On The Road To Single-Payer Health Care

Tom Lester * Economic Noise

I don’t believe the Left intended to screw up as badly as they did with ObamaCare. That, however, is always a risk when government does anything.

The issue now is whether they have failed so badly as to turn public opinion away from their approach. Or, does their intended trojan horse still have life? That is, will they be able to pivot toward single-payer health care which was their objective all along?

Tom Lester provides his view on this subject:

Does anyone remember in 2010 when Obama signed Obamacare into law and the Democrats were taking their victory laps acclaiming how great the law was? I still vividly remember Iowa Senator Tom Harkin’s statement, my paraphrase, in which he said, ‘It’s not perfect and it’s just the beginning.’

After the events of the last forty-five days the first part of Harkin’s statement has become prophetic as Obamacare has indeed proven to not only be imperfect but a complete catastrophe that so many previously and much earlier proclaimed it would be. But what of the second part of his statement?

The crown jewel of the liberal left has always been a second Bill of Rights, first advanced by Franklin Roosevelt, guaranteeing the right to a job with decent pay, home ownership, and health care. The first of these has little by little been delivered as the employment rolls of Federal government has dramatically grown with average incomelevels of public employees now exceeding those in the private sector. In fact, government employees’ pay has increased while the private employees’ income has diminished.

The second item on the proposed Bill of Rights was home ownership and Barney Frank and Chris Dodd did their utmost to make this happen with their push to lower the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lending standards. This strategy proved erroneous and lead to the almost complete destruction of the housing market, which represents about 30% of the American economy, just now beginning to recover.

continue at EconomicNoise.com:

http://www.economicnoise.com/2013/11/19/road-single-payer-health-care/