Bill C on Obamacare

The remarks by Bill Clinton regarding Obamacare came as a surprise to many but it is part of a plan that has been in the works since before Obamacare even started. When Obama was a state senator he expressed his desire to see a single payer plan called Medicare for all. In 2003 he said: "I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its gross national product on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. He went on to say: A single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. That's what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we've got to take back the White House, we've got to take back the Senate, and we've got to take back the House." Here is what I wrote last year. In the past I have presented my plan for health insurance whereby companies provide annual payments to employees in the form of health saving accounts but this is not politically feasible. The next best thing is single payer or what is sometimes called Medicare for all. Both Trump and Sanders have indicated they would be willing to go this way. Administrative cost in Medicare is 2% and in the private sector it is 17%. Since private insurance cost about 1.5 trillion dollars this could be a 15% or 225 billion dollars savings. This is enough to provide free health care for all those living below the poverty line. These policies would be much like Obamacare in that they would have high deductibles. This eliminates the casual use of health care. In addition there would be only one government plan so they could ration benefits. Since most health cost occur in the last year of life the big saving in rationing will come from the elderly, the so called death panels. What is not mentioned in this change is that over 2 million jobs in the health care industry would be lost.