September 9, 2017
REPEAL AND REPLACE:
Key Obamacare Architect Who Shunned Single-Payer Now Backs It : Max Baucus' comments show how far the debate has shifted. (Daniel Marans, 0/08/17, Huffington Post)
Former Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), a fiscal moderate who, as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, presided over the passage of the Affordable Care Act, expressed his support on Thursday for the creation of a single-payer health care system."My personal view is we've got to start looking at single-payer," Baucus said in remarks at Montana State University, according to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. "I think we should have hearings... We're getting there. It's going to happen."Single-payer health care, in which the federal government insures all citizens through one large program, is a model for universal coverage in many developed countries, including Canada, France and Australia. But it has long been viewed as a pipe dream in the United States, where a plurality of people receive coverage from their employers.Baucus' endorsement of the idea speaks to just how dramatically the health policy debate has shifted within the Democratic Party in recent years ― particularly since the 2016 presidential run of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who made what he called "Medicare for all" a central issue of his campaign. [...]Obamacare itself relies on a hybrid model, once favored by conservative policy experts, that combines the creation of a new private, individual insurance marketplace and an expansion of Medicaid.
The electorate of every developed democracy considers health care a right, so it is one. All GOP derangement has done is make the less desirable option for providing it more likely.
Posted by Orrin Judd at September 9, 2017 7:02 PM