Senator Warren outlined her Medicare for All plan today. It’s long, and the overview she published today is just part one — Warren says she’ll release transition details soon. You can read it here. I’ll post some excerpts below the fold.
Here are the choices, as Warren sees them:
Option 1: Maintain our current system, which will cost the country $52 trillion over ten years. And under that current system –
24 million people won’t have coverage, and millions can’t get long-term care.
63 million have coverage gaps or substandard coverage that could break down if they actually get sick. And millions who have health insurance will end up going broke at least in part from medical costs anyway.
Together, the American people will pay $11 trillion of that bill themselves in the form of premiums, deductibles, copays, out-of-network, and other expensive medical equipment and care they pay for out-of-pocket – all while America’s wealthiest individuals and biggest companies pay far less in taxes than in other major countries.
Option 2: Switch to my approach to Medicare for All, which would cost the country just under $52 trillion over ten years. Under this new system –
Every person in America – all 331 million people – will have full health coverage, and coverage for long-term care.
Everybody gets the doctors and the treatments they need, when they need them. No more restrictive provider networks, no more insurance companies denying coverage for prescribed treatments, and no more going broke over medical bills.
The $11 trillion in household insurance and out-of-pocket expenses projected under our current system goes right back into the pockets of America’s working people. And we make up the difference with targeted spending cuts, new taxes on giant corporations and the richest 1% of Americans, and by cracking down on tax evasion and fraud. Not one penny in middle-class tax increases.
That’s it. That’s the choice. A broken system that leaves millions behind while costs keep going up and insurance companies keep sucking billions of dollars in profits out of the system – or, for about the same amount of money, a new system that drives down overall health costs and, on average, relieves the typical middle class families of $12,400 in insurance premiums and other related health care costs.
She framed it as a choice — good! It’s irritating that candidates who advocate for a complete overhaul of our shitty, inefficient, expensive healthcare delivery system are accused of engaging in radical pipe dreams, whereas it’s not considered “radical” to accept the status quo or actively make things worse, as Trump is doing.
People who want to keep private insurance without a “radical” overhaul are accepting a situation where tens of millions go without insurance, people die due to lack of insulin, infant mortality rates are rising, life expectancy is decreasing, redundant insurance bureaucracies dream up arcane ways to withhold care to fund fat cat CEO salaries, etc., etc., etc.
If Warren and Sanders have to defend the costs of M4A — and it’s fair to ask them to do that! — people who want to keep private insurance companies in business should have to describe in detail why it’s necessary to put up with the rent-seeking inherent in the current system. Maybe they’re right and incrementalism is the only way to go! But they shouldn’t get a pass on making that case. Warren throws down that gauntlet here:
Every candidate who opposes my long-term goal of Medicare for All should explain why the “choice” of private insurance plans is more important than being able to choose the doctor that’s best for you without worrying about whether they are in-network or not. Why it’s more important than being able to choose the right prescription drug for you without worrying about massive differences in copays. Why it’s more important than being able to choose to start a small business or choose the job you want without worrying about where your health care coverage will be coming from and how much it will cost.
Every candidate who opposes my long-term goal of Medicare for All should put forward their own plan to cover everyone, without costing the country anything more in health care spending, and while putting $11 trillion back in the pockets of the American people by eliminating premiums and virtually eliminating out-of-pocket costs. Or, if they are unwilling to do that, they should concede that they think it’s more important to protect the eye-popping profits of private insurers and drug companies and the immense fortunes of the top 1% and giant corporations, rather than provide transformative financial relief for hundreds of millions of American families.
And every candidate who opposes my long-term goal of Medicare for All should put forward their own plan to make sure every single person in America can get high-quality health care and won’t go broke – and fully explain how they intend to pay for it. Or, if they are unwilling to do that, concede that their half-measures will leave millions behind.
And make no mistake – any candidate who opposes my long-term goal of Medicare for All and refuses to answer these questions directly should concede that they have no real strategy for helping the American people address the crushing costs of health care in this country. We need plans, not slogans.
Warren says she’ll release details of how to transition to the plan here:
In the weeks ahead, I will propose a transition plan that will specifically address how I would use this time to begin providing immediate financial relief to struggling families, rein in out-of-control health care costs, increase coverage, and save lives. My transition plan will take seriously and address substantively the concerns of unions, individuals with private insurance, hospitals, people who work for private health insurers, and medical professionals who worry about what a new system will mean for them. It will also grapple directly with the entrenched political and economic interests that would spend freely, as they have throughout modern American history, to influence politicians and try to frighten the American people into rejecting a plan that would save them thousands of dollars a year on premiums and deductibles while making sure they can always see the health care providers they need with false claims and scare tactics.
The Bernie Bros on Twitter are already yelling “sell-out” over the transition. I wonder how Sanders will respond? He probably won’t. IIRC, he indicated he wasn’t planning to get into the weeds, but Warren sort of had to, being the Plan Lady and all…
Anyhoo, Krugman made a great point on Twitter about Warren’s plan. It’s de-Twitterized below:
There will be endless arguments about whether her cost estimates are too low and her revenue estimates too high, but they were put together by knowledgeable people — including former top Obama officials. This is a real plan, not a trickle-down fantasy… Will the plan be debated on stage? I hope not. The issues are far too technical to settle in sound bites and one-liners. And frankly, the Dem debates have already devoted too much time to health relative to other issues…
My sense is that while Warren’s embrace of Medicare for all was a questionable political decision, she has now passed an important test: providing a plausible way it could happen without big middle-class tax hikes… Maybe we can now starting talking about things that are much more likely to happen in the near future, like child care, or where the president has a lot of discretionary power, like environmental protection.
What he said. I look forward to Warren’s transition plan and hope it explicitly acknowledges that M4A is the goal — the starting point around which to build consensus and push legislation — and that achieving it would require huge Democratic majorities, which can only be delivered by an enthusiastic and engaged electorate.
In past speeches and writings, Warren has said rooting out corruption and reducing the influence of wealthy special interests in government would be her top priority because nothing else is possible without that. She has also said that “big, structural change” of the type she’s advocating will take a movement, not an election. She’s right.
Mandalay
Butter cheekbones!
laura koerber
The more I know of Liz the less I like her as a candidate. Medicare for All won’t get through congress so why make an easily-criticized and mocked plan that is hard to understand or defend the centerpiece of campaign in what is likely a close election? It’s political malpractice. I don’t give a fuck how she plans to pay for it. I smart and honest way to talk would be to say “I’m for universal health care and wil work with Congress on a plan and remember that if we don’t take the Senate, nothing will happen And if idiots say hey you have no details, just point out that Congress, not the P, legislates.
Jeffro
Dems in general have not done nearly enough educating of the public about how much our health care system actually/already costs the country and how many people it leaves out.
Nor the fact that we pay about twice as much per person as most Western countries, while getting the same or worse outcomes and leaving tens of millions uninsured.
I like Liz and I’m fine with the plan…I just think she’s going to end up doing the majority of this ‘educating’ all by herself, while her primary opponents and the GOP twist the numbers every which way and scare away plenty of voters. I wish her well.
germy
Oh, Christ, this thread is going to be something.
All the “I’ve got good health insurance through my employer and my six thousand dollar deductible works great for me” commenters will be here trashing Warren.
Meanwhile, the republicans are simmering in their own juices:
daveNYC
In a just world it’d be fair to ask how a Democratic candidate would pay for any of their progressive proposals, but since nobody seriously asks Republicans how they’re going to pay for their tax cuts and military adventures I consider most of the talk about ‘How will we pay for this?’ to just be concern trollilng.
trollhattan
“Mumble, mumble, mumble, but she didn’t write the damn bill!”
With Certain People you get the Cliff’s Notes edition, with the professor you get the text, syllabus and course notes. Will be interesting to see how it plays in Peoria.
Mike in DC
@laura koerber: If we take the Senate and don’t get rid of the filibuster, nothing will happen either, for literally any Democratic president.
trollhattan
@germy:
We know it was a foreign-made camera so it’s all okay. Who was that guy who choked the reporter and went to congress anyway? Montana?
Feature, not bug.
JPL
The right is already crying about the job losses saying it could be 2 million. The ads are going to be brutal.
I will say that she is following through by explaining how it all happens.
O. Felix Culpa
The more I know about Warren, the more I like her. She’s smart and her policies reflect values and goals that I generally support. I also agree with radical overhaul at this point. Nibbling around the edges ain’t gonna fix what’s so badly broken.
Is she perfect? Of course not. That’s a stupid question/expectation to begin with and I hate it when we “defend” our candidates by saying, “she’s not perfect, but….”
I also think it’s ok for presidents to have an aspirational agenda. I’m fairly certain all our candidates know which branch passes legislation. Hopefully we can retake the Senate and get something done, regardless of which De m is elected in 2020.
the Conster
yeah, no. Medicaid expansion which has already won in key states, adding a public option, and restoring the funding and provisions GOP gutted should be the Dem message.
After running into the healthcare propeller in the midterms, Republicans, cynically, will run on saving everyone’s insurance from the crazy tax and spend socialists and they will win.
and what about the Hyde Amendment? That’s not going anywhere. Why is everyone so hot to have Republicans in control of healthcare when they’re in charge?
And good luck selling doctors and other medical professionals on the cram down of their income. Will medical schools have to be subsidized by the government now too?
What about the filibuster? Joe Lieberman single handedly killed the public option.
Cacti
Berniecare will get Trump four more years.
