The Fate of Obamacare
by Ross Douthat
Dec. 19, 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/opinion/sunday/the-fate-of-obamacare.html?comments#permid=16996855
"Maybe that debate will happen. But it seems just as likely that the new budget is less a prelude than the sign of a new normal, in which Obamacare is neither fixed nor fully paid for nor furiously opposed, but simply limps along with the rest of our health care system for as long as both can limp."
Substitute any other of the many serious issues facing the US for "Obamacare" in the above, and you have a perfect description of the dysfunction of the current Congress.
The failure to include the needed new taxes to help fund Obamacare into the new spending bill is not happenstance; it is the deliberate Republican effort to continue to fight a clandestine "war of attrition" against ObamaCare.
How to make a national healthcare insurance system work is no big secret - just look at ANY other such system implemented by other "advanced" (and some not so advanced) countries, and they put the US system to shame, both in terms of cost and healthcare available to the AVERAGE person. The fact that the US refuses to learn from such experience is a result of the arrogance ("American exceptionalism") and ignorance ("those failed socialist states in Europe") of our elected officials, and by extension, of large portions of the American population.
Substitute any other of the many serious issues facing the US for "Obamacare" in the above, and you have a perfect description of the dysfunction of the current Congress.
The failure to include the needed new taxes to help fund Obamacare into the new spending bill is not happenstance; it is the deliberate Republican effort to continue to fight a clandestine "war of attrition" against ObamaCare.
How to make a national healthcare insurance system work is no big secret - just look at ANY other such system implemented by other "advanced" (and some not so advanced) countries, and they put the US system to shame, both in terms of cost and healthcare available to the AVERAGE person. The fact that the US refuses to learn from such experience is a result of the arrogance ("American exceptionalism") and ignorance ("those failed socialist states in Europe") of our elected officials, and by extension, of large portions of the American population.
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