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Every now and again, I argue that Democrats should support school vouchers because they will improve the public schools by removing the need to cater to the flat-earth parents who will send their offspring to intelligent-design academies.
This hasn't produced many converts, so I'll try a new tack while Congress takes up American health care: Why Republicans should support a single-payer national plan.
1) Republicans hate trial lawyers. As Dick Armey, former
GOP house majority leader put it, attorneys who specialize
in personal-injury suits twist our legal system to
pillage the productive sector for personal gain.
I understand why. When I worked for the local paper about 30 years ago, I wrote some columns about a county commissioner. I thought they were funny, as did many readers. However, he thought the columns held him up to public contempt, ridicule and hatred, and sued for $2.25 million.
His libel suit was totally baseless; it was dismissed by
the district court, and his appeal of the dismissal was
turned down by our state court of appeals, the Colorado
Supreme Court and the U.S Supreme Court. But the process
took four years, and consumed a lot of time and energy from
the productive sector.
If the GOP truly wants to defund these ambulance-chasing parasites, consider that many personal-injury cases are filed because people need to recover their medical costs. If these costs were covered by a national health plan, they wouldn't need to sue. No lawsuits, no big contingency fees for trial lawyers, thereby accomplishing an important GOP objective.
In a related matter, I often read Republican propaganda about how physicians, under the current system, may be more concerned about the prospect of lawsuits than about caring for their patients, as well as the cost of malpractice insurance. Go to single-payer, and these issues should largely vanish.
2) Republicans admire Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of Great Britain from 1979 to 1990 while leader of Britain's Conservative Party.
Thatcher, who was lauded by Newt Gingrich for her
courage and toughness,
did not dismantle Britain's
National Health Service. If socialized medicine
enjoyed the approval of the Iron Lady, then what could
Republicans have against it?
3) Despite their public statements, Republicans actually like government health care, and they ought to come out of the closet and say so.
So far as I know, every Republican representative and
senator takes advantage of the Federal Employees Health
Benefits Program, which has an assortment of health plans
and no exemptions for pre-existing conditions.
And
we taxpayers cover about 75 percent of its cost.
If government medical care
is so terrible, why
don't these office-holders turn it down and take their
chances with the private sector? And for that matter, why
do they run for office when it means that, if elected,
they'll have to suffer under the oppression of socialized
medicine?
4) Republicans say they oppose health-care
rationing.
But it's already rationed, based on factors
like how much profit an insurer can gain by denying claims.
So why not minimize rationing (there will always be some
rationing because supply cannot meet demand) by going to a
different system?
5) The GOP believes in a productive work force. How many people do you know who just go through the motions in a job they hate because they need to keep their health insurance? If they were freed to apply their talents in the pursuit of happiness, wouldn't America boast a more creative and productive economy?
Consider all these factors, and it's obvious that
Republicans could find valid reasons, consistent with their
statements, to support national single-payer health care.
And I wouldn't care if they called it the Defunding
Trial Lawyers Act of 2009.
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