West of the Rockies
Imperfect analogy, but here goes…
The American health care system is like 30 people eating together at a luncheon. 10 will pay $100 for salmon and like it. 10 will pay $50 for a burger and fries and get a cold ham sandwich and chips. Five will have only $10 in their wallets, enough to get ice water and a complimentary sugar packet and napkin. 5 will order whatever they want, get precisely what they ordered, and pay nothing.
FSM we try to find a better restaurant (system).
MisterForkbeard
@laura koerber: She can’t really do this without hardcore pissing off a large portion of Bernie people, whom she’ll ultimately need to convert to her lane.
They insist that she’s a squish and won’t REALLY enact M4A, and that Bernie has a real plan to pay for it, etc. The fact that Bernie’s plan is literally “Here are 10 things we could possibly do that might pay for it” doesn’t really get to them – nor that Bernie has less chance of enacting it than she does. If she confirms that M4A is a starting point for her and the ultimate goal but she’ll take less, she gets pounced on from the left and will probably lose some of her support.
Matt
I want to see a plan that takes on the.doctors’ cartel to increase the supply of doctors. And yes government should subsidize med school.
rikyrah
@the Conster:
Yep
the Conster
@Cacti:
Most people get their insurance through their employers. Health care issues like coverage of pre-existing conditions was the force behind the blue wave – people want to keep what they have, they knew Republicans were committed to taking away what they have and punished them for it. Now along comes Warren and Sanders proposing to take away what they have. It’s madness.
rikyrah
2 million jobs lost….
2 million jobs lost…..
The ads write themselves for the GOP
trollhattan
@MisterForkbeard:
Yeah, pretty much. We have CFPB because of her initiative and efforts. Nobody else in the field can match that. Healthcare is even more complex.
O. Felix Culpa
I was a big supporter of the ACA when it was passed. However, for reasons that Mayhew/Anderson can explain better than I, coverage for people not on Medicaid is expensive for pretty crappy plans. I want better for us all.
EW’s plan is not the last word on policy change, but definitely worth debating to fix the travesty that is the American health care system.
mad citizen
@laura koerber: Agree 1000% with Laura here. I’d much prefer less details and more policy statements. Don’t overpromise and over-detail everyone to death. I just want to ensure reasonably smart people and good leadership skills to run the Executive branch.
Gelfling 545
@MisterForkbeard: She may well piss them off. She does this already by existing. Still, it’s not like they’ll like any of the others any better.
rikyrah
@germy:
This should be an ad unto itself…LOL
Cacti
@the Conster:
Yep. Dems will be running as the “repeal and replace” party, while Rs will get to run on preserving the ACA, which they’ve opposed at every turn up to now.
And Warren’s fans wonder why I say she has terrible political instincts.
the Conster
@Matt:
So you want national healthcare like the VA? You think doctors want to be told what and where and how they can practice, which will happen if medical school is subsidized? That’s a winning message? In 2019 USA?
Ella in New Mexico
Yes, because God knows Bernie has a “Goddamned Magic Wand!” and will be able to do M4A overnight when he’s elected.
I’m all for the concepts of M4A, but she has to emphasize we’ll need to do it in realistic steps, including the practical idea that a lot of us Normals will likely need to contribute to funding it in some way. I mean, her first scenario happens taking into consideration the $600-$1200 a month in premiums pretty much all non-poverty level people pay for insurance in addition to all the co-pays, deductibles, non-covered out of pocket costs. Imagine we all got 100% medical, dental, vision, hearing AND long term care covered if we paid affordable, income- based premiums with no other out of pocket costs? I’d buy in in a heartbeat. Fund it by making the 1% pay into the system somehow, but I suspect if we don’t include some sort of participation by those of us down here it won’t get the public support it needs.
I’ve long thought that we could make both SS and Medicare not just solvent but give even more generous benefits for folks, simply by tweaking things like the payroll tax income caps (make them lower overall but apply to ALL income, even capital gains, for example) Maybe her taxes on the 1% etc can do that, but I’m skeptical it’ll be easy to do without most of us also being a part of the picture in some way.
Still open to her making her case, though. Part of me wants fixes to what we have now in the short run while we set up a Blue Ribbon Non-Partisan Committee to study the very best ways we can do Universal Health care, including how we keep it from being ruined by concessions made to Republicans and for-profit healthcare lobbies.
gene108
My very limited understanding is other countries that have universal coverage, the government basically sets out guidelines for prescriptions.
If you need a drug off the government guidelines, you or your doctor have to appeal for it or something like that. Probably not as brutal a process as dealing with US health insurance companies, though.
guachi
Medicare for All is the one and only policy position that can lose the Democrats the election in 2020.
It’ll force most Democratic House candidates in competitive districts/states to run against their own Presidential candidate.
The top three running on the D side are Biden/Sanders/Warren and I’m leaning towards voting for whoever isn’t pushing M4A. And that means Biden at this point.
MJS
If Warren has really shot herself in the foot here, as many seem to believe, we’re down to Biden or Buttigieg, right? It can’t be Bernie, because he has the same idea, just not as well thought out, and Harris is dropping like a stone. If it’s Biden, then we can expect 1) Joe acts like Joe on the campaign trail and 2) the media spend all their time mulling whether or not something really is up with Hunter. So that leaves us Mayor Pete.
Just want to make sure I’m properly wallowing in the gloom and doom.
eclare
@rikyrah: Agreed. I would love something like NHS, I used it when I lived in London, but this plan will scare people. Jeez, we have just turned the corner on ACA approval.
O. Felix Culpa
@gene108: Very little is as brutal as dealing with insurance companies, whose profit depends on not paying benefits. Their incentives are structured to hurt people when they need help the most. (I worked briefly in that industry and they are explicit internally about denying payouts .) Many European countries allow purchase of supplemental private insurance. I’m fine with that, assuming a baseline of universal coverage.
the Conster
Doesn’t Warren also have a *plan* for breaking up big tech and banks too? Am I missing any other major sector of the economy she thinks should be broken up, you know, as long as we’re promising to re-engineer the entire US economy by promising to tax everyone while jeopardizing millions of jobs because it will be better for everyone (maybe not them though) in the long run.
We’ll lose the House if she’s the nominee, and not only won’t we have healthcare, we won’t have a democracy. This will be Mondale v. 2.0.
Brachiator
The current system includes the ACA, which is more than mere incrementalism, and works pretty well.
Betty Cracker
@guachi:
No, it would force swing-state candidates to say they disagree with their party’s presidential candidate on that particular issue and advocate XYZ approach instead. You know, like every Democratic politician in every swing district does during every presidential election ever.
trollhattan
For what it’s worth.
MisterForkbeard
@Gelfling 545: I think this is basically true. They’ve latched onto her as the Hillary of this cycle and hate her with a fiery passion for… some reason. Can’t think of a single common factor between these two impressive women.
More seriously, I’m coming around to the idea that M4A is a pretty bad idea politically. Our insurance system is a disaster, but thanks to the ACA there’s a lot less discontent than there was during 2010 and this kind of solution is going to be a harder sell.
Mike E
Oh maiii, we’re reaching Peak Concern!
MJS
@Betty Cracker: This. It’s not that difficult to say, “I disagree with Senator Warren on this particular issue, but look forward to working with her when she’s President to improve our health care system. In comparison, the Republicans have had decades to improve the health care system, but seem intent on making it worse instead.”
Ella in New Mexico
@the Conster:
Just sayin’:
Having worked as an NP student in a VA clinic I can firmly attest to the fact that most people would LOVE their VA healthcare. Great providers and innovative services that are state of the art exist there today, and I’d work there in a heartbeat if they could hire me. What’s bad about it today is they’re literally starving them to death– the decades long political assault on it’s funding has only worsened under Trump by his cronies attempts to privatize it. We could fully fund VA healthcare and give our vets outstanding services overnight if we wanted to.
O. Felix Culpa
@Brachiator: Ah, we disagree in part again! :)
The ACA works well in part: it protects people with preexisting conditions, allows for Medicaid expansion and for parents to keep adult children on their health insurance policies longer. All good. But, unsubsidized plans on the exchange can be expensive for mediocre coverage and sick people still need to fight with insurance companies to get needed medical care paid for. Insulin is murderously expensive and healthcare costs in general are out of control.
I don’t know if M4A is the answer, but we definitely need to do more.
Ella in New Mexico
@MJS:
Close, but you need more cowbell.
And I think you forgot the “Her Late Entry into the Race” option lolol.
Cacti
@rikyrah:
The press is already running with it:
“Elizabeth Warren Casually Admits Medicare For All Will Kill 2 Million Jobs”
schrodingers_cat
Nope. Hard Pass on pie in the sky Bernie Care.
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
Wow. Biden appears to be really dropping. Mayor Pete in 3rd place? Interesting.
the Conster
I think you’re making my point about government control of healthcare. Why anyone would want GOPers in charge of such a critical function is beyond my ability to comprehend – they’re cruel and evil, and giving them leverage over funding and regulations and who can do what and where is madness. I hate to tell everyone, but the white majority of this country keeps voting Republican decade after decade, to keep *those people* down so the chance that GOP is going anywhere soon is zero.
BR
I’ve been one of the lucky few in the country to have “platinum” plans for the last several years via my various employers. These are the sorts of plans with almost no deductible, 90% or sometimes even 100% of all costs paid for the insurance company (when covered), and in some cases my employer even covered all of the insurance premium so there was no employee portion.
And I still support Medicare for All (either Warren’s version or one of the other variants). Even with the best plans money can buy it’s still a terrible system — I’ve still spent countless sleepless hours worrying about how to pay for bills that the insurance company said they wouldn’t pay, calling them and fighting with them, getting dozens of mysterious letters from the insurance company, etc. Having the best plan they sell still doesn’t get you any better service from the insurance company, and they still try to play their usual tricks using in-network / out-of-network, pre-authorization, and the rest of it.
