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Weiner: Medicare Expansion Could Get Us to Single-Payer

By Philip Klein on 12.9.09 @ 3:55PM

Rep. Anthony Weiner, an advocate of a government-run, or single-payer health care system, is a fan of the proposal to expand Medicare to those over age 55.

“Extending this successful program to those between 55 and 64, a plan I proposed in July, would be the largest expansion of Medicare in 44 years and would perhaps get us on the path to a single payer model,” Weiner told the New York Daily News.

Via TPM.

I made largely the same point in a column (except for the part about Medicare being a "successful program").

View all comments (6) | Leave a comment

Derek Leaberry| 12.9.09 @ 5:25PM

Single-Payer is the ultimate goal for most of the Left. I know I risk attack when I suggest that there might be some positives with Single-Payer. First, businesses would relinquish a heavy burden on their companies. Second, there would be security for all Americans. Third, Americans would be more free to move at will or change jobs at will. Fourth, conservatives could go migrate to rural areas and restore conservative and religious culture much more easily under Single-Payer. Fifth, health rationing would ensue and those Americans who refuse to take good physical care for themselves(walk through a supermarket and notice how obese and slovenly a majority of Americans seem to be) would pay a heavy price. Sixth, health care would be reduce from 16 % of our economy to probably 10 % just by draconian cuts as is happening in Britain. Seventh, doctors will find it easier to work with one burueaucracy, however clumsy and inefficient, than the myriad of insurance bureaucracies they deal with now. Eighth, tort reform will be more easy to accomplish because the government does not like to be sued.

What I have just written makes me an appostate in many conservatives' eyes so flame away.

Dale Spencer| 12.11.09 @ 4:44PM

Yeah, single-payer has positives, like having a bowel enema three times every day. If they expand Medicare (a system that is more broke than Social Security) for those age 55 and up, it will then be time to make the "special" order of 2 million tons of paper to print way more money than we are now !

iamse7en| 12.9.09 @ 5:42PM

Yeah single-payer has positives just like a fully communistic society has its positives...

But the negatives dwarf, and I mean DWARF, the positives.

dum & dummer| 12.9.09 @ 7:42PM

leaberry, you go ahead and enjoy serfdom if you want. think i'll pass.

Derek Leaberry| 12.10.09 @ 9:02AM

I am opposed as well but find that it has some socially conservative aspects in it. Sadly, I think Single-Payer is inevitable as the American people still think they can vote themselves programs that benefit themselves. Yet with the nation hurdling down bankruptcy road, how long can Single-Payer survive?

And yes, dum & dummer is correct. Single-Payer is the road to serfdom. Better that we end the socialism that is Medicare and let the old who didn't take care of themselves die when it is their time just as has always been so in the history of mankind. Without Medicare, Medicaid and with tort reform, medical costs would be rationalized.