“Ryancare” Dead on Arrival: Time to Look Again at Single Payer
The new American Health Care Act has been unveiled, and critics are calling it more flawed even than the Obamacare it was meant to replace. Dubbed “Ryancare” or “Trumpcare” (over the objection of White House staff), the Republican health care bill is under attack from left and right, with even conservative leaders calling it “Obamacare Lite”, “bad policy”, a “warmed-over substitute,” and “dead on arrival.”
The problem for both administrations is that they have been trying to fund a bloated, inefficient, and overpriced medical system with scarce taxpayer funds, without capping its costs. US healthcare costs in 2016 averaged $10,345 per person, for a total of $3.35 trillion dollars, a full 18 percent of the entire economy, twice as much as in other industrialized countries.
Ross Perot, who ran for president in 1992, had the right idea: he said all we have to do is to look at other countries that have better health care at lower cost and copy them. So which industrialized countries do it better than the US? The answer is, all of them.
ROBERT STEELE: Ellen combined intelligence and integrity in a most helpful manner. This is a great article. Central to the failure of both TrumpCare and ObamaCare is the deep dishonesty of the two-party tyranny. Ellen covers half the dishonesty: the US government is not allowed, by law, to negotiate better price deals. This is of course insanely criminal, which is the nature of our two-party tyranny. The other half is the fact that there is no price list for any prescription or procedure in the US health care industry. What you pay depends on how much the health industry has been able to gouge from the combination your location, which insurance company you have, and more. I totally concur with the negative assessment of TrumpCare, which is as badly devised — and as dishonest — as the Trump proposals for tax reform. Trump lacks a grand strategy and a good staff; he lacks the combination of intelligence and integrity in addressing Whole of Government needs coherently. On his present course, he is certain to fail.