JPL
@MJS: Me too! I do think that Joe could win if he ran with someone who could bring out the youth vote. Buttigeg does okay with the under 45, but polls poorly among blacks. Because of the strength of Warren and Sanders, technically our choice might be one of those. Now I’m gonna curl up in a ball and pray.
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
Buttigieg is absolutely my biggest surprise here, and I’m wondering if it’s that “Midwest familiarity” thing, but that should also boost Klobuchar, which clearly is not occurring. (Oddly enough, she’s grown on me the last couple of months but I can’t see a breakout path for her.)
rikyrah
@JPL:
Ok, this just made me LOL, cause I feel ya.
Brachiator
@O. Felix Culpa:
I’ve read that ACA has at least slowed the rise of healthcare costs. Other nations with universal coverage don’t have M4All, so I am skeptical that this is the magical answer for America. I don’t know why we need a do-over instead of looking to improve ACA. Also, I hear some unions, which have fought hard to get their members good coverage, are not hot on this plan.
Also, I confess that I tend to be against almost anything that Bernie Sanders strongly advocates. Not because it might be a bad idea, but because I know that Sanders has not really thought it through.
However, this expanded proposal is hot and new and I will try to make time to look at it. I am not dismissing it out of hand.
matt
@the Conster: I want an elected group controlling the supply of medicine rather than an unaccountable cartel of doctors. There’s no free market option on the table.
…..
Kay
@Brachiator:
Biden isn’t a very good candidate. He never was, really, so I don’t know why this time would be different. Even with hugely benefiting from no one else in the middle lane for so long he’s still dropping. It’s just a poor showing anyway you look at it and he had every possible advantage going in. It may not matter. The “anybody but Trump” may carry the day no matter the nominee.
Mary G
I know, she worked for hILLARY’S FAILING CAMPAIGN AND SHOULD STAY HOME AND KNIT. Sorry for all caps, not yelling, just lazy.
Cacti
@matt:
Now add “of Republicans” after “elected group”.
Still feel that way?
Kent
One important point that I rarely see mentioned is that Warren’s Medicare for all would replace state-Administered Medicaid programs. Most red states do their damned best to shame and make life difficult for the poor, through various work requirements and complicated shitty qualification requirements for medicaid. All of the less aggressive “public option” plans would more or less leave Medicaid in place with the sketchy expansions around the US while providing a public option for middle class exchange participants.
Warren’s Medicare for All plan (and Sanders) would eliminate state-administered Medicaid and put all the poor on the same plan as all other Americans. I think this would be an enormous step for equity and take medical care rationioning out of the hands of horrible GOP run red states.
I don’t necessarily think it is going to happen. But on paper it would be a HUGE improvement for pretty much everyone on medicaid in a red state and that is many many millions of Americans, many of them of color.
BR
@trollhattan:
I think Mayor Pete would be really easy to characterize as a Romney type of corporate raider if he were the candidate — both by a third-party candidate on the left and by the right. His management consulting background will have more than enough stories to use in that regard — none of which seem to have been unearthed yet by the press since he hasn’t been a front runner, but they will in good time. And I’m not sure his personality would really enable him to combat that image — he doesn’t have the just-plain-folks way of speaking like Biden.
MJS
I do not believe Joe can win. He sounds old, he has absolutely botched what should have been a golden opportunity Trump provided to him, and his gaffes will be elevated by the media to be the equivalent of Trump’s. I also do not believe Mayor Pete can win for the reason you cite, among others. I’m really hoping at this point that Harris can rebound, and maybe televised hearings will benefit her, as she’s able to comment on them from the perspective of a former prosecutor.
the Conster
@matt:
I don’t know what to tell you, except that our only hope for anything good to happen is to get rid of every Republican. Unfortunately, even here in bluest blue Massachusetts and in liberal downtown Boston I’m surrounded by MAGAs.
catclub
@MJS:
someone in the morning thread pointed out that at this point in 2007, Obama was a distant third behind Hillary and Edwards. There is still lots of time.
the Conster
@Kent:
SCOTUS will never let this happen.
Kay
@trollhattan:
I think anyone in the middle lane can reasonably believe that it makes sense to stay in since Biden’s dropping. That’s their opening. IMO he had to really dominate there (and he had it all to himself) and that would have put the other centrists off – Mayor Pete saw the opening first but he’s not the only one. Klobachur could still do something with it.
Kent
@Cacti:
The current Medicare program for those over 65 has been running more or less smoothly since Trump and the GOP took power in 2016. As is Social Security. They have been trying to sabotage the complicated subsidized private insurance obamacare exchanges. But the government run programs seem to be doing fine. And I have a hard time imagining a worse GOP president than Trump
MJS
@catclub: I hope you’re right, but I think there’s a difference in the trajectories, i.e., Obama didn’t lose support and then gain it back. But I may be wrong about that.
Brachiator
@Kay:
Totally agree. But Biden enjoyed a good deal of support because he was a familiar face, and because of his connection to Obama. It will be interesting to see if this drop in popularity in consistent in other polls. I thought that Biden would continue along in or near the lead for a few more months.
I am still not hot for any particular candidate. But I think that someone has to rise to the top and make people think, “Yeah, that’s who I want.” There has to be a positive desire to see someone win. The “anybody but Trump” sentiment only works for diehard political junkies.
Cacti
@Kent:
In 2008, we all had a hard time imagining a worse GOP president than George W. Bush.
Immanentize
People were arguing it’s all pie in the sky. How can this fine thing happen? Too good to be true! Too expensive! Can’t be done.
Warren says, I will come up with a plan.
People then complain, where is the detailed plan? Show me your plan, dammit!
Warren shows a plan. And it is not just rainbows and unicorns. It is a serious plan.
To many that — politically — looks like promise made, promise kept. Voters care whether they can trust a politician to keep promises. Warren offers the voters a choice — You can keep your shit sandwich if you like it (extending the restaurant metaphor from above) or we can choose to work toward a better day. And, demagogues gonna demagogue. Always. I’ve stopped worrying about Bobby Lee.
Kay
@MJS:
It’s not his fault but it is his problem- there is resistance to him among certain Democrats because he is gay. I have already heard it. I think we erred in 2016 by not recognizing the sexism among Democrats in 2016 and I don’t want to do that again with anti-gay bigotry this time. We have to admit this exists in our party. Just like we all had to come to terms with the racists in the D party re: Obama we now have to do that on some other issues.
schrodingers_cat
TBH Massachusetts plan worked better than ACA exchanges. While red states may have benefited we didn’t. Regression to the mean is not good if your state is doing better than the average. I am not in a mood for structural change. I want to stanch the bleeding first then we can start with a new exercise plan.
*Awaiting brickbats*
ETA: Rs are trying to kill the ACA IRL. It was saved by McCain’s vote. I don’t think we are ready for M4A.
Immanentize
@Kay: @Brachiator:
I think that this Ukraine focus and the Hunter Biden stuff is hurting Biden more than perhaps we care to admit.
Chyron HR
@MJS:
No, the Bidenbros have borrowed Bernie’s 2016 messaging of, “Democrats are too dumb to vote for the right candidate and that’s why we lost.”
Chief Oshkosh
@Ella in New Mexico: That’s been my experience, too. VA care is fantastic wrt doctor/nurse/staff engagement and many leading-edge approaches. What absolutely is upper management at the federal level, and in some cases, regional and institution level. And yes, Republicans forever and Trumpites especially, are starving the system.
Kay
@Brachiator:
Agree 100% on Democratic voters. That’s a requirement for our voters. “Anybody but” didn’t work for our voters in ’16 and it didn’t work in 2004 either. They’re a pain in the ass but they vote FOR not against.
Kent
@the Conster:
This isn’t really an issue for SCOTUS. Medicaid Expansion was, to the extent that the Federal Government was arm-twisting states to run the program. It was a tortured argument and wrong, but still a possible argument. Medicare for All would simply be a Federally run program like the existing Medicare program. States would not be involved. So no real Federalism issues. There is really no possible constitutional argument for how medicare for ages 65+ is constitutional but medicare for under 65 is not.
I don’t think it is likely to get through Congress anyway. But i’m just pointing out that it does have advantages not frequently mentioned here or elsewhere.
MJS
@Kay: Agreed – that’s what I was alluding to with “among other reasons.”
Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot
@laura koerber:
I’m mostly with you on your take here. Except, my impression of Warren as a candidate hasn’t changed much since this overlong primary season got serious (I guess, since the start of the debates, which I never watch).
I think she’s a good candidate, although flawed in her own particular ways. In my opinion, which is mine, this sort of uber-wonkiness (in service of the greater good, yes, of course, but still) is one of them, for the very reasons you stated. It’s definitely reflective of who she is, though, and she’s not going to change that, so if she becomes the Democratic nominee (right now I’m betting she will be) I believe the better strategy for those of us who want a Democratic president instead of a fascist one is to defend her to the hilt on pretty much fucking everything, this snowball’s-chance-in-hell M4A plan included.
We can piss and moan with each other on our little political blog-bubbles (I only go here and LGM anymore, with an occasional Roy Edroso thrown in) all we want; that’s right and good, I think (mostly, anyway). But to the wider real world I think an unstintingly unified front for our nominees in opposition to fascism is crucial, whatever their flaws. It’s how and why I volunteered for Sinema’s campaign here in AZ, to the horror of my purity-leftist young friends.
