Sen. DeMint: Not passing health-care reform will result in a single-payer system

[sabra]

http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2009/aug/19/demint-offers-his-take-on-hot-issues/

<snip>

P&C: Do people have a right to health care? Describe where the government's obligation to provide a safety net ends and where a person's responsibility should begin.

DeMint: I think health care is a privilege. I wouldn't call it a right. ... I do think in our country and in any civil society there should be a safety net for basic health and food and shelter, but that doesn't mean that the whole system should be designed around the belief that people can't make their own decisions, can't be responsible for themselves. ... What we do need to do is make sure everybody has access to policies they can afford, own and keep. We're not doing that. What we've done is set up the whole system to reward employers for offering health insurance, but we don't support people who don't get their insurance at work, and that's not fair.

P&C: What are the most serious things that will happen if nothing changes in the health care arena?

DeMint: If nothing is done, we're likely to end up with a single-payer system anyway in a few years. Every year we're ratcheting down what we're paying doctors and hospitals for Medicare and Medicaid, which means the cost shifting gets greater and fewer employers can offer health insurance. What we're doing is driving the private market out of business anyway, and I think that's why they don't want anything to pass that would make it easier for people to have their own insurance. So if we don't do anything, that's bad too. That's why I made the point -- I could have calibrated my words differently -- that we have to stop the president on this health care thing. ... If it's completely socialized or nationalized, whatever you want to call it, then you've got over half of the American economy in the government hands at some point, and the free enterprise system doesn't work anymore if the government is that involved. So we've got to make a stand here. We've got to stop it. My hope has always been if we could stop them on this ... then we could move on to real freedom solutions that will work in every area of society. That was the last part of my sentence.

:crazy:

[BattyDem]

1. Well, if that's where we're headed anyway ...

let's save some time and do it right now!

[wryter2000]

2. My head hurts

That's some really convulted thinking. :crazy:

[Schema Thing]

8. Here, take an advil; I had to get one for myself

:crazy:


there really isn't an "eyeroll" icon big enough to cover Demint's statement, is there?

[dana_b]

16. he's cuckoo!!

that is the most bizarre line of thinking that I've heard yet.

[Turbineguy]

3. The issue isn't about

"right" or "privilege".

It's about whether or not you want a healthy population with a lower risk of pandemic outbreaks.

[BlueIdaho]

9. Bingo!

What the fuck is this - the dark ages? Do we really want a nation where the sick just wander the streets, shopping malls, airports, and Walmarts untreated? I'm all for a government backed single payer system - but I'm more concerned about pandemic possibilities and moral outrage of millions of Americans without health care.

If a public option takes us towards single payer, I say its about damn time!

[Kalyke]

12. The sick already wander the Walmarts untreated.

[BlueIdaho]

14. Touche'

[GreenPartyVoter]

4. Well, I sent him my letter on why I support the public option. I am sure he

will not like some if it but hopefully he'll understand the rest.

[MarjorieG]

5. Called divide and conquer, hoping to peel off Dem votes

I know we'll have fewer employers able to participate, fewer employees, but private insurers will still keep claws in whoever buys it.

[Me.]

6. Being A Senator Is A Privilege

Health care is a necessity

[Birthmark]

7. The free enterprise system worked?

When? Where? Tell me!!

[undeterred]

10. Somebody's got their thinking cap on.

[Schema Thing]

11. Translation: we pugs have lost this one. time to get smarmily on the right side of history

[kenny blankenship]

13. The source aside, this is a valid projection. Between 1996 and 2006, health care costs doubled.

(in the U.S.) Another decade of our current regime of for profit medicine/health insurance will throw the average US family out of the system.

We have a chance to reform our system and control costs like they do so well in Canada and the UK.

Or we can pervert this opportunity into a govt. enforced status quo, preserving things the way they are now more or less, coercing people to buy insurance they can't afford, for another 15 to 20 years (before the lid blows off altogether and people wipe the middle men insurance companies out of existence forever.)

Guess which objective your Rahmite Blue Dog Conservadems are pursuing.

Doing nothing will surely result in the Single Payer Apocalypse. Enacting "reform" could stave off the end of health insurance for extortionate profit for perhaps a couple of decades. Which is why the big money players in this game like the hospital corporations and the health extorters and the phama companies are acting so amenable to "reform" this time compared to 1993. As long as they get to dictate terms.

[Laelth]

17. Amen. DeMint is right about that. n/t

:dem:

-Laelth

[DrDan]

15. "What we're doing is driving the private market out of business anyway"

putting these health insurers out of business??? - their profits were up ONLY 428% 2000-2007.

http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/05/27/health-insurance-profits-soar-as-industry-mergers-create-near-monopoly/

Why can't they EVER tell the truth.

[Stevenmarc]

18. DeMint is one that I would love to leave stranded on a melting ice flow

[dgibby]

19. Don't blame poor little Jimmy.

He can't help that he's stoopid. He's been eating too much freshwater fish in S.C.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x206029

[Zynx]

20. I got stuck in a logic conflict and my brain just exploded.

I might be dead, but I no longer possess the intelligence to make that determination.