Quote of the Week...from Donald Trump

We must have universal health care. Just imagine the improved quality of life for our society as a whole...The Canadian-style, single-payer system...helps Canadians live longer and healthier than Americans...There are fewer medical lawsuits, less loss of labor to sickness, and lower costs to companies paying for the medical care of their employees.                ---Donald Trump

Yes, our current president, who seems to have gone in the diametrically opposite direction from this 2000 quote with his national health care agenda, at one time was strongly in favor of the kind of universal, single-payer health care systems almost all of the world's developed countries use.  He also stated back then that this is the one big issue that he, although mainly conservative, was liberal about.  The above quote of his I took from a reprint in my bi-monthly union magazine of an editorial article written by my union president Mark Dimondstein.  In his article Dimondstein laid out the reasons for the United States to join the rest of the civilized world and deem health care to be a right and not a privilege...and to free its people from the financial bondage and uncertainty imposed by our current health insurance system, be it Obamacare, Trumpcare, or what we had before.  I would make one correction to Trump's earlier stance on this issue: I believe that universal health care should be embraced by conservatives as being compatible with their political philosophy, and here are some points to make in that regard...

1-Businesses would be shed of the red tape and financial burden of providing health insurance.
2-Universal health care encourages job-changing, risk-taking, and entrepreneurialism by those in mid-life and/or with pre-existing conditions...or by those related to such an individual.
3-Deprives liberals of what conservatives often see as "divide and conquer" political strategy by demographic groups.
4-Gives people a greater sense of liberty with their lives...they can invest their money back into the economy.
5-Insurance companies provide no health services but add greatly to the total cost of care as a middleman between provider and patient.

And how does this all get funded? Well, this is where the "modern" conservative, for whom the expression "raise taxes" is anathema, and I part ways: you fund it by raising taxes. The net effect, though, will be to reduce health care expenses, provide universal coverage, and end catastrophic medical events in people's families leading to personal bankruptcy...

As Mark Dimondstein wrote in his article, and our current president implied with his remark 17 years ago, we need as a nation to decide whether health care is a right or a privilege.  If it is the former, then let's get down to business creating a universal health care system modeled after the most successful countries that employ it.  If is the latter, let's go back to the way it was before the Affordable Care Act and let the marketplace freely determine its financing.  The way things are now is an unholy, messed-up mishmash of both approaches, whether you call it Obamacare or Trumpcare...