Re: More on the “Universal Coverage” flacks Re: TNR: universal health care now! or how to work for Wal-Mart
Nathan Newman wrote:
Doug (and others)– you’re being played for fools if you don’t understand what this whole upsurge in talk about “universal coverage” is all about. It’s about mandates on individuals and Health Care Savings accounts and, at best, subsidized vouchers.
So TNR was lying when it said:
It’s time for the government to be much bolder, to try something even more far-reaching than what it attempted in the ’60s: making health care a right, not a privilege. And doing so for everybody, even if that means having the government provide insurance directly.
And Medicare isn’t only popular. It’s also efficient. Nearly all of the money that goes into the program, via taxes and the premiums seniors pay, goes back out to purchase actual medical services. Private insurance, by contrast, inevitably diverts a much greater share of its premium dollars to administration, marketing, and profits, which means less money for the beneficiaries.
Government isn’t the best way to provide all Americans with health security. It’s the only way. And it’s time for liberalism to say so openly.
I’d always thought that the obnoxious things about TNR’s politics were right there on the page - their contempt for the left, their love of imperial power, their raving Zionism. Apparently that’s not all - now you want us to believe that they’re pushing for some version of national health insurance out of some convoluted scheme to protect Wal-Mart.
And is Paul Krugman too part of this conspiracy so immense?
Doug