Without GOP Obstruction, "Obamacare" Would Be "Single Payer Universal Care"

The following post got stuck in "drafts" on November 1, 2012

Alan: Obama has always had his heart set on "single payer" healthcare. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/obamas-preference-for-single-payer.html

If Republicans had not insisted on making the Affordable Health Act as shoddy as possible, healthcare reform could have been great.

And now, the free marketeers have the temerity to complain about its shortcomings

No matter how Obamacare is criticized and attacked, it remains a "foot in the door," a down payment on affordable healthcare for every single citizen. 

Make no mistake. Single payer is "on the way." 

To achieve cost-effective universal healthcare, only government can systematize the process. 

Turn the free market loose and faster than you can say Jackie Robinson all the alleged n'er-do-wells will be thrown in the ravenous maw of Social Darwinism. 

Go ahead. Check out the Republican healthcare plan. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/gop-unveils-health-care-plan.html 

Republicans have got nothing. Not even a back-up plan. Just the "invisible hand of the marketplace." 

American conservatives discern a sharply-delineated racial and socio-economic threshold above which people deserve a measure of government assistance, and below which people deserve to die.  The sooner the better.  This is the hard central fact of contemporary "conservatism." 

The following graph says it all.

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/03/national-geographic-chart-of-per-capita.html

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The monstrosity of Obamacare was devised - lock, stock and barrel - by American conservatism.

What is good in Obamacare is what Obama salvaged from the Republican wreck.

Every conservative gripe about Obamacare concerns the very shit they themselves stuffed in "the sausage" by refusing to consider the manifest cost-cutting benefits of single payer healthcare.

If Republicans had gone along with even a public option, Obamacare would have been much more elegant - and economical - than the law that emerged from GOP insistence on customary foolishness.

Again, the following graph says it all.

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/03/national-geographic-chart-of-per-capita.html

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Obamacare is an inefficient, problem-riddled political sausage because, during the legislative process, Republicans were intransigently opposed to every kind of "public option" which would, at minimum, have created a universal healthcare system along the lines of Medicare or VA. 

It is a historical fact, plain as potatoes, that the GOP would tolerate no healthcare plan other than the free market monster it insisted upon. Now that the monstrosity is revealed, Republicans allege that Obama is Frankenstein -- like farting and then pointing at the dog. 

On the other hand... the fundamental Good of Obamacare is its normalization of universal healthcare "as an idea." 

If the nation were to repeal Obamacare and then "start over," GOP obstructionists would ensure that universal healthcare drop from America's agenda for another indeterminate period of time. 

To ensure the advancement of Universal Care as a philosophical principle, we must work with the monster we have. 

Yes, it is an ugly beast, but "it's alive I tell you! It's alive!" Through progressive modification -- and eventual metamorphosis into "something like" a single payer system -- Obamacare is the seed that will eventually insure that every American be cared for. The Republican alternative? American conservatives discern a sharply-delineated racial and socio-economic threshold above which people deserve a measure of government assistance, and below which people deserve to die. The sooner the better. This is the hard central fact of contemporary "conservatism." 

By way of contrast, Democrats affirm G.K. Chesterton's observation: "Charity is the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible. Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. It is true that there is a state of hope which belongs to bright prospects and the morning; but that is not the virtue of hope. The virtue of hope exists only in earthquake and eclipse. It is true that there is a thing crudely called charity, which means charity to the deserving poor; but charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who require it, and the ideal either does not exist at all, or exists wholly for them." Heretics, ch. 12 (1905)

Here is a video collage of Obama's clear preference for "single payer" healthcare: http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/obamas-preference-for-single-payer.html

No one imbued with this bedrock view would have signed approved The Obamacare Beast unless it was the only political way forward.

And here is a National Geographic graph that reveals the absurdity of bank-breaking American healthcare and the only known cost-effective alternatives, all of which depend on comprehensive government coordination: http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/03/national-geographic-chart-of-per-capita.html