Roy Blunt: It would have been "best" if Medicare and Medicaid never existed
Today on The Eagle 93.9, Roy Blunt shared some pretty incredible thoughts on the problems of public health care.
Government health care programs are so awful, Blunt said, that it would have been "best" if federal government never got "in the health care business" in the first place -- and never created Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Administration health care, SCHIP or any other program that he believes might "distort the marketplace." Listen:
Blunt's rhetoric about "more choice" and the beauty of the marketplace are standard, though not illuminating in any way. But his suggestion that Medicare and Medicaid should never have even existed is a downright radical proposition.
Listen to the whole interview here.
Here's a transcript of Blunt's response to a question about the
HOST MIKE FERGUSON: What is the proper role of government, and what are the potential impacts of the direction that we're going right now?
BLUNT: Well, you could certainly argue that government should have never have gotten in the health care business, and that might have been the best argument of all, to figure out how people could have had more access to a competitive marketplace.
Government did get into the health care business in a big way in 1965 with Medicare, and later with Medicaid, and government already distorts the marketplace.
A government competitor would drive all the other competitors away. What we should be doing is creating more competition. One of the reasons the marketplace doesn't work the way it should work right now is we really don't have the competitive marketplace that I'd like to see put in place.
I'd like to see people have many more options, instead of fewer options. The option, for instance, to continue to get insurance at work, but also take that same tax benefit and use it on their own and use it in the new marketplace that Republicans advocate... [Blunt cuts out]
Are there any other mainstream politicians saying it would have been best for everyone if we never created Medicare or Medicaid? Or provided health care for our veterans? Or started the SCHIP program?
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Mr. Blunt
If Mr. Blunt thinks Medicare and Medicaid are so bad, then I think the health coverage we give him is bad too. Bad in that we pay for his and have no choice in what coverage he gets.
There needs to be some way we that don't deserve Medicare and Medicaid can vote on whether he deserves his coverage or not.
For my part, Ole Roy can lay on the sidewalk and wait in the hot sun to see if the Emergency Room will take him in.
You can be sure if there is a program that will help the less fortunate, he and his cronies will be against it.
Sooner or later there will be a special reward for folks like him and John Boehner. What a bunch.
David Rust
History Repeats Itself
When rural electrification came to farm communities in the 1930s it was not because of the kindness of the utility companies. Franklin Roosevelt created REA because there was no profit advantage for the power companies to serve such a wide spread community. Had it been left to the private sector rural Missouri would still be operating with kerosene lamps.
Don't expect universal health care to come through a competitive marketplace alone. There needs to be a public option that ensure everyone has coverage, even those with pre-existing conditions that the private providers throw to the wolves.
Guess Congress should get rid of their public health care
The marketplace would serve them better, right?
Radical from our perspective? Yes.
If you've been listening to and watching the republicans? Not at all.
Strange thing that I've notcied is that some among the republican party, Blunt for one, have been pushing the some extreme ideas recently. I don't know much about psychology but is it possible that they're quietly putting these ideas out on the table to be written into law at a later date? If they get their wish a lot of people are going to start dying earlier than they need to.