After over 50 years being involved in Democratic and related campaigns (like pushing against creationism in public school science classes) I am sick of the internecine sniping in public. I know we’re liberals, but in the war against American-style fascism, fuck nuance! (and, no, I’m not going to admit to my neighbors or any others I canvass that Warren’s M4A campaign platform-plank is nuanced, why do you ask?)
JPL
@Kay: I think his problems run deeper since he lost the support of blacks in South Bend, because they felt he deserted them.
Zzyzx
I’m Warren cynical but I liked this plan, mainly because I can see how it works. We start out paying much of what we do right now, add in the expected cost savings, and that covers the majority of it. I think it can be sold at some point… maybe not when the Republicans are trying to cut social security again but we’ll see.
Martin
@germy: FWIW I’ve got great health insurance and the whole system is garbage. Just because I have good outcomes doesn’t mean I’m happy passing the unbearably high costs down to the taxpayers that are paying for my policy.
I take Lauras point above, but nobody is actually working on fixing healthcare, from the roots. At some point we need to stop bankrupting the country for the sake of electability.
Immanentize
@Chief Oshkosh: I have discussed this with Kay and others before. If I was to build an incrementalist approach, I would start with the V.A. Then (like USAA insurance did) extend V.A. care to family and dependents. Then extend it to them for their lives, then their families. Until everyone asked/begged to be allowed to be included.
the Conster
@Immanentize:
i don’t know why trying to cover people who aren’t covered first isn’t the best and simplest to explain plan, while letting people keep what they have. It’s like everyone sat through the hours and days of weeks of hearings and watched the tea bag stapled to their tri-cornered hat idiots on their scooters holding misspelled signs about keeping the government out of their Medicare, then watched the 2010 midterms bloodbath for Dems that followed, and learned NOTHING about what a heavy legislative lift it is to get what we have, which has saved so many lives.
Part of Warren’s plan to raise some of the trillions is to pass immigration reform. It’s the Rube Goldberg complexity of it all that just seems like it’s baffling everyone with bullshit.
MJS
@Immanentize: That’s primarily Joe’s own fault. His response has been too little, too late. He should have been furious, and should have been pointing out the hypocrisy of Trump 24/7.
Immanentize
@the Conster: It may be the best path. In fact, like you, I guess it really is probably the only politically viable path. But I don’t think people will throw her to the curb because she is trying — in a primary — for something big and aspirational. And, she has shown it is possible. That type of argument changes peoples minds. I just don’t see it as the huge political death plunge others are predicting. This is what primaries are for.
Brachiator
@Immanentize:
You might be on to something here. The GOP and Fox News have been very good at lying about this and blowing it out of proportion, while ignoring and downplaying the open corruption of Trump and his vile brood.
But also Biden looked old in the last debate and whenever he is on TV. And his gaffes don’t help. And Sanders’ heart attack makes people take a second look at Joe as well. Didn’t he say something about not committing to a second term if he won? That ain’t helpful. People want a president who can go the distance if possible.
Kent
@Cacti: I think it is still an open question as to whether Trump is worse than Bush. A lot of the horrors of the Bush Administration seem to have vanished down the memory hole. Bush certainly has a lot more blood on his hands. And the DHS and ICE storm troopers were born under Bush.
Trump is certainly the most corrupt and unethical president of all time. But I’m not yet convinced he as done more lasting damage than 8 years of Bush.
MisterForkbeard
Warren frames this as a binary choice, which it isn’t – there are a lot of other choices. It’s not “implement this or nothing changes”. I know why she’s doing it, but it still bugs triggers my engineering sense. :)
The dumb thing is that M4a is a vastly better system than we have but it’s a scary transition so we can’t really run on it. I feel like Harris’ plan (actually let everyone onto current medicare + make a few changes) goes over a lot better, but she’s stalled until she can get another breakout moment.
Citizen Alan
@Cacti:
This infuriates me. The jobs people are talking about losing are overwhelmingly jobs in billing offices. OF COURSE, those jobs will go away when doctors are no longer responsible for billing and for arguing endlessly with private insurance companies over whether a service or drug is covered! It reminds me of those idiots who are offended at the existence of self-checkout lanes at the grocery story because its “stealing jobs” away from lumpenproles who will apparently starve to death if they aren’t making subsistence wages ringing up my groceries and bagging them for me. It’s the fucking Luddites all over again.
Kay
@Immanentize:
This is not very generous of me and it’s partly because of the Trump Family, but I don’t want to hear so much about Joe Biden’s family, good or bad. I think he has to talk about voters. I know he loves his family. I don’t want to get dragged into it to the extent that he seems to be insisting I do because it isn’t just his son. He also talks about his father too much. It’s not a reason he should be president. The biographical connection to policy is fine and they all do it but that can’t be all he says. It’s not actually extraordinary to love your own children. He’s not alone in that.
Immanentize
@MJS: I agree — which is evidence of his troubles as a candidate. I’m just saying the smear and smoke have taken their toll.
Barbara
@schrodingers_cat: I have no idea what kind of plan you are in, and in general I agree with your sentiments, but I think you need to understand how much current insurance designs — even under the ACA — leave people exposed to catastrophic financial events. “High deductible health plan” is a fancy way of imposing costs on the sickest people. I don’t like Medicare because it is stuck in a 1965 conception of what insurance is supposed to work like, and it needs to change, but the fragmentation we live with now burdens so many people.
BR
@Martin:
Yeah, it’s like what I said — I have had what’s supposedly top-of-the-line health insurance, for years. And it’s still terrible. I’ve also by accident experienced the UK NHS (got sick when I was in London once) — it was a breeze. While Medicare for All wouldn’t be as seamless as NHS, it’d be better than my current reality of knowing that for anything major I’m going to be spending some quality time shouting at the insurance company’s automated phone robot.
JMS
I’m not going to worry about this plan happening because it won’t happen, not like this. Even Dems won’t pass it, I’m sure. So the questions is, is it something true believers are excited about even if it won’t happen (like Trump’s Wall). If not, then stop talking about it.
Immanentize
@MisterForkbeard:
Oh, I can see why it does, but it tickles my lawyer argument funny bone because it can be so effective.
MisterForkbeard
@catclub: Harris is my preferred candidate, but she gets massively unfair coverage like Hillary did. She consistently gets results, has good plans and has lots of very good media moments but none of it gets covered.
I think she’s stuck in the 3-8% range unless she has another breakout moment.
germy
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/11/elizabeth-warren-medicare-for-all-funding-plan.html
Kent
@Brachiator: I think it is a combination of Biden’s age, the Ukraine thing, and his lackluster performance so far in terms of making a compelling case for his campaign and his presidency. He only had one real argument in his favor and that was his supposed “electability” Once that notion started to get peeled back there was really no other compelling case for why Biden.
I doubt many of his supporters could even finish the sentence:
“We need Joe Biden because he will….”
And that’s a problem once he is no longer perceived and the most electable front runner.
MisterForkbeard
@Immanentize: Oh, it absolutely agrees with my “How do I present this project to the executives” sense :)
Kay
@JPL:
That may be true but I haven’t hear it. I have heard it from white male Democrats in this county and they’re not just “Democrats”- voters- they have actual roles in the party which is what shocked me- the casualness of it. It’s mean jokes, but jokes with a real edge.
Immanentize
@Kay: That is a really great point — Biden is being sunk on his strength (Thanks, Rove). His love and closeness to his family — which he parades around every opportunity — increases the back of the mind suspicion that he really might do something shady to help his kids.
catclub
@Kent:
mediCAID expansion also had no federalism issues. IF it had been a standalone bill: “This is now how the federal part of Medicaid works, take it or leave it (ALL).” Roberts pretended otherwise since it was part of the ACA.
Immanentize
@MisterForkbeard: She has always been my favorite candidate as well. And she is really tough, too. I think Warren is too. Both feel incorruptible to me too which is, in itself, a very big thing these days and may be a prime issue in the booth next November.
Kay
@Barbara:
So true. Have you seen the health insurance for health insurance yet? Incredible. It’s another policy to cover the costs your health insurance doesn’t. You have to buy that too. I already see tons of health insurance + HSA. This is yet another payment mechanism.
gene108
@JPL:
Not an unfounded concern. If we reduce healthcare spending or reduce prescription drug spending, etc.
Less money going to an industry usually leads to some type of job loss.
How disruptive single payer will be to the existing providers, and the impact, is something we need to plan for.
We failed at this, with regards to trade agreements, and it soured both liberals and conservatives on them.
Immanentize
@germy:
Damn! That is a lot of sawbacks.
Quaker in a Basement
I have to admit the “put $11 trillion back in the pockets of working Americans” part of this surprises me. Right now, that $11 trillion is part of the funding stream for our health care system. This plan says we can cut funding by 20 percent and still cover more people. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I’m eager to hear more.
Kent
@MisterForkbeard:
I like Harris too. But to be fair, Klobuchar, Castro, Booker, and Beto aren’t getting much coverage either. I don’t think it is necessarily unfair. Warren has just done a MUCH better job of capturing the free media coverage, as has Mayor Pete. If Harris doesn’t start gaining traction I’m sure we will see a lot of post mortems of her campaign. But haven’t really seen much that I would call “unfair coverage”.
Immanentize
@MisterForkbeard: Glad to hear it!
Marcopolo
@catclub:
Did whomever said this in the morning thread show their homework? By this time in 2007 Obama was solidly in second place, it was Edwards who was slowly fading into oblivion.
Here’s CNN for Nov 2-4, 2007, for example:
Nationwide opinion polling for the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries
For someone who is not in the top 4-5 at this point time really is running out, though I’d agree that Biden’s support, if he continues to fade will go somewhere.
p.a.
