Democrats are understandably furious.. but I want you to watch this panel from Fox News, reality is sinking in.
Yes, that was Charles Krauthammer just saying that we’re heading towards a single payer system. While Mercedes Schlapp did her best to toe the GOP/Faux line, Krauthammer knows the goose is cooked.
I often said to my friends during the interregnum between the passage of the ACA and the time all provisions took effect (2014) that if it survived this period between repeal attempts and court battles, it would be almost impossible to repeal afterwards. As Chris Wallace said, once a benefit (I prefer that term over “entitlement” that he used) is offered to voters, it’s impossible to take it away.
With the scary black man out of office, the GOP doesn’t have anyone that it can push the blame on. The GOP owns this hook line and sinker, and is now personally responsible for the health care system.
Yes, Ms. Schlapp, this includes those people in Virginia that you mentioned. It’s now Trump and the GOPs problem that 2/3rds of counties have only one insurer. Trump’s dangerous game of playing politics with subsidies is the exact result of that. Yes Aetna is bad, but in the end we can’t fault them or any other insurer for being reticent on continuing to play in the exchanges. Those subsidies are what makes the whole system work.
So we’re here. Krauthammer correctly argues how the debate has changed. Indeed, among (the ever shrinking) reasonable GOP, there has been a tidal shift in how healthcare is discussed. I see parallels to the arguments made by the Conservatives in the UK and Conservatives in Canada. Right wingers in those countries now argue healthcare on favorable terms to us. Of course some in both would love to dismantle their universal healthcare systems but wouldn’t dare do it.
The Republicans here at home are coming to the same realization. While Democrats have lost the short-term game, we’ve won in the long run. Healthcare as a right is now something that has bipartisan appeal.
Could we see single-payer within seven years as Krauthammer predicts? It’s certainly possible. It most definitely won’t happen in the next four. But an incoming Democratic president might be campaigning on single-payer, and the next time around we might find ourselves with a bipartisan bill that finally guarantees healthcare for all, and takes corporations out of our healthcare.