Colin Powell: America Needs Socialized Medicine

[mystery-ak]

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/12/08/Colin-Powell-America-Needs-Socialized-Medicine

 by Tony Lee 8 Dec 2013, 7:10 AM PDT

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell believes the United States should have a socialized, single-payer healthcare system similar to those in Canada and Europe.

“I think universal health care is one of the things we should really be focused on, and I hope that will happen,” Powell reportedly said last week. “Whether it’s Obamacare, or son of Obamacare, I don’t care. As long as we get it done.”

The Puget Sound Business Journal reported Powell's remarks at the Prostate Cancer Survivors Celebration Breakfast at the University of Washington's Cancer Research Center.

Powell, the Republican who supported Barack Obama during the last two presidential elections, told the story about a woman who lives in the countryside that he buys wood from every year.

"I’ve got about four years worth of wood out in the back yard. I can’t resist her, and she needs the money," Powell said, before mentioning that when she came to his door three weeks ago and he told her that he had no work for her, she asked Powell to help pay for medical treatment her insurance company would not cover.

Powell said he ended up paying for the women's treatment and compared her experience to the prompt treatments that he and his wife received for serious medical issues.

The retired four-star general and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said he thought, "Every country I’ve visited, every developed country, they have universal health care. They don’t understand why the United States of America, which uses more health care than just about anybody else, still (has) 40 million people not properly insured.”

“I am not an expert in health care, or Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act, or however you choose to describe it, but I do know this: I have benefited from that kind of universal health care in my 55 years of public life,” Powell said. “And I don’t see why we can’t do what Europe is doing, what Canada is doing, what Korea is doing, what all these other places are doing.”

[truth_seeker]

I met a guy at a party Friday night. He's originally from the UK, lived most recently near Mannheim Germany. He's a European libertarian, and runs a gun store here in the US.

His politics are closest to Ron Paul, but from a European angle. He says national health care across Europe works fine, as far as his experience.

Sounds like libertarian conservative, except health care. He says we are consumed by corporatism, whereby the insurance companies get rich, from the insured and the government.

First the patient paid his doctor cash-they had a one on one relationship.  Then came the employer with his insurance for employees. A threeway or fourway. Patient, insurance, employer, doctor.

Now comes the government, five way; and the cost never goes down, it always goes up.

There might be a better way, stripping government and insurance companies from it entirely. Maybe coops, or mutual aid societies. The employers might "sponsor" his employees to become members.

Keep it entirely outside of obamacare. Eff their rules.  Republicans sound like broken old records, no fresh ideas.