Anyone giving EW credit for maybe doing a little background research/focus group-ing on this issue and finding out it’s not an electoral bomb? NOT AT ALL saying I know this is fact, but she does seem pretty bright; maybe she (or those in her inner circle) are on this for a reason.
Quaker in a Basement
@Immanentize: It is a lot, but it’s about 2% of the total cost of the American health care system over those same years.
Kent
@Citizen Alan:
There are a shitload of people around the country working in medical coding for insurance companies, many of them out of home offices. I have a friend down the street who does this for a living. He has a big workstation with multiple monitors in his basement and sits there all day reading medical files and assigning complicated billing codes that either confirm or deny coverage for hundreds of people each day. Tedious job and the complexity of it is why people get so screwed by insurance companies.
These jobs would mostly vanish under medicare for all. But there would still need to be many many people hired to track and audit the coding done by doctors to prevent fraud.
schrodingers_cat
@Barbara: Why do you think I am not aware?And I haven’t faced uncertainty due to precarious health insurance?
Kay
@Immanentize:
One of the things I loved about the Obamas was they weren’t so needy. They were complete people. They didn’t demand we recognize that they love their family. Michelle Obama’s mother lived in the White House. I think I saw one article about her.
I feel like the horrid Trump clan are just demanding I be involved in their gross family and I don’t want to be. I don’t want to deal with Hunter. I want it to be none of my business.
Immanentize
@Quaker in a Basement: I know, relatively — but I just meant a lot for a non-designated multi-year military slush fund. Money hanging out so you can go to a casino, basically. DOD can’t spend all they are budgeted directly every year. Even after they go to great lengths to waste, squander, and discard.
schrodingers_cat
@<a hre@p.a.: It will play well in the primaries not so sure about the general election.
Betty Cracker
@Citizen Alan: The linked hack is Tommy Christopher, an alleged liberal who will adopt any wingnut meme wholesale if he can use it to smear Warren.
Cacti
@Kent:
Trump has laid out the blueprint for a fascist takeover of our national government. Someone more intelligent and devious than him will use it to try and finish what he started.
the Conster
@p.a.:
She tied herself to Bernie, and wants his supporters. She got away with a lot of aw shucks meemaw and peepaw bullshit until Pete and Amy called her out, and then she had to put up or concede the M4All field all to Bernie. Now they’re both tied to that mast.
Kay
@Immanentize:
Because we don’t know Hunter. It’s not, in fact, personal to us. Ideally we wouldn’t be put in a position where we have to defend Hunter, this adult man, given that we don’t know him and will safely assume Joe Biden loves him as much as every other parent loves their kids. I’m stipulating to “you love your kids”. I’m giving all of them that.
Citizen Alan
@Cacti:
I didn’t. I understand why Obama felt obligated to “look forward instead of back” but I was certain by the end of 2009 that the next GOP president would be significantly worse than GWB. Bear in mind, while Shitgibbon clearly seems to be the nightmare scenario, every other Republican who had ever been a front runner in 2016 would have been immensely damaging to the country,
Kathleen
@Brachiator: Medicare was not perfect when passed. But because of functioning Congress improvements were made over the years. ACA never had that chance. My opinion is that assuming we have House and Senate goal should be to improve ACA. Not fair to just ditch it. If we don’t have House or Senate it won’t matter – moot point.
Mary G
Warren’s Trojan
horse:the Conster
Apparently Warren’s M4All calculator is broken. Remember when the ACA sign up website was glitchy, and it was days and days of press coverage.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: THIS! It would be infuriating to watch the Trumps divide, dismantle, cheat, steal, etc., under any circumstances, but the demands that we acknowledge their greatness and sacrifice make it that much more unbearable. No more needy fucks. Wanted: a competent, complete human being who doesn’t require my emotional support to do his or her fucking job, just like everyone else who works for a living.
MisterForkbeard
@Kent: Eh. Harris gets a lot of weird crap. The most recent example with the 20/20 foundation giving Trump an award is a good example.
What happened: The 20/20 foundation gave Trump a civil rights award and were supposed to participate in a candidate forum later that day centering on civil rights. Harris flat-out said she wouldn’t go if they were involved as they were whitewashing Trump’s record and would have her own event. The forum capitulated, ousting the group in question. Harris agreed to attend their event after her terms were met.
What the media reported: Harris threw a tantrum over a bipartisan group giving an award, saying she wouldn’t go to the event they were part of. She took it back and gave in later that day, saying she would come to the event after all.
It’s the same thing Hillary had, where every story is given the worst possible interpretation, frequently at odds with the facts.
Immanentize
@Kay: One way to help prevent us from having too care about the kids is “don’t put them into the administration!” JFK got tons of shit for making RFK his Attorney General. It’s too bad we didn’t get anti-nepotism rules then.
Kay
@Immanentize:
This sounds mean but I have grown children so I feel like I can say it- these people aren’t “kids”. Hunter is a grown man. I don’t actually think Joe Biden is responsible for him but Joe Biden seems determined to insist he is, so I must agree. This whole thing is just so far off the rails with “Ivanka” and “Jared” and the rest I don’t even know what to think. It makes me yearn for the Obama’s who had actual kids. Children. Not these giant adult people we’re calling children because they have parents.
James E Powell
@Marcopolo:
What’s interesting for us in 2019 about those 2007 polls is to see Joe Biden at 4% at the end of October 2007. He may be a great guy with brains, experience, and a fan base in the Beltway, but he is not a good campaigner.
Marcopolo
@Immanentize: Thanks for laying it out like this. I heartily agree with you.
Dream Big, Fight Hard.
As a realist, I do not expect M4A (or Universal Coverage if you don’t like M4A) to happen as a result of the 2020 election or the 2024 election or the 2028 election. But if M4A or Universal Coverage is the goal line we are driving for then maybe we get there sometime in the 2030s or 2040’s. In the meantime we need to move the conversation towards that end and Warren putting out a well-thought-out plan for accomplishing it is a huge part of that.
The fight for Women’s Suffrage ran from 1848 to 1920. The fight for Civil Rights was also generational (and based on the current occupant of the WH is still being fought). The Union movement (fight for worker’s rights) was won over the course of decades. This is the mindset we need to bring to all of these challenges–especially including Climate Change, which is existential.
Anyway, I don’t know who the D nominee will wind up being. IA is a murky 4 way atm and I believe whomever wins there will get a lot of momentum out of it. But I really hope whoever winds up being the nominee does not go all mealy-mouthed when it comes to talking about what our aspirations are on the big issues: Climate Change, Healthcare, Wealth Inequality, Immigration, Criminal Justice reforms, etc…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@schrodingers_cat:
My feeling, too
I’m listening to the O’Bros most recent podcast, and the last half-hour is illuminating. After ’16 they pretty much went all in on Big Bold Ideas, sorta kinda joined the Bernie-woudlv’e-won caucus. A few months ago they did an intensive poll of Wisconsin, and Favreau is now doing focus group in WI, FL, PA and AZ, and I would say they’re sobering up a little. Tommy Vietor– who was one of Obama’s lead organizers in Iowa for the ’08, sounds underwhelmed by what he’s seeing on the ground, especially for Biden, and Warren being the exception.
the Conster
On Liz’s Big Day, Pelosi weighs in to say not so fast.
I trust Nancy.
Immanentize
@Mary G: The “Just 2 cents” slogan is brilliant. And her dog is sweet (the real one)
trollhattan
@Kent:
IMO he was crafty in holding out so long and letting natural interest grow, so he could measure his odds before committing. Obama admin nostalgia was probably the biggest driver. Then, 2019 Joe shows up on the campaign trail, not 2008 Joe. It’s been his main problem ever since, that other guy is mostly gone.
Cacti
@Citizen Alan:
There was about a thimble’s worth of difference between the lot of them on policy.
What sets the orange one apart has been that his Presidency has led a sustained assault on every existing institutional and constitutional norm of the Executive branch, and its interaction with the other branches of our national government. And thus far, he’s done so with zero accountability or personally adverse consequences. If he wins a second term, expect every future GOP POTUS to follow his example.
Immanentize
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That is how elections are won. Organizing on the ground.
Well, that and opposing voter suppression.
chopper
@Immanentize:
i don’t know what’s more sad, the idea that we can’t have nice things because goopers are gonna demagogue over the money, or the idea that we can’t have nice things because democrats are afraid goopers are gonna demagogue over the money.
O. Felix Culpa
@BR:
Hear, hear! Maybe some folks haven’t experienced just how bad insurance companies are, even with the best of plans. I’m not wedded to M4A, but I am strongly in favor of universal healthcare and making insurance companies largely irrelevant.
Kay
@Immanentize:
Right agree, but we’re not going to be able to regulate the adult children earning off the name because I think that’s illegal- I don’t think we can regulate family members outside government :)
Although we should be able to shame them. And we will.
Sure Lurkalot
@Cacti: Republicans are currently attempting to have the ACA deemed unconstitutional. Even if that attack fails, think they will just stop trying to repeal or undermine it? Hell, think calling it Obamacare was a compliment? The system designed by the Heritage Foundation was deigned a socialist takeover.
And what is the public option? The term is as variable as M4A. Candidates who tout the public option should explain what they mean by it. Who qualifies to use it? Would it essentially become a high risk pool?
topclimber
@guachi: Democrats will have just impeached a President in large part to reassert the Constituional power of Congress. So you think they are going to have a hard time explaining that Congress is the branch that passes legislation, and no they are not a rubber stamp for a Democratic President when it comes to health care?
germy
Major Major Major Major
Warren’s decision to jump blindly on Bernie’s “platinum insurance for all!” bandwagon continues to not work out for her. The financing plan is not super workable IMO—tripling the wealth tax is actually a big deal! And that’s not the only structural change she’s proposing in order to avoid raising taxes on everybody. The finance plan is unrealistic because the M4A plan is unrealistic. It’s off-brand for her. I don’t like it.
