Anthony Weiner Quotes
Do you know what the overhead is of the Medicare system? One-point-zero-five percent. Do you know what - private insurance is 30 percent in overhead and profits? Given a choice how I'm going to improve health care, I'm going to take it away from private insurance profits and overhead. Wouldn't you?
Weiner, Anthony. Interview. The O'Reilly Factor, Fox News, 28 Jul. 2009.
Although extremely conservative, Paul was opposed to giving corporations a cut of economic activity just to say that it was private and not public of government run. The corporate HMOs and managed care organizations claimed that they are performing a quality control and money saving service, but there were non profit organizations that performed the functions just as well and did not add on a profit fee for themselves,
The reason this quotation is noteworthy is the reality that Medicare is the largest Federal Government program that there is. It is not only funded by the Government, but Government employees actually operate it from making the policies to paying the tens of millions of bills to doctors and hospitals. The protester who created the sign, like the overwhelming majority of Tea Party enthusiasts are opposed to big government and especially to government involvement in any health care operations. Obamacare was very controversial and most Tea Party enthusiasts were lobbying heavily against the Government “taking over” the American health care system. Medicare is one of the most popular Federal programs in American history and many people who were opposed to Federal health program management and were ignorant of the fact that Medicare was operated by the Government, were expressing their concern. The sign did not seem to distress any of the thousands of Tea Party followers in the audience, but the main takeaway was that there were many American who just assumed that anything that was run well and they liked could not be run by the government.
That particular Libertarian platform called for the abolition / repeal of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Post Office, Federal election Commission and campaign finance laws. Extreme radical ideas such as this are not typical of Libertarian Party positions before or afterwards. The quotation illustrates that there are people in America who would end public education if they could. The quotation also illustrates how a small cadre of people can capture control of a political party and create a platform that is their own personal views which may be different from most of the party members or the historical position that the party has taken. In 1980 the Libertarian Party Vice Presidential Candidate was David Koch, one half of the billionaire conservative Koch brothers. Their money financed the Libertarian Party in that year and David Koch’s views then prevailed in the party platform. Historically, the Koch brothers moved from a minor third party to the Republican party at the beginning of the 21st century when their money was able to help drive the party very far to the right from the traditions of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.
At the time in America, the insurance companies only paid out less than 80 percent of all the money they took in for health insurance. More than 20 percent went into their high overhead and profits. In contrast, to the 20 percent or more that it costs with insurance companies to administer health insurance payments, the agency that performs the same function for Medicare doe so with only a 6 percent cost Sanders argued that by getting rid of the insurance companies, the nation could save about 14 percent of the entire insured medical bills for the nation—many billions of dollars which would reduce average health insurance premiums by 14 percent. Opponents argue that the would be a socialist system and give too much potential control of individual health matters to a government operated or government controlled organizations. Politicians, in order to look good with the voters, would lower premiums and also pay out less either shortchanging doctors and hospitals or rating medial care somehow.
Anthony David Weiner is an American former politician and convicted sex offender. He represented New York's 9th congressional district from January 1999 until June 2011, winning seven terms as a Democrat and never receiving less than 60% of the vote. Weiner resigned from Congress in June 2011 after an incident in which a sexually suggestive photo that he sent to a woman via Twitter was captured and publicized.
