Hey Jimmy, why are you in favor of government control of healthcare?
Do you trust the government to administer your healthcare when you don't even trust them to recommend an effective CΟVID vaccine?
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Q. How could the government take control of health care?
A. The House of Representatives would have to write and pass appropriate legislation; the Senate would have to accept it; the House would have to sign off on the Senate's changes; the President would have to sign the bill; the Supreme Court would have to refrain from declaring the law unconstitutional.
Q. Is that possible?
A. No.
Q. What, really?
A. Yes, really.
Q. What, really?
A. The closest we've ever come was when the House of Representatives, in 2009, wrote a bill that would have allowed the government to provide a form of health insurance, which is not health care, in competition with private insurance.
Q. Is that the bill that the Republicans spent all summer not having time to read?
A. Yes.
Q. And that bill passed the Senate and became “Obamacare”?
A. No, it died on arrival. The Senate created the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act by taking an entirely different bill the House had passed previously, striking its entire text, and replacing it with one designed by Liz Fowler, former VP of a leading insurance company, which, rather than put the government in charge of health care, enshrined for-profit insurance permanently.
Q. What, permanently?
A. Yes, permanently.
Q. What, permanently?
A. Technically no Congress is bound by the actions of a previous Congress, so it is possible to repeal the PPACA and replace it with government-administered health care.
Q. Hasn't the GOP been trying to do the first half of that?
A. The GOP voted to repeal the PPACA dozens of times, right up to the moment they actually had the power to succeed, at which point they stopped, because it's very good for their wealthy insurance-company and medical-industry donors — as the Democrats intended.
Q. But it is nonetheless possible to put the government in control of health care, is it not?
A. Given a House to the political left of all previous Houses, a Senate to the political left of all previous Senates, a President to the political left of all previous Presidents, and a Supreme Court to the left of all previous Supreme Courts, the government could transform itself into a government in charge of health care.
Q. And that government would be the same government that currently — it is alleged — cannot be trusted, would it not?
A. It would be the same government in the sense that Lincoln's hammer continued to be Lincoln's hammer after the demise of its owner, the replacement of its head and handle, and its transfiguration into an electric toothbrush.