Citizen Alan
@MJS:
Plus, there’s the fact that not a single Republican has come to Joe Biden’s defense after the Ukraine story broke. Nearly the entire party has embraced the theory that the whole impeachment imbroglio is really about whether Joe’s son is a crook and whether Joe is a crook for covering for him. Which makes Joe look like an utter fool for his stated belief that he can get Republicans to support his agenda once in office.
Kent
@Cacti:
Really it was Bush who did all of that. Bush leveraged a war into a 2nd term. He put into place all of the structural tools from DHS to the surveillance state to torture and a compliant DOJ letting it all happen. Yes, Barr is horrid. But so were Ashcroft and Gonzales. And it was Bush who did the wholesale politicalization of the DOJ through this attorney firing scandal. And then we can’t even begin to compare Cheney to Pence in terms of fascism. And Bush put into place just as many right wing wacko judges as Trump.
Immanentize
@chopper: Zackly. Sad and Sadder still, but in what order?
O. Felix Culpa
@Brachiator:
There are many models of providing universal healthcare and I’m agnostic as to which one we use, as long as we get there sooner rather than later. M4A is one possible unmagical answer. Like you, I haven’t delved into Warren’s proposal deeply enough yet to render an informed opinion on its feasibility. I’d be ok with fixing the ACA, but I’m concerned that approach won’t get us what we need quickly enough. People are dying now due to unaffordable insulin, which is absurd in a country as rich and “advanced” as ours. One example of our broken system, but there are plenty others.
BR
@Major Major Major Major:
I honestly think her strategy is to get the non-diehard Bernie voters and then present an incremental plan to an eventual Medicare for All during the general election.
Kay
@germy:
We have a large (unionized) employer here who had so much trouble with health care costs they started a clinic. It’s for all primary care needs – it is popular with their employees because it is easy, so much so that the local police agency bought in. But you have to ask- why is a candy company running a clinic? Why is this country so insane that they have to do this? Wouldn’t they rather just make candy?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: our day-to-day language doesn’t really have a common word for “adult children”. I guess we could just say “trump family”. Large Adult Children is kind of fun to drive the point home in a couple of way, but it doesn’t roll off the tongue or keyboard.
as I’ve said before, what bugs me most about the Hunter thing is that Joe– whom I like more as a candidate, I think, than most people here– was so sanctimonious about the Clinton’s buck-raking. At least they were booking those speeches based on their own achievements.
BR
@Brachiator:
There are lots of ways that countries get to universal coverage and some are like Medicare for All. But what all of them seem to have is a far more regulated insurance industry, to the extent that they are like a utility. We’re nowhere near that today.
Citizen Alan
@Kent:
I wonder how many people presently doing such work for insurance companies would be thrilled beyond measure to transition neatly into a job with federal benefits.
Immanentize
@Kay: Denunciation (shame) is a potent tool … against those capable of feeling shame. Trump and family feel shame profoundly. They are the thinnest skinned people in public service ever. It’s just their reactions to feeling shame are so un-ordinary. Contrary, in fact, to how they ought to act — what they ought to do — in response.
japa21
I will vote for whomever gets the nomination. However, in the primary, anybody who creates a binary choice like this or even uses the term Medicare for All is automatically off my list. Specially since so many details are still missing.
1. What will the reimbursement rates be for medical services? If the answer is medicare’s current rates, it will mean major problems and increased doctor shortages. Hospitals will close, clinics will go under.
2. What will the benefit structure be and how will it differ from current Medicare which is average insurance at best?
3. Why use a term “Medicare” when you what your are talking about doesn’t resemble Medicare (which from what limited info I have neither Warren’s nor Sanders’ plan does)?
These are just 3 of about 25 questions I would have that I haven’t seen addressed as of yet.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I don’t remember him being sanctimonious about the Clintons but it isn’t just Hunter. It’s two of his brothers too, so he really had some nerve going after them. His brother Frank is a charter school scammer. There are you tube videos of his “pitch”, unfortunately.
japa21
@Citizen Alan: That would depend on a lot of things, such as would their years of service in their current jobs transfer over for pension purposes?
BR
@japa21:
I can’t say for sure, but I was skimming Warren’s full-length plan this morning and it has answers to those questions from what I remember.
Marcopolo
@MisterForkbeard: While I think your recounting is a little simplistic, I think the major thing about this story is it just happened and disappeared, all in about half a day, because of all the other crap that is going on. It is really hard to even get earned media in this political cycle. However, I did read some favorable coverage of Harris showing leadership by calling out this issue & forcing the group that gave Trump the award to pull out.
Still, I do agree that if your last name isn’t Biden, Buttigieg, Sanders, or Warren you are having a difficult time getting your message out right now. Compare the news environment now in the nominating process to what was going on in 2015. We really are in fucknutsville and it sucks up a lot of the news airtime.
Immanentize
@O. Felix Culpa: The insulin problem drives me nuts. Nationalizing critical drug production would certainly be a constitutional remedy there.
Major Major Major Major
@BR: I hope so. Trying to attract Sanders supporters does not attract me.
trollhattan
@germy:
So would Bezos’ ex! Fair is fair.
Mary G
WaPo conservative columnist concern trolling by comparing Warren to McGovern:
the Conster
@BR:
Yes, the private insurers in the UHC countries that mandate coverage are non-profits, I believe. That’s what the ACA tried to do to thread the needle – force everyone into the arms of insurers in exchange for them accepting caps on tax write offs for CEO pay, covering pre-existing conditions, health care ratios, etc. Forcing them to become non-profits may be an easier legislative lift than putting them out of business.
trollhattan
@Mary G:
E.Warren is well-remembered for her heroics piloting USAAF bombers over Europe.
Major Major Major Major
@Mary G:
…film at eleven
Immanentize
@Major Major Major Major: The strategy is working for Warren — I just read an article that said that in Iowa, where Bernie won 85% of all votes of people under 25 (I think that was the age) that group is now more pro-Warren than Sanders and is more widely divided (at this point) among the candidates.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I just think it’s important to reclaim the idea that people grow up. It would be easier to do if they would establish separate identities from their parents and their parents aren’t really helping with that by constantly insisting we defer to their love of their children. Stipulated! Asked and answered! Moving on!
Marcopolo
@japa21: I invite you to do some research/reading up. I suspect a lot of your questions might be answered if you looked at the plans various candidates have put out so far. The plan Warren dropped this morning is particularly comprehensive. I’d add that starting your research now not only means you’ll hopefully figure out what you like but you’ll also be able to intelligently answer other folks questions. Its a win win.
the Conster
@Major Major Major Major:
Pelosi came out today and put Liz back in a box. I trust Nancy’s judgment and sense of what her caucus needs to do to keep their seats.
BR
@Major Major Major Major:
I agree — I don’t care whether she appeals to Sanders supporters or not. But I think she knows she’d get wiped out by the deluge of Bernie diehards attacking her all day (much worse than now) if she were to have backed off of her support for Medicare for All. As it stands, she and Bernie stood tall on it (whether you see that as a plus or minus) so the voters who are unsure about Bernie but are on the left might back her instead. I also think it’s authentically what she supports re: policy, but I’d bet she has an incremental rollout plan waiting for the general.
BR
@the Conster:
I’m not sure making them non-profits is enough given that a lot of hospitals are non-profits (in name only) and charge crazy amounts and raise their prices constantly while paying unreasonable salaries to their CEOs and upper-level admins.
Ksmiami
@laura koerber: I think nominating her would’ve political suicide as much as I think she’s smart etc
Mary G
These scum must be eradicated:
catclub
@Kent: Come sit by me. I annoyed Betty Cracker by pointing this out too often. Be careful out there.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: mostly that’s behind the scenes gossip, and it’s not uncommon among Dems outside Clinton-world. The one time it went public was when an anonymous source (cough) told Maureen Dowd about the private conversations between Biden and his son during Beau’s last days.
ETA: @Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Clintons’, god dammit! Now I can’t be sanctimonious about wild apostrophe’s.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I would be fine with Biden, BTW. I think he understands a broad range of issues and would be perfectly competent as a centrist Democrat. If his family are sort of grifter-y I think that’s forgivable as long as his administration has a strong ethical framework and they’re kept at an impersonal arm’s length. I don’t want any skeezy deals with brother Frank and public funds. No “access”.
Major Major Major Major
@the Conster:
?
J R in WV
@the Conster:
1. We have quite a few Vets posting here who have life saving medical care provided by the VA, which has the best cost/benefit ratio of any health care org in the US today. So, YES, we want national healthcare like the VA. We just need to keep the dirty little fingers of the Russo-Republicans out of the management of national healthcare.
2. Do you even know anyone who attended med school? You don’t get to pick where you go for your Residency training, the schools combine tells you where you’re going for your Residency and if you don’t like where they send you, you can just toss those years in med school and forget about being a doctor. Also, in your dreams are med schools not already subsidized! So much so wrong in so few words!
Once you complete your residency, today, now, you look for work like any other recent graduate of any training program. Pretty sure that won’t change much with M4A, just that there will be more jobs and more people making appointments to see doctors.
3. The Russo-Republicans are stealing our health care, our pensions, and our jobs. Only voting in Democratic people can save our pensions, our healthcare and our jobs.
