Joe Scarborough Gets Anthony Weiner (D-NY) To Admit He Doesn't Believe in Private Health Insurance

Why does anyone want Medicare, which will go bankrupt in 10 years, to be the basis for everyone's health care?

And Scarborough catches Weiner, who tries to use the populist line that the health care industry doesn't deserve its profits, by askying why any corporation deserve profits.

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Why Would Anyone Want A Medicare-Based Public Plan?

It is time to address a small, but important, issue in the health insurance reform debate. Many "progressives", including Reps. Lynn Woosley and Anthony Weiner in recent Politico editorials, want, as a subsitute for politically unpalatable single-payer, a public plan based on Medicare. Any impartial analysis shows that this is an awful idea. Even if you support the concept, Medicare, in its current form, has been a cost boondoggle. There is no reason to make the same mistake twice.

So why would any sane person support this proposal. Because Medicare (along with Medicaid) is the only socialized health care currently in this country, and is next to impossible to cut politically. A public plan based upon it would accomplish two things:

1. Prevent Republicans and moderate Democrats from ever removing it if it begins to show that it was a mistake/unnecessary/too costly. Health debates would always have to be fought on the left's terms, just as entitlement reform and health debates in England and Canada are.
2. Put in place the basis for a complete government take-over of one-sixth of the U.S. economy through a single-payer system, as soon as a bad conservative (see: GWB) gets elected, leading to a liberal follow-up willing to put such a plan in place.

New Health Care Polls Show Republicans Winning/Losing

In the last couple of days, CBS News and USA Today/Gallup have released fairly comprehensive polls concering the health care debate currently raging in Congress. They provide a pretty good playbook on how Republicans should approach this topic, where we are currently succeeding, and where we need to do better.

1. More than 3/4 of Americans (at the low end) consider it extremely or very important that health care reform allow them to keep their current plan, allow them to make critical medical decisions with their doctors (aka NO RATIONING), and control costs. These are the focal points of all the various Republican proposals, and we should emphasize this. (An additional note: Controlling costs continue to big a larger priority for the public than expanding coverage by a 10+ point margin.)
2. People strongly support raising taxes on the rich and penalizing employers for not offering health care, while they oppose controlling Medicare costs, cutting the home mortgage interest deduction, or limiting the tax credit for employer-provided benefits. This does not mean that Republicans should change our views of where new revenue (if necessary at all) should come from; we need to explain ourselves better. Penalizing employers who don't offer health care will destroy jobs as small businesses go under while the economy slowly recovers, and any tax raises on the rich should be saved for general revenue to pay off the massive debt Bush and Obama have been building. Republicans need to explain how the mortgage and employer-based health care tax credits are extremely regressive and favor the rich, and how fixing medicare is the central necessity for any plan meant to control health costs.
3. A near-majority of Americans believe doctors are best suited to lead health care reform, while only 10% believe Republicans are so qualified. Since doctors and hospitals trend Republican by significant margins, we need to a) consult with them concerning which parts of our plans could be refined to improve its feasibility, and b) let the public know we are working with the medical professionals while the Democrats are working with 30-year Washington beauracrats.
4. Finally, majorities of Americans favor mandated health insurance and a public option. Again, we should not back down on these points. They contradict what the public says they want, as mandated health insurance leads to rapid cost inflation (see: Massachusetts), while a public option pushes other insurers out of the market and leads to rationing (see: Maine, most European countries.) Again, messaging is everything. Lets take advantage of the support we get from doctors and display which party is basing their proposals on empirical fact and which is basing theirs on strict party ideology.
   
   See the full numbers for yourself at: http://www.pollingreport.com/health.htm