Logan Darklighter Wrote:What would be the point?
The fact I asked a question and it would thus be only polite to answer, and if you are a former Republican supporter who now thinks the party has changed, why wouldn't you want to explain why it's changed? I'm not going to berate you over it, I am asking because I wish to understand your position better.
Blackaeronaut, without going into excessive detail, the arguments that health care should be a primary priority for Obama right now include:
- He's already put so much time and expended so much political capital on it that backing out at this point will leave him as a lame duck president scarcely a year into his first term. Clinton eventually recovered from his similar debacle, but it's unquestionable how much authority he lost over it, to say nothing of the Democrat's disastrous showing at the midterms. Also, if this effort comes to nothing it is unlikely any other president will touch the obvious political poison pill anytime in the near future.
- It is difficult to argue with the fact that universal health care (of any sort) will, on the whole, improve the health of the general public. This has many knock-on positive effects, including but not limited to there being less running up of private debt (good for both them and the economy), and a healthier workforce which therefore takes less sick days, are more able to look for work, and are more productive at work. Therefore, a viable public healthcare program will improve the economy both through more willingness to spend money and a better workforce.
- The American health case system, as it stands, actually costs US taxpayers more per capita than many single-payer publically funded healthcare systems. To repeat myself: you are paying more per capita in taxes to support your health care system than, say, Canada is to support theirs. This is due to a variety of factors, some of which aren't directly related to it not being a single-payer system, but one major reason is that Americans, demographically, tend more than other countries to ignore small health problems until they become big ones, which then have to be treated as an emergency, which costs vastly more than it would to catch health problems before it escalates. As well, since many Americans simply cannot afford a major operation, they either use free clinics for this or default on their payments to hospitals (since they cannot refuse to treat people due to lack of funds). Now, I don't think much of Obama's plan compared to a single-payer system, but if it at ALL works out and the majority of Americans start getting check-ups and going to hospitals the way people in other countries do, then the ultimate effect will actually be to lower the amount the government is paying and reduce the deficit.
- The removal of the necessity of catastrophically expensive company-funded health care insurance will actually benefit many US companies, notably including GM and Ford. One of the primary causes (though certainly not the only one) for the collapse of those companies over the past few decades is the skyrocketing costs of the excellent health insurance plans they were obliged to pay for both current employees and all living retirees (whose costs and insurance premiums were, of course, steadily getting higher). Although truthfully I'm not certain what the current status of their health plans are given their bankruptcy and restructuring, but it's certainly true that providing expensive private health insurance has a negative impact on the bottom line and competitiveness of many American companies, and the huge drop in rates certain to follow an Obama-style health care system would be an overall benefit to them. Many companies not exactly noted for their liberal leanings actually support Obama's initiative for this reason.
There's other reasons (such as the argument there's no reason he can't be doing both, the general altruism of trying to make sure all Americans have affordable health care, et cetera), but those would be the first four to come to mind.
