You know things are bad for President Obama when even Warren Buffett has soured on Obamacare and says that “we need something else.” Money Morning writes:
“Healthcare costs in the United States are like a tapeworm eating at our economic body.
“Those words come from famed investor Warren Buffett, who said he would scrap Obamacare and start all over.
“‘We have a health system that, in terms of costs, is really out of control,’ he added. ‘And if you take this line and you project what has been happening into the future, we will get less and less competitive. So we need something else.’
“Buffett insists that without changes to Obamacare average citizens will suffer.
“‘What we have now is untenable over time,’ said Buffett, an early supporter of President Obama. ‘That kind of a cost compared to the rest of the world is really like a tapeworm eating, you know, at our economic body.’
“Buffett does not believe that providing insurance for everyone is the first step to take in correcting our nation’s healthcare system.
“‘Attack the costs first, and then worry about expanding coverage,’ he said. ‘I would much rather see another plan that really attacks costs. And I think that’s what the American public wants to see. I mean, the American public is not behind this bill.'”
Republicans should take Buffett’s words as an invitation to propose a long-overdue Obamacare alternative, one that would lower costs, fix the unfairness in the tax code, deal with the specific problem of preexisting conditions, breathe life into a moribund individual insurance market, and constitute real reform. It’s time to delay Obamacare and propose an alternative, then repeal Obamacare (in 2017) and pass the alternative.
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4 Responses
It doesn’t result in universal coverage.
It results in many people losing their preferred insurance.
It doesn’t to lower costs.
It bankrupts the government.
And it endangers the Democrats in Congress (and in all fairness, the only reason the Republicans don’t have solid control of Congress was Tea Party overreaching).
The headline of this article is misleading. In the content of this article he didn’t criticize any aspect of ObamaCare, he just doesn’t believe it will help too much.
He comes out with a brainstorm, attack the cost!! can he please be kind and give specifics! Even a 10 year old child would realize that high costs are the core problem, but the question is how to reduce it.
The article gives an invitation to the republicans, “propose a long-overdue Obamacare alternative, one that would lower costs”, while the Republicans will never do that since the’re in to pockets of the health care lobby, (and so are the democrats). The only solution to be able to resolve it, first there should be a ban on campaign contributions (similar to a system in the UK)
Mr. Buffett has not told us anything that Pres. Obama and supporters of health care reform do not already know. Yes, costs are crazy-high, and yes, cost must be addressed. But Congress and Pres. Obama have enacted Obamacare, which assures that all US citizens will have healthcare coverage. Maybe costs should have been addressed first, but that is not what has happened. So let the House Republicans stop throwing out the Obamacare baby with the bath water and propose something that will lower costs. Free-market solutions have not worked, and won’t work, or will leave millions uninsured. Obamacare is a work in progress, as Medicare was 50 years ago (and as it continues to be today). But the status quo before Obamacare was unacceptable.
Let’s remember how difficult it was to get any reform through Congress. Obama, Ram Emmanuel and Pelosi did a brilliant job of patching together a bill that barely squeaked through a heavily Democratic Congress, and the result, based on Mass/Romneycare, was a vast improvement over the status quo. Yes, it needs to be improved, but what doesn’t.