There's no real argument, but he had to say that in order to not be sidelined as an extremist.
I know it sounds insane, but the average American's idea of nationalized healthcare is something akin to waiting in Soviet Union breadlines just to get an aspirin. There's a whole cadre of talking heads employed full-time to make the rounds on Fox News et al promoting this sort of willfully ignorant line of thought.
Medicaid has some serious problems that are not addressed in the act. One of the main problems is the number of doctors that will no longer take Medicaid (not Medicare) patients. This is generally the result of lots of paperwork and smaller payments to the doctor.
It would have been an amazingly smart start to health care to really focus on the Medicaid patients. Encourage more urgent care centers and fix the payments / paperwork.
I know it sounds insane, but the average American's idea of nationalized healthcare is something akin to waiting in Soviet Union breadlines just to get an aspirin. There's a whole cadre of talking heads employed full-time to make the rounds on Fox News et al promoting this sort of willfully ignorant line of thought.
Not at all. We've seen it first-hand and up-close with our neighbors to the north. Taxes through the roof, and the only way to get good care is to "go private."
I severely doubt the average American has any sort of experience with the Canadian health care system whatsoever, let alone "first-hand" or "up-close".
The average American probably didn't even know Canada had universal health care before 2009. Shoot, the average American might still not know that.
The highest federal marginal tax rate in Canada is 29%[1], kicking in at taxable income over $135,054.
The highest federal marginal tax rate in the US is 39.6%[2], kicking in at $400,001. At 135,054 of income, you're in the $87,851 – $183,250 tax bracket, and paying 28%.
Provincial / state taxes can ratchet those numbers up depending on where you live.
> the only way to get good care is to "go private."
Have you ever had medical care in Canada? There are situations where going private will get you much speedier care (for an MRI for a non-life threatening injury, for example, could take you months to get). But generally speaking, going public will get you high quality care delivered on an appropriate schedule (life threatening: right away... not life threatening: appropriately quick).
As an American living in the UK, I have actually seen it first-hand. This belief that because we border Canada that we somehow have first-hand experience of their medical system is exactly the type of willful ignorance that I was calling out.
There are lots of reasons to be against nationalized healthcare. Some for practical reasons, others for legal reasons -- just because you want something doesn't mean it can skip the legal process which is what obamacare tries to do in a lot of places.
One simple reason to be against it is that the current implementation is crazy bad and has no way of dealing with costs and is anti-democratic. It creates outside bodies that don't answer to congress, etc.
Citations needed. The primary argument used against ACA's constitutionality was struck down by the supreme court [1]. And there already exists at least 50 government agencies that reserve the right to pass regulations without congressional approval [2].
I know it sounds insane, but the average American's idea of nationalized healthcare is something akin to waiting in Soviet Union breadlines just to get an aspirin. There's a whole cadre of talking heads employed full-time to make the rounds on Fox News et al promoting this sort of willfully ignorant line of thought.