Now that Newt Gingrich and Hillary Clinton have gotten together to work on health care IT legislation (See Unlikely Allies Tout Healthcare Bill in today’s Boston Globe) I think it’s time for the reactionaries to retire the term “Hillarycare.”
I get a chuckle out of defenders of the status quo in health care who try to head off reformers with doomsday scenarios and personal attacks against Senator Clinton. Here’s a quote from a letter in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (Moonbeams in Vermont: Single-Payer Health Care) attacking a single-payer proposal:
Vermont would be a lovely laboratory. The plan won’t work… and (in a burst of hope over experience) it might finally put a stake through the heart of “Hillarycare.”
I’m not a proponent of single payer. But are the author and other mudslingers really prepared to defend the current system? Ironically, the President’s spectacularly expensive Medicare drug benefit is itself a step toward a single payer system.
May 12, 2005
Critic of single-payer and current system here;
MassHealth, the agency that administers Medicaid in Massachusetts is a veritable tone-poem of waste and lousy management.
Now, imagine the entire country on MassHealth. Proponents insist it’ll be better than MassHealth. Do you believe that?
Whatever the smarties-in-power come up with, 65% of Americans want health care for everyone, according the Pew Research Center. It would be silly for Republicans to keep resisting.
I hope Gingrich can work to do us a favor and help fix health care. Affordable health insurance would be a dream come true.