Krauthammer(!): US 'may be ready' for government-run universal healthcare

[Recursion]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-road-to-single-payer-health-care/2017/03/30/bb7421d0-156c-11e7-ada0-1489b735b3a3_story.html

Obviously, this is Krauthammer, so he's pissed about it

That’s procedure. It’s fixable. But there is an ideological consideration that could ultimately determine the fate of any Obamacare replacement. Obamacare may turn out to be unworkable, indeed doomed, but it is having a profound effect on the zeitgeist: It is universalizing the idea of universal coverage.

Acceptance of its major premise — that no one be denied health care — is more widespread than ever. Even House Speaker Paul Ryan avers that “our goal is to give every American access to quality, affordable health care,” making universality an essential premise of his own reform. And look at how sensitive and defensive Republicans have been about the possibility of people losing coverage in any Obamacare repeal.

A broad national consensus is developing that health care is indeed a right. This is historically new. And it carries immense implications for the future. It suggests that we may be heading inexorably to a government-run, single-payer system. It’s what Barack Obama once admitted he would have preferred but didn’t think the country was ready for. It may be ready now.

As Obamacare continues to unravel, it won’t take much for Democrats to abandon that Rube Goldberg wreckage and go for the simplicity and the universality of Medicare-for-all. Republicans will have one last chance to try to persuade the country to remain with a market-based system, preferably one encompassing all the provisions that, for procedural reasons, had been left out of their latest proposal.

[benld74]

1. Kraut? WTHeck

[longship]

9. He graduated from Harvard Medical School while in a wheelchair.

Krauthammer is no dummy.

He's been a paraplegic since undergraduate school, wheelchair bound.

I don't like his politics very often, but I will give him credit when he's correct.

FYI.

[Girl powers]

2. Universal

Switching to Universal Health Care would add at least 20 cents in value to every health care dollar.

[Xipe Totec]

3. You would think he would have an appreciation for access to health care

Given his personal history.

But no.

[0rganism]

4. glad my ideology doesn't include wanting millions of people to waste away uncared for

mr. Krauthammer's heart must be in a cold and lonely place

[leftstreet]

5. 8 yrs GOP bitching about it - 8 yrs for people to think about it

Thanks GOP and Trump!

You've likely gotten more people believing healthcare is right

[Laffy Kat]

6. Krauthammer???!! OMG. nt

[lindysalsagal]

7. Ya think? At least someone said it.

[maveric]

8. Dr. Strangelove said this?

Wow!

[Kaotic]

10. Is health care a right?

We have a gov't run national defense, law enforcement, judicial systems, environmental protection...all for the protection and benefit of U.S. citizens...why should health care be any different. No one gets rich from receiving health care...the ones getting rich are the middle-men and the ones administering health care services for profit.

No one thinks of being protected against criminals, terrorism and foreign adversaries as a right but we spend hundreds of billions each year. Why isn't health care thought of in the same way as protecting U.S. citizen's lives?