We won't rest until the American Health Care Act is law
Dan Weber, president of the Association of Mature American Citizens, warns that "liberals in Congress will continue to sabotage efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare. They see President Obama's so-called Affordable Care Act as a first step toward a single-payer system which is, itself, a first step toward the creation of a socialist state here in the U.S."
Self-declared socialist Senator Bernie Sanders is as outspoken a proponent of single-payer health care coverage as he is a booster of the movement to convert America into a socialist country, says Weber.
However, the AMAC chief adds, neither universal health insurance nor the restructuring of our political system is in the cards. As health policy expert Dr. Timothy Callaghan put it: "Americans, and conservatives in particular, have a strong belief in classical liberalism and the idea that the government should play a limited role in society."
The argument that single-payer health care works in other countries such as England, Canada and France is bogus, Weber says. There are numerous reports of the failings of their systems. Britain's Care Quality Commission says that country's health system is on the verge of collapse. Meanwhile, government spending for healthcare in France is over budget by billions of Euros each year and some say that universal health care there cannot survive.
"So much for the cost benefits of single-payer insurance. What about issues such as the fewer health care options that would be available under universal healthcare," says the head of America's most powerful conservative senior advocacy organization. "Choice is important. We don't want the government to dictate how we receive care, nor do we want the government to tell us how much care we get before it decides to pull the plug."
Paul Krugman is an economist and a liberal but not so much a supporter of universal health care. He points out that in order to have a single-payer system that might work, we would need to keep costs down. And that would mean we'd have to "say no to patients, telling them that they can't always have the treatment they want."
A few years back Michael Tanner at the Cato Institute produced a paper in which he showed that Universal Health Care [is] Not Best Option. First and foremost he noted that "universal health insurance does not necessarily mean universal access to health care. In practice, many countries promise universal coverage but ration care or have extremely long waiting lists for treatment. Those countries that have single-payer systems or systems heavily weighted toward government control are the most likely to face waiting lists, rationing, restrictions on the choice of physician, and other barriers to care."
If Congressional liberals get their way, Weber concludes, we could likely end up with the kind of rationed health care that Tanner talked about. "We would have to forget not only about keeping our doctors and keeping our choices, we'd also have to forget about keeping our health. And that is why AMAC will not rest until the American Health Care Act is the law of the land and ultimately succeeds in repealing and replacing Obamacare."
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