Do Republicans/
Libertarians Have a Coherent Healthcare Coverage/
Outcomes on a Par With or Superior to European Social Democracies?
August 14, 2017
Alex Henderson, Periodista and Technical Writer
La question: Do Republicans/Libertarians have a coherent plan to deliver healthcare/coverage outcomes on par with or superior to European social democracies?
Short answer: hell no.
More nuanced answer for those who don’t have painfully short attention spans:
Republicans of the past did have a plan for universal health care. It is now called The Affordable Care Act of 2010, aka Obamacare. The elements of the ACA were greatly influenced by Republican ideas proposed in the past by President Richard Nixon, the Heritage Foundation, Mitt Romney and Sen. Bob Dole. In fact, the Nixoncare plan that Nixon and Sen. Ted Kennedy agreed on in the early 1970s went much further than Obamacare and would have insured more Americans had it not fallen by the wayside and been derailed by Watergate and other things. Obamacare is essentially a Republican plan (a watered down version of Nixoncare) implemented by Democrats, but because modern-day Republicans are motivated by their deep, seething, tribalist hatred of Barack Obama rather than by the well-being of the American people, they have suddenly decided that the “universal health care via the private sector” model of Nixoncare/Romneycare/Heritagecare is bad.
No, the Republicans of 2017 don’t have a coherent plan for implementing health care/coverage on a par with Sweden, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands and other countries that are ahead of Les Etas Unis in terms of life expectancy and health outcomes.
As for Libertarians, the Libertarian view is that if government would just get out of the way, decrease regulations and let the free market prevail, intense competition would result and insure millions of people. The problem is that giant corporations (whether they’re airlines, health insurance companies or cable TV providers) and their lobbyists detest competition and do everything they can to stamp it out, create monopolies and rape consumers. Cable TV is not a necessity, but health care is literally a matter of life and death. So if Republicans succeed in uninsuring millions of diabetics, cancer patients, heart disease survivors, asthmatics, etc. in Les Etas Unis, it will be a death sentence for many of them.
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