the medical research that has given us the modern system we have. So, yup, as a taxpayer, I believe it is a reasonable request that I be covered - just like the welfare mom, or the drug addict, and that I be given prioirty over wealthy foreigners.
Well you can call it what you want, when people get sick or are injured, as a society we have the means to help them. We have hospitals and doctors and nurses and medicines. What I think the blogger is saying and I am saying and most people quite frankly are saying is that our doctors and nurses and hospitals can be utilzed for the benefit of all, not simply the wealthy and the very poor, but those in the middle that basically subsidize the whole shebang one way or another.
dude ... health care is a luxury you have come to expect in your daily life it is not necessary to your daily existence.
Most businesses endorse the idea of a federally-run Universal Health Insurance system, most states would benefit, most individuals would benefit. The only people that would not benefit would be the private Health Insurance industry's executives and stockholders and there is even ways to compensate them for economic loss. There just doesn't exist any other workable system, I've looked.
It is contingent upon the government to provide for the general welfare of the people. That's the way it is. There is a better, cheaper, more efficient, and less corrupt way to ensure each and every US citizen is insured. That's all. The government can establish a universal "group" health insurance system that would be far and away better than what exists now, particularly for the hard-pressed American working family.
Antifed jackie. OK, I'll give up my health care if the government can provide me with food, shelter and water, and sex.
U dont need healthcare in order to survive? O okay fine when you bust your leg dont go to the doctor or when you have cancer boo hoo to you right???
Healthcare is not a human basic need you don't need it in order to survive. You WANT it to live a longer life. Humans need food, water, and shelter PERIOD! in order to live he basic functions of life
Image I think you're nuts I AM poor I'm living out of my car basically at the moment but I got a job that gives me health care benefits for 19.50 a month. Poor people beg the government for aid the money I put into the system by paying MY taxes
I see too many talking about health care as if it were a luxury item. I find this disturbing. Among the "certain inalienable rights" mentioned in the Declaration of Independence is LIFE. Health care should be seen as a basic human right, not a commodity. It should be seen as part of the commons, just as roads and running water and electricity are deemed part of the commons, the collection of items we need to function as a society, the things we all use on a daily basis. Health care should be seen in this light.
You do realize that poor people already get free healthcare???? It's the middle class who makes too much money to get free healthcare but not enough to be able to afford it. The poorest people can get free healthcare. it's the working middle class that can't! Jackie, you REALLY need to start reading or something.
and people who don't have jobs will not be paying into universal health care meaning I would be supporting someone else who is not myself or my dependents ... I quit school b.c I didnt want to pay for something and get into debt and then earn about 30 K a year with 100k + in loans.
Universal healthcare is paid for by taxes. Is not given for nothing. And you stopped going to med school because Obama promised national healthcare? Sounds like a load of bullsh-t to me. And I assume, Jackie, that when we get universal healthcare, you won't be using it.
no national health care...bad idea ... people shouldnt be given anything for nothing. this is a socialistic measure period. I stopped going to med school b.c of Oshama's promise to force national healthcare
We need to nationalize essentials: Healthcare, banks, prisons etc.
With a National Health insurance plan:
1) Reasonable but mandatory copays would be necessary in order to discourage abuse.
2) Everyone must help pay for it and that means it must be partially subsidized by a national sales tax.
... Wiz if you are paying only 50 bucks a month, you are getting a good deal, because I pay $100 a week for my family of three! I work for the federal government and get no dental, essentially no optical. And that's the cheapest, crappiest health care I can get. It is getting insane, it has to change because I am sick of paying this kind of money to a private health insurance company who I know is ripping me off blind.
Lets do it. Universal health care. Pay for everyone to go to the doctor and get cancer. Walmart wins with this one. Hell I won't be paying 50 bucks a month. The government which just spent 2 trillion dollars on what the helll is going to. And if Obama sends me 500 bucks and I get all my money back from withholding like last year. I wonder why they even withold my taxes. I guess just to feel the money. Send it all back to me in debtors notes. I can spend other people debt to pay for cigarettes.
I fully support universal healthcare. And JamesCart, Krug wasn't against Greenspan because he's a Republican, he's against Greenspan because Krugman is smart and Greenspan sucks.
If there were a simple, Universal Health Insurance plan, that covered every inhabitant of this country, not only would it save hundreds of billions of dollars, it would give a tremendous flexibility to our workforce, and take a huge monkey off the backs of states, counties, and industry. I am a republican, but I am tired of the republican rhetoric regarding universal health coverage. It doesn't make sense - our current helter/skelter hybrid "system." Sorry, my fellow republicans but this is one thing the liberals are right about.
paul krugman was against the grrenspan bail outs (because he is a republican) but is in favor of the dems bailouts, he is a partisan parrot
The Republican Party, at least the progressive side led by Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, had Universal Health Care on the platform. What happened?
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