Oh, yeah… I’m feeding a troll, sorry ’bout that!
Marcopolo
@Immanentize: One of the more crazy things in the IA poll that just came out is Biden is only winning 4% of voters under the age of 45 (Warren & Sanders are 1-2 for 18-29 & 30-44), but has substantial majorities for voters over 45 (45-64 & 65+).
Warren Leads Tight Iowa Race as Biden Fades, Poll Finds (NYT link so apologies if you can’t see it)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@catclub: there is very little trump does– from debasing institutions (McConnell on Garland) to voter suppression to demaoguing on immigration to racist- and homophobe-baiting politics– that didn’t have a solid place in Republican politics before trump, but no modern politician, not even Palin, had quite his levels of toxic charisma for the frightened and culturally resentful white voter, and irregular voter.
BR
@Kay:
I think the grifter-y nature of a lot of politician families was one of the small sub-plots that was most authentic in the West Wing, where Matt Santos had to support his brother, who was depicted not as a sad sack but more like a clueless and slimy grifter.
janesays
@Mike in DC: We’ll still be able to get judges through, and we can creatively push through one reconciliation-related bill per year.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Here’s the thing. I don’t think Joe Biden likes to fight. I don’t think that’s how he has operated and been successful. I think he cultivates relationships and makes friends, which is great. But to fight well you have to be comfortable doing it, and he’s not.
The nominee will have to fight and to a certain extent they will have to enjoy a fight. I think Warren does and Harris does and Mayor Pete does. Biden wants to be liked. It just won’t work.
O. Felix Culpa
@Immanentize:
I would support that.
BR
@Kay:
Biden may have done the country a huge favor even if he loses the nomination by drawing Trump’s fire.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: yeah, I don’t hate him at all, and if he could get some energy and speaking discipline (big IFs) I think he’d be the strongest candidate, and potentially have longer coattails, which is huge. I think he would if he could name good people in the executive and judiciary, and follow the progressive lead if we can make progressives strong enough in Congress.
germy
the Conster
@J R in WV:
Why anyone would want Republicans in control of anything to do with healthcare is beyond me. They’re not going anywhere.
O. Felix Culpa
@Immanentize:
What I’m seeing in my obscure neck of the woods is that Warren is drawing support from both former Berners and HRC supporters. Not universally, of course, but it seems significant based on my unscientific sample. Especially among women.
Kay
@BR:
I actually don’t think Biden gets enough credit for experience. He really is well-versed in just about everything and that matters. Everyone talked about Harris’ going after him on busing but if you read what he said he’s correct and he understands that issue well, so well he easily puts it in his own (halting) words in 30 seconds which I don’t think anyone else on that stage could do. He knows what he’s talking about.
But he doesn’t like to fight so he won’t go after Mayor Pete on it, although he should.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: I agree with all points– Mitch McConnel has no interest in comity and relationships, and I don’t know who’s left on either side from the clubby days Biden remembers so fondly and with highly questionable accuracy, St McCain was chortling about blocking President HRC’s nominees in the last days of the 16 campaign– except on Buttigieg. I don’t see him as much of a scrapper.
Maybe President Klobuchar would bounce a big binder of Minority Leader McConnell’s head.
Martin
@JPL: Yeah, but Warren seems to know it’s coming. I doubt 2m, but 1m is certainly possible. The transition will take some time, and that’ll attrition probably 25% of that number, just due to people retiring and moving onto other jobs naturally. It’s a real problem for certain states. CA won’t pull support over this, but there’s a few states where insurer side jobs are pretty important.
There’s a lot of employment that govt could fill in with the savings from this. I’m not sure the GOP ads will be terribly effective if Warren does this right.
chopper
@japa21:
b/c medicare is very popular. people really like it.
germy
@J R in WV:
the Conster
@Major Major Major Major:
Pelosi not a big fan of Medicare for All
PJ
@Kent: This. Can you imagine a worse Congress and President than what we had in 2017? Even then, they couldn’t get rid of Social Security and Medicare, and could only hobble the ACA.
For all the concern trolls whining about how an actual plan to insure every American will destroy the Democrats chances in 2020 – how many of you have insurance because of the ACA? How many of you have no insurance now? Despite the ACA, too many people I know (mostly younger people) have no insurance whatsoever right now. Depending on where you live, it is still too expensive for many people to pay premiums and pay rent and buy food for a family. And if there is a serious illness, co-pays and deductibles add up to thousands of dollars that people cannot afford to pay. Massive medical debt is a real thing, and most people are unaware that they can contest it. This is a reality for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Americans.
If you don’t think inexpensive, reliable health care for everyone is a winning message, I don’t know what to say.
schrodingers_cat
I don’t care what Rs think. I am not in favor of such a drastic change that’s also rapid. Healthcare represents 1/3 of the economy according to some estimates. This plan is going to change more than just healthcare.
the Conster
@chopper:
it’s very complicated and requires supplemental insurance that isn’t *free*, at all. I honestly think people are thinking of Medicaid, which is single payer.
Cacti
@Mary G:
Not even McGovern campaigned on a plan to end 2 million jobs.
guachi
@the Conster: Her arguments are my arguments, too. She just says it better.
BR
@Kay:
Oh, I agree Biden himself knows his stuff, especially on foreign policy. I was just talking about his family — I agree with you that I don’t want Biden+his kids and extended family as a package deal if we elect him. They’re probably nowhere near as bad as the Trumps or Bushes or lots of others, but you’re right that we’d need strong ethics rules to keep them on the outside.
Marcopolo
I have to go off and do real world stuff, but there are places doing polling on public sentiment related to healthcare/M4A. Here is polling from Data for Process (yes they are a lefty group so use as much salt as you want but I think their polling is quality work) for folks who would like some data to add to all the anecdata we tend to throw around on the blog.
Memo: Polling Medicare for All(executive summary)
Memo: Polling Medicare for All(full memo)
Chyron HR
@Major Major Major Major:
It’s so not working out that Biden has his supporters out arguing that the DNC must intervene and award him the nomination after he loses the primary, before the primary has even started.
Ksmiami
@O. Felix Culpa: uh no – Warren at this point doesn’t have a chance at winning and we have to win
O. Felix Culpa
@the Conster: Pelosi also didn’t sound like a big fan of impeachment…until she was. Not a perfect parallel, but I’m ok with smart people disagreeing on policy. It’s a process and can lead to good results when good people are involved.
J R in WV
@Kent:
I have never been on Medicaid, but I have friends who have been. One in particular recently had a copperhead snake bite in his garden, just a couple of weeks after another friend was bit in her garden, who had actual employment related health insurance.
Medicaid recipient got antibiotics, a tetanus vaccination and a few pain killers. Person with actual health insurance coverage got all those, AND an anti-venom injection, which billed at ~ $66,000 IIRC, give or take a grand.
Medicaid recipient might have gotten anti-venom if he was having life threatening symptoms, maybe. We need universal coverage.
When my wife spent 2 months in the hospital, part in ICU on a vent, then surgery to put in chest tubes, then more surgery to clean up a necrotizing infection in her lung, Medicare and her supplemental covered 99.9% of the large 6-figure bill. Everyone should have that kind of coverage from birth to death.
germy
@the Conster:
Should we have not created Medicare in the 1960s? Because we’ve had a few republican presidents and congresses since then. I’m trying to understand your argument.
chopper
@the Conster:
yes, but ‘medicaid for all’ doesn’t sound good, cause medicaid is ‘shitty insurance for the poors’.
chopper
@germy:
i know. by that reasoning government shouldn’t be involved at all in healthcare.
the Conster
@O. Felix Culpa:
No one knows more about getting health care legislation passed than Nancy Pelosi, and what it took to get the ACA passed, which it she did with the public option in it.
I trust her judgment, and not Liz’s.
O. Felix Culpa
@Ksmiami:
Agreed on your second point, which is why I’m working my ass off to organize. But your assertion that Warren doesn’t have a chance of winning seems…a little premature and unsubstantiated. I recall something similar being said about BHO, a few years ago.
mrmoshpotato
@Gelfling 545:
YES! This a bazillion times.
germy
@chopper:
“Keep your government hands off my Medicare.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@PJ:
McCain was voting out of spite, and he’s dead. The Rs have a larger majority in the Senate now than they did then, and odds are they will keep it. And even if we run the table, Joe Manchin will probably have effective veto over legislation
trouble is most people, especially frequent, reliable voters, have health insurance, and even if they hate it, they fear losing it more than they worry about their neighbors, even their family members, who don’t, especially if it means their taxes go up. And if they have socialized medicine, they either don’t know it, think they earned it, and either way don’t give a fuck.
O. Felix Culpa
@the Conster: I view Nancy and Liz both as shrewd and effective legislators. Liz originated and helped get the CFPB passed. No small potatoes. I am happy to have two of the smartest women in government debate policy. It’s a process that can lead to better outcomes. I have a feeling Liz and Nancy both understand that.
the Conster
@germy:
Medicare and Social Security are constantly under assault too, but that affects the GOP base so they’re way more careful about going after it. For the rest of us women, children and POC, there’s the Hyde Amendment, assaults on PP and the children’s health programs like SCHIP and Medicaid expansion since they can squeeze funding and tinker with regulations.
if they could get rid of Medicare and SS without losing all the olds who vote GOP, they would.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I said at the time that her meanness was an asset and I meant it. I think she’d destroy Trump and I were a middle laner I’d pick her. She’s one of the most popular senators in the country and people are like “ohhhh- where is SHERROD BROWN?” It’s sexism, probably.
