Paul Krugman writes this,
And on the other side, here’s what Newt Gingrich, the Republican former speaker of the House — a man celebrated by many in his party as an intellectual leader — had to say: If Democrats pass health reform, “They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years” by passing civil rights legislation.
I’d argue that Mr. Gingrich is wrong about that: proposals to guarantee health insurance are often controversial before they go into effect — Ronald Reagan famously argued that Medicare would mean the end of American freedom — but always popular once enacted.
No shit. I like birthday presents too. Medicare is popular with those receiving free or nearly free healthcare paid for by the government, which in reality is you and I. Who does not like to be given things, even those which you could afford to buy yourself. And that is the issue with this healthcare reform bill; Who is going to pay for all this largess? You cannot grant large swaths of the population free goodies from the government without eventually taxing the producers to the point that they can no longer support the system. Medicare is going broke and has cost over a trillion dollars. Much more than the $10B originally forecast. If the healthcare reform bill is not seriously tweaked, we will see our economy enter a period in which growth and unemployment looks more like Europe than our traditional rates. And that is not a good thing.
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