25
Nov
2015
Old Obama Footage on Paving the Way to Single Payer
A lot of people–even prominent libertarian economists–have told me they think I’m paranoid for believing that at least some of the architects of the Affordable Care Act knew full well it would lead to a single payer system. (One of their arguments is that the federal government can’t do anything right, how could they pull off such a coup?) Well, a guy in the comments on Facebook for my Daily Caller article posted this video. Then below I’ll post the Harry Reid one, which I had referenced in my article.
Reid in 2013:
Bob, it’s been 8 months+, and you’ve done a spate of posts in recent days, and you still haven’t posted about the mid-1932 Hoover recovery and the fate of private spending during WWII you told me you’d post about in two weeks or so.
He’ll get to it just as soon as he’s done helping OJ find the real killer.
Shoot sorry E. Harding, can you link me to the original exchange we had? I remember that I owed you something but I don’t remember now what it was.
“A lot of people–even prominent libertarian economists…” Yeah, it is amazing, the people you have to state the obvious to.
Bob, I wholeheartedly agree with you that large numbers of liberals are in favor of single-payer, including Paul Krugman, Matt Yglesias, Ezra Klein, Barney Frank, Anthony Weiner, Dick Grayson, etc. They just support Obamacare as a step in the right direction, with the hope that it might lead people to embrace single-payer.
As far as Obama goes, Obama was very clear in the 2008 campaign that he used to be a proponent of single-payer, and that he would still be in favor of enacting single-payer of he was designing the healthcare system from scratch. But he said that given the fact that so many Americans were already getting health insurance from their employers, a single-payer would be too disruptive. So he decided that keeping the employer-based system in place would be a more sensible path to universal coverage.
In the clip above, Obama is just saying that he can envision Americans deciding that single-payer would be better than the Obamacare model, and so deciding to gradually phase out employer-based coverage. I think Obama would be open to the idea of such a gradual transition process, but I don’t think he’s necessarily in favor of it at the moment. (He’s not quite as liberal on economic issues as Krugman and the like.) And I certainly don’t think that Obama intentionally designed his Obamacare as a Trojan horse for single-payer.
“And I certainly don’t think that Obama intentionally designed his Obamacare as a Trojan horse for single-payer.”
But he did, and Obamacare is part of the transition process.
He said you can’t get there in one fell swoop. He said that Canada had a similar transition process.
He said that he wasn’t trying to take over 1/6th of the economy “all at once” (paraphrase), implying that it was still the goal.
obama master plan on health careover the years in his own words–SINGLE PAYER!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kvg8qVKZYuM
[Duration: 04;37]
The “all at once” quote isn’t in this video, I don’t think.
“As far as Obama goes, Obama was very clear in the 2008 campaign that he used to be a proponent of single-payer, and that he would still be in favor of enacting single-payer of he was designing the healthcare system from scratch.”
He absolutely was not. It took Andrew Breitbart and his team to shine the light on these statements he made to the AFL-CIO and the SEIU.
No, this was all well-covered in the 2008 campaign:
http://www.factcheck.org/2008/10/factchecking-debate-no-3
Obama made clear numerous times in the 2008 campaign that if he was starting from scratch, he’d implement a single-payer system, but given the fact that so many American already get insurance from their employers it made more sense to preserve employer-based coverage and just cover the uninsured.
Your logic escapes me. Obama admits he really wants a single payer system. You use this as evidence against the suggestion he might be trying to get a single payer system.
Of course you also argue that the IRS targeting phrases like “tea party” does not mean they were targeting the tea party, and you maintain this in the face of confessions that they were targeting the tea party.
Craw, it is certainly true that Obama used to be in favor of single-payer, but then he realized that it would be too disruptive given that so many Americans get coverage from their employers. He is still open to the idea of transitioning to single-payer one day, but he isn’t in favor of it right now.
Concerning the IRS, they never admitted to discriminating against the Tea Party for political purposes. They just admitted to targeting Tea Party groups (and progressive groups for that matter) because of the words they put in the Be on the Lookout (BOLO) List. They put political-sounding words in the BOLO list in order to try to identify potential 501(c)(3) organizations that were political as opposed to devoted to social welfare. They put words like “progressive” and “environmental” in equal numbers as they put words like “Tea Party”.
I do not buy Murphy’s theory, but come on. Obama having a desire for single payer is a point in Murphy’s favor. And taking Obama at his word when his statement clearly is to his benefit , a pol lying to advance his agenda, is weak.
And you are pretending that since the IRS did officially admit to an illegal policy that IRS employees did not.
“Craw, it is certainly true that Obama used to be in favor of single-payer, but then he realized that it would be too disruptive given that so many Americans get coverage from their employers. He is still open to the idea of transitioning to single-payer one day, but he isn’t in favor of it right now.”
Oh please, this is nothing but lahdeedah water carrying propaganda. As if you’re reading his mind.
Going by what he has said, we know differently.
“Going by what he has said, we know differently.”
Going by what he has said we don’t know any such thing. He has said he is not in favor because it is too disruptive. Craw thinks he is lying, becasue of things he said earlier. But that is attempted mind reading.
We have no alternative but to attempt to mind-read, unless we are to take everything everyone says at face value.
“… it made more sense to preserve employer-based coverage and just cover the uninsured.”
Obama: “… but I don’t think we’re going to be able to eliminate employer coverage, immediately.”
The goal was always to eliminate employer coverage.
Now, as someone else noted in the recent past, this is what libertarians should want.
That’s true as far as it goes, since employer-based coverage was an escape from a tax burden, and therefore was the result of government interventions.
But instead of going from employer-based coverage to single-payer or exchanges (which are meant to fail so as to become a source of agitation for single-payer), the government should just get rid of taxes; Problem solved:
The Relentless Process of Socializing Health Care
https://mises.org/library/relentless-process-socializing-health-care
That’s the beauty of being a politician. Most everyone knows they MUST lie. They have to because the average citizen is ignorant and their power comes, in part, from the average citizen. So were left guessing. Obama would be smiling ear to ear reading this thread.
“A lot of people–even prominent libertarian economists–have told me they think I’m paranoid for believing that at least some of the architects of the Affordable Care Act knew full well it would lead to a single payer system.”
This, and other such topics, are the reason I say that libertarians *desparately* need to go back and watch the Glenn Beck Program that was on FOX.
Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart were exposing Obama, the 60s Marxists still active today, and the Unions, left and right. Backed up, often, by video, audio, and pictures.
I agree Keshav that this was aired in 2008. I remember it. Next Murphy will remember Obama promised to close Gitmo and that will be a shock surprise revelation in another post.
You sound like a jilted lover.
He’s paving the way for the Single PRAYER system. Soon, nothing will work, all you will have to rely on is your prayers.
And then there’s this:
Pelosi: Even If Americans Were “Pleased” With Health Care, It Would Be “Necessary” For Reform
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/01/04/pelosi_even_if_americans_were_pleased_with_health_care_it_would_be_necessary_for_reform.html
“If everyone in America was very, very pleased with his or her health insurance and had no complaints and had access to quality, affordable health care in our country, it still would have been necessary for us to pass the health care reform care bill because we could not sustain the system,” outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi said at a presser on Tuesday.