Two Party Opera by Brian Carroll for March 28, 2019

" … The plan is organized around seven principles:

First, it offers every American an opportunity to obtain a balanced, comprehensive range of health insurance benefits;

Second, it will cost no American more than he can afford to pay; Third, it builds on the strength and diversity of our existing public and private systems of health financing and harmonizes them into an overall system;

Fourth, it uses public funds only where needed and requires no new Federal taxes;

Fifth, it would maintain freedom of choice by patients and ensure that doctors work for their patient, not for the Federal Government.

Sixth, it encourages more effective use of our health care resources;

And finally, it is organized so that all parties would have a direct stake in making the system work–consumer, provider, insurer, State governments and the Federal Government.

…"

https://khn.org/news/nixon-proposal/

Socialism, a great example of thing that people agree with in principle, but once they hear the name, they are immediately turned away.

It is true that Nixon almost got a universal healthcare law passed. It is NOT true that Kennedy scuppered it, however. There were two main reasons it failed:

1. Nixon himself. Watergate derailed much of his legislative priorities.

2. Wilbur Mills, representative from Arkansas, was found drunkenly cavorting in the tidal basin with a stripper. He was in charge of shepherding the bill through the House. This scandal derailed his ability to do so.

(And for the record, this was reported to me by former members of Ted Kennedy’s staff.)

You also made it so that insurers could be for-profit.

So, basically, the “EVIL OBAMACARE” that Agent Orange is DESPERATE to kill actually has it’s basis in several REPUBLICAN HEALTHCARE PROPOSALS!!! But, of course, it has that TERRIBLE NAME attached to it, so it has to go. Good thinking, you moron!! NOT!!!!

To me the crowning irony and proof of Republican mendacity and hypocrisy is the fact that The ACA was the Republican counter offer to “Hillarycare”. It would appear that in an effort to get Republicans on board with a national health care plan, he used theirs rather than the single payer plan his base wanted then and now.

In 1965 Medicare was working its way through the Senate and the House. In the compromise committee, insurance companies reached out to the legislators that they owned and struck out one paragraph that essentially did this:: “For every ten years this bill is enacted the minimum age for benefits will drop by five.” In 1965 you had to be 65 to get Medicare, in 1975 that would drop to 60, in 1985 that would drop to 55, in 1995 that would drop to 50, in 2005 that would drop to 45 and in 2015, you would have to be 40 years old to be Medicare eligible. By 2095 you hwould have to have been born to get Medicare. Slow, gradual and not undoable. Except the insurance companies and religious organizations in the hospital business would lose their cash cows, and they are more protective of their profits than they are of any humans.

Okay, I won’t say that Gops were giants in those days, but dang if the Wee Folk of the time weren’t a heck of a lot bigger than they are now.

Republicans are mentally ill.

Dick Nixon is the absolute best character in this strip! And when he starts bitching about “those damned Kennedys” it gets even better. The Nixon dialog always sounds so spot on! Hurrah Mr. Carroll!

FDR also wanted a type of universal health care included in the Social Security bill passed in the ’30s. We see how that worked out.

I used to think Mitt Romney was the biggest coward in politics (this was before Trump, and, of course, Hannity is a coward in the private sector), because the Affordable Care Act was based almost completely on Romneycare (which itself was based on Republican ideas that, ironically, preceded Nixon!), yet when he ran for president he spent all of his time running away from his only actual accomplishment in politics! If Romney had run in 2008, and defeated Obama, would we have Romneycare nationwide NOW? (Then again, if Obama hadn’t said mean things about Widdle Donnie Trump would Trump have run for president in the first place?)

Dang! I read that in Nixon’s voice!

Brrrrrrrrrr!

{sigh}

Why cannot people see…. UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE FOR ALL…. is the only fair, appropriate way to go. To have your employer (or your spouse’s or parent’s employer be the determinant of whether you receive health insurance and if so, how decent or crappy it may be….. makes absolutely no damn sense at all.

Health care should be a universal right for all in the U.S.

From the man who brought us the EPA and relations with China.

Therein lies the rub: a right-centered Republican proposed a system more left than the corporate Democrat. It shows how far the country has drifted rightward since 1970.