Why The Right Should Embrace Medicare For All
The private sector is running out of things to socialize.
The cry of “socialism” rises from the right anytime spending public money is proposed by the left. It is just expected now, but the list of unprofitable things to socialize covertly to favor the business sector is dwindling. Few items that have been socialized to public spending have been more profitable than health care over the decades, but the insurance industry may be out of wiggle room as premiums now needed to cover all the profit the industry wants to make are becoming an embarrassment and threatening capitalism itself.
The big socialist programs (although most capitalist economies don’t consider them to be socialism), Social Security and Medicare, were similarly adopted to pull capitalism’s butt out of the fire. Both were necessary to avoid the pitchforks and torches of rebellion against the core of capitalism. Such large expenditures can only be handled by equally large deep pockets, and the government is the only entity to fit that bill. However, not making those investments was/is not an option. Even die-hard capitalist Republican voters aren’t going to allow their parents to die penniless on the curb in front of the ER for lack of money.
Social Security and Medicare benefits are, according to popular opinion, funded by payroll deductions from the wages of current workers and bond proceeds, but the masters of the universe understand money well enough to know that isn’t possible. Both are paid from appropriations and add to deficits. The deductions are nothing more than a thinly veiled “VERY” regressive tax that increases income inequity more than it ever provides in benefits. In short, the government foots the bill with new money creation and trash cans the deductions over the working life of beneficiaries. This is cleverly obscured with sleight of hand accounting for bonds as assets when they are actually liabilities for the future, including the interest they accrue.
With the government picking up the tab for the most expensive demographics for healthcare and their retirement benefits the private market was able to remain functional, but greed conquers all in the end. The “socialism” that the right rails about perpetually allowed it to raid pension funds and privatize formerly non-profit hospitals without much pushback from the left. Capitalism could go on practically forever taking considerable profits from healthcare, but that isn’t the nature of that beast. With no vision past the next quarterly statement, the outcome of private healthcare and insurance was entirely predictable.
No death is pretty, and the death of for-profit healthcare will be no exception.
I believe the vulture capitalists are seeing the writing on the wall for their cash cow and are now just trying to leverage as much profit as possible before they are stopped completely by public demand for a more equitable system. Everyone knows at least one diabetic, so insulin prices rising at meteoric rates with no justification for the increase isn’t going to be tolerated. Social media will broadcast the name and face of every victim who unsuccessfully tried to ration out their medicine to fit the reality of what they can afford on their meager incomes.
Doctors will not go along much longer with our corrupt drug industry and they will also feel the pinch in their practices as insured patients become more scarce. As providers are squeezed between the corporate profiteers and the ability of their patients to maintain insurance coverage, especially now that there is no enforceable legal mandate to be insured, their ability to maintain their own lifestyles will be threatened.
Doctors now not accepting Medicare/Medicaid may find themselves having to reject private insurance and accept only public programs if the administration cost of catering to multiple companies, each with its own forms and rules, not to mention the unpaid billing that insurance stiffs them with regularly for no reason except that they can, becomes greater than the demand for their services will support. Those same doctors are major investors in the hospitals and specialty clinics they work for and those are soon going to be threatened by massive totals of unpaid billing again, so there is no refuge available there. ER’s will be jammed up again from patients using the extremely expensive facilities as their primary care providers.
Single payer healthcare isn’t as much of a change as most believe it is.
With the political trend leaning toward cutting federal budgets out of a very misplaced obsession with deficits, the states, who lack the luxury of being able to spend in deficit, are already feeling the pressure of degrading healthcare funding and rapidly increasing costs. Just the administration of insurance, let alone paying the bulk of premiums, is placing stress on employers who are not seeing sufficient numbers of customers with cash in hand to justify lavish benefits for their employees. It appears that the only segment of the insanity we call our healthcare system that is immune to a cascading collapse is insurance, the easiest segment to carve out.
Our various levels of government already pay over half of all healthcare billing via Medicare, Medicaid, VA, and a complex myriad of state programs for the poor and working poor. While we like to think those agencies exist solely to provide some level of compassion in our society, the truth is that each takes the burden of the most expensive demographics off the insurance rolls. Just try to imagine what your already crushing insurance premiums would be if just Medicare were suddenly defunded and everyone over 65 had to be factored into them. The truth is insurance only still exists because of “socialism” leaving it only the youngest and healthiest demographics as its market.
I don’t think our politicians and oligarchs understand the level of threat potential posed by a large number of people who have nothing to lose if they are cut off their life-sustaining health care and drugs. There are already 22 veteran suicides per day, so even if just those mistreated patriots decide to not go out alone they could decimate the privileged 1% and Congress. CEOs in the health care industry and their well-paid congresscritters, especially on the right, would be wise not to let this be the issue that takes down our economy or causes the collapse of all health care.
There was a recent cost analysis study conducted by a very conservative think tank that resulted in trillions in savings over our current insurance-based system by moving to a single-payer system. The many lies promoted from the right claiming that a “socialist” single-payer system would cause long waits for treatment and shoddy care simply aren’t supported in evidence.
With every other wealthy nation in the world using some form of nationalized health care and not one of them ever showing any serious desire to adopt our system, those lies are becoming real detrimental to the political right. Their older and much less informed base may buy them, but the next generation of voters, many of whom will be voting with a vengeance next year for the first time, certainly isn’t.
Karma is a ___?
These aren’t voters conditioned into knee jerk reactions to the word socialism by decades of constant propaganda and manipulation by politicians and corporate media. They are better educated and informed than their parents and every one of them can likely name someone in their social network who lives in a country that is generally happier and healthier because of their “socialized” health care system. Saving the insurance industry may be the least of the right’s problems beginning next November if they can’t find some way to reach those new voters. Backlash always goes farther than transitions.
The GOP, or some new substitute, should yank the health care issue away from Democrats by advancing a single-payer system. They have a general dislike for Obamacare and one of their own studies to launch such an effort with. It would be a smooth transition from their hatred for the ACA, so it could be pulled off without making them look like opportunistic jerks. I believe they are actually better positioned than the establishment left to promote single-payer and gain back much of the credibility they have lost from allowing Trump anywhere near the oval office without a tour guide.
Pelosi and the establishment wing of the DNC are already using Obamacare to shoot down Bernie’s plans for single payer. I think the numbers that would abandon Obama’s signature program, especially since it’s decimation in the courts and skyrocketing premiums, would be far greater than those who are blindly loyal to Obama. It’s commonly referred to in social media left-leaning groups as a boondoggle and further neoliberal take over of health care, so it isn’t likely to find support beyond the most centrist of the party, which is proving less formidable every day in the presence of rising progressive stars like AOC.
Single payer is going to happen, either politically or out of necessity when the present system crashes. Whichever political party jumps on that bandwagon first will probably lock in dominance for decades. The advantage the right has is that it can be ushered in without additional taxes, and may even require a tax “cut” (their specialty) to employ displaced insurance workers.
