President-elect Donald Trump, despite his criticisms of Obamacare, is apparently meeting with Obamacare architect Ezekiel Emanuel to discuss healthcare.
Trump is wise to meet Emanuel now, while Trump is only 70. After all, Emanuel is the same guy who wrote people shouldn’t live past 75, adding:
Here is a simple truth that many of us seem to resist: living too long is also a loss. It renders many of us, if not disabled, then faltering and declining, a state that may not be worse than death but is nonetheless deprived. It robs us of our creativity and ability to contribute to work, society, the world. It transforms how people experience us, relate to us, and, most important, remember us. We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic.
Trump repeatedly said during the presidential campaign that he would repeal and replace Obamacare, even claiming on his campaign website, “On day one of the Trump Administration, we will ask Congress to immediately deliver a full repeal of Obamacare,” but since he was elected he has backtracked, allowing that he would retain two core parts of the law: covering pre-existing conditions and allowing those under age 26 to remain on their parent’s insurance.
Transition aide Sean Spicer told The Hill:
He’s looking at all ideas, even folks like Dr. Emanuel have talked about ways in which it can be improved upon. I think this continues to show the open mind in which he approaches all of these problems. He’s going to meet with all sorts of people that he agrees and disagrees with, but if they have ideas that can make the country better, and in this case our healthcare system better in terms of affordability and accessibility, he’s going to want to hear their ideas.
But the two parts of Obamacare Trump wants to keep are the key ingredients to eviscerating insurance companies, which would pave the way for a single payer system. That wouldn’t necessarily bother Trump at all; as he said in the first GOP debate in August 2015. “As far as single payer, it works in Canada. It works incredibly well in Scotland. It could have worked in a different age, which is the age you’re talking about here. What I’d like to see is a private system without the artificial lines around every state…Get rid of the artificial lines and you will have yourself great plans. And then we have to take care of the people that can’t take care of themselves. And I will do that through a different system.”
As famed economist Thomas Sowell stated, “The monstrosity of ObamaCare needs to be gotten rid of, not just cosmetically adjusted.”