I feel this is a problem centrists created for themselves. They are doing a bad job. If they want to knock out Bernie and Warren they have to do better than whining about Bloomberg saving them. They’re complacent! They thought they could put up Biden and call it a day. Okay, now what?
Mandalay
@O. Felix Culpa:
Using the yardstick of human perfection to make a point is never done in good faith.
Disgraced sexual predator Mark Halperin had this to say about his own conduct:
So those who aren’t perfect are unfit to form an opinion on Halperin’s behavior.
Taking a different tack, little Marco tweeted this in support of Trump last week:
So only Jesus is perfect, and Trump is just like the rest of us – no better and no worse.
And when Trump won the election the media kept pushing the line that his voters knew that Trump wasn’t perfect, but they knew what they were getting. Who cares what Trump actually does, as long as he’s honest about it?
All worthless arguments, and all made in bad faith.
germy
@Cacti:
Will they at least get to keep their rubber stamps that say “CLAIM DENIED” for sentimental purposes?
Maybe they can retrain and do something else in some other office? It doesn’t seem as drastic as asking coal miners to work in nursing homes.
Most of us have had to retrain over the decades, learn new skills, adapt, etc.
chopper
i’m imagining how powerful it’d be for all these insurance company people to march on washington to ‘save our jobs’. all holding up signs saying “we’re the ones who deny your claims for no reason!” and “we’re worthless middlemen and we vote!”
germy
@chopper:
Won’t someone think of the claim deniers?
Momentary
@germy: I have actual experience of best case USA (employer provided comprehensive Kaiser Permanente) and also of the NHS struggling to survive under sadistic austerity from successive horrible Conservative governments. The NHS is still light years better, it’s not even remotely a question. It’s jaw dropping to me to see the comments in this thread arguing for the USA status quo or just tiny incremental change. It’s like watching an argument against bathing or living in houses.
Barbara
@schrodingers_cat: Because a lot of people don’t and I don’t know you in real life. That’s why I said I didn’t know. Some people still have really generous insurance, but more and more people have substantial deductibles, like, over $5000 annually.
mrmoshpotato
@germy:
? Get it right. It’s “Tell the government to keep their damn hands off my Medicare! and social security!” ?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: Obama, partly due to his personality/charisma and partly because of the train wrecks all around him, could make centrism exciting. This current from of centrists can’t seem to do it.
And sexism. Sherrod Brown, scion of the upper middle class (I believe?) and an Ivy Leaguer, does a much better job of presenting as “regular guy” (used advisedly) than Klobuchar (also an Ivy Leaguer)
Betty Cracker
@catclub: Huh? I have no idea what you’re talking about. I do think Trump is worse than Bush in many ways, though Bush has the higher body count…so far. But obviously they’re both awful.
@the Conster: As long as we’re making appeals to authority, President Obama thinks M4A is a good idea.
@Momentary: “It’s like watching an argument against bathing or living in houses.” Perspective! You have it!
Barbara
@Citizen Alan: A really great point. Biden increasingly seems to me to be a politician that has been passed by the times.
Kay
I think evidence of consciousness of guilt will move the public. I think people both intuitively understand it and have personal experience with it. They knew it was bad.
The congressional “knowing” interests me. How both Republicans and Democrats were looking for that funding release for months and asking about it. Because they all knew too, that something hinky re: Ukraine was going on. Guiliani was telling us on tv and all congress had to do was put two and two together. Republicans must have been shitting their pants for months.
Major Major Major Major
@Chyron HR: because everybody knows that things other candidates do and say are determined entirely by Warren’s tax proposals! Her support for this particularly dumb M4A proposal will be a net liability when it becomes a focused attack on her. She didn’t look good in the last debate and it will only get worse.
germy
@Momentary: At the very least, if we’re going to negotiate with conservatives and centrists, why not start with a bold plan? And then when they whittle it down, we at least achieve something.
Who begins a negotiation with a compromise?
chopper
@Momentary:
oh look everyone, a ‘bather’ decided to show up. oooh, here to lecture us on ‘hygiene” or whatever it is you guys believe in? i roll around in my own filth just like my grandpappy did!
Cacti
@germy:
And liberals wonder why they lose winnable elections all the time.
mrmoshpotato
@chopper: @germy: Oh won’t someone pleeeeease think of the multi-millionaire CEO fat cats!
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Sherrod’s father was a doctor. He was a loved doctor though- one of those. During Sherrod’s last campaign they had this young man who gave a testimonial about how Sherrod’s father removed an arrow he had been shot with when he was a kid. So like a HERO doctor :)
And Klobachur must be charming someone because she’s a very popular senator. I like her because she’s mean. She’ll need that.
PJ
@the Conster: Pelosi has never run for President. She works with the nuts and bolts of getting legislation passed. Any plan by a Presidential candidate will have to go through a tortured legislative process to get enacted, and much will depend on the actual makeup of Congress, so regardless of whatever any candidate is proposing, the end result will be something different. But it’s far better to put forth the plan you want, and show how it can be done, and fight for it and end up with something less, than to put forth no plan or to make vague promises. People are excited and motivated to vote if they think it will actually benefit them, and “improving the ACA” isn’t going to move them. Putting forth a real plan for universal coverage will.
J R in WV
@germy:
Whoa!! Count me in, anything that takes away, hmm, add, subtract, divide, divide again, hmmm… ~2% of Jeff’s fortune, I’m on board with that!!
germy
@chopper:
Baths? C’mon! Who’s going to pay for all that water?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: think evidence of consciousness of guilt will move the public. I think people both intuitively understand it and have personal experience with it. They knew it was bad.
I think this is why the use of professional counsel– for longer than five bloody minutes– is especially important, somebody who gets they’re making a case to someone like a juror, not for political junkies and twitter obsessives.
rikyrah
@the Conster:
This this this.
We have what we have because of Pelosi.
Chris Johnson
We sure do get the hard workin’ trolls on a Warren thread. I guess that’s how we know she can win ;) (joking/not even joking)
It looks like the Russians/Republicans want to see Biden the candidate because they’ve got enough bile in the tank for him, and enough accusations to fling. Last thing they want to see is someone who could, you know, govern. And make plans. Oooh fuck no, can’t have that. Deny it. It can’t even be real, for a thousand reasons.
Here’s the thing: if we need to run somebody who will not only make plutocrats impossibly rich, but will make the plutocrats MORE impossibly rich than the Republicans will, when the Republicans are fucking traitors and working directly or indirectly for Russian oligarchs who are literally able to pay people off and buy up the NYT’s editorial direction and hire armies of trolls to support literally everybody willing or unwilling who could throw a spanner in the works (ain’t just Gabbard, last time it was Bernie and I did not realize it for far too long, and now there are other Dems being ‘helped’)… IF we can only run someone who will work within that system as it stands and accept those situations at face value…
…then we’re fucked, and might as well just give up already.
IF.
That’s a mighty big if.
Turns out if you don’t HAVE to make the oligarchs here and in Russia richer and happier than even the Republicans can manage to do, if you don’t HAVE to appease them and do only what they will permit, then you can fucking well GOVERN.
Which is not that hard. It’s really not. For many years this country had governance. It’s so off the rails now because we’re under attack, in a relatively new form of warfare that we ourselves kind of invented (in places like Central America) and which has come back to roost. And it’s not good, and won’t do us any good, and it’s keeping us from simple, normal governance. Which is, as I said, not THAT HARD.
We have to remember that the attacks can and do come from every direction, whether directly from ‘lowercase mcnotfromaroundhere’ on a top-1000 blog, or all over twitter from ‘numbers at the end’ Very Real People, or literally from our biggest, most corrupt media entities.
Putting in sensible governance and less insane health care is not that fucking hard. Don’t believe for a second that it is. We are the worst in the world at this, and we are making a pile of oligarchs impossibly wealthy, and they’re incredibly politically active and operating out of pure, sociopathic self-interest. Don’t get sucked into scaremongering fed you by bad actors.
the Conster
@PJ:
I want to see the polling on that assertion – I’ve seen a recent poll that says that taking away private insurance isn’t popular by a large margin.
The Blog Dahlia
@Cacti:
“Running away from your principles in fear of Republican criticism” certainly never helped liberals win any elections either.
trollhattan
@Cacti:
He just wanted to end a super-popular war, that’s all.
the Conster
@Chris Johnson:
You have to win first before any changes can be made, and I think Liz will lose BIG and may bring the House down with her.
the Conster
@Betty Cracker:
If President Obama was running again on M4All I’d question his judgment too.
Martin
@japa21:
‘Medicare’ refers to single payer healthcare that all Americans know they have, or will have. It’s not a foreign concept, even if the details are poorly understood, and it’s popular. In a good Medicare for All plan, Medicare itself will be torn apart and rebuilt. There are now better ways to do a lot of things that the Medicare architects couldn’t have foreseen.
PJ
@the Conster: It’s going to be a fight between the people who are afraid of losing their employer-sponsored coverage, and the people who don’t have employer-sponsored coverage or who think their employer-sponsored coverage is a rip-off (anyone who pays the full amount for private insurance knows it’s a rip-off). Anyway, here’s a poll from MarcoPolo above:@Marcopolo: https://www.dataforprogress.org/memos/medicare-for-all-polling
Butter emails!!!
There’s an awful lot of rending of garments and gnashing of teeth about something that’s unlikely to pass or even seriously be considered. Want you see something more likely to be pushed hard legislatively? Wait for the transition plan too show up, because that’s probably more likely what we’ll see attempted pin a Warren first term.
Cacti
@The Blog Dahlia:
When was M4A a Dem Party principle? It’s the plan of the socialist crank from Vermont.
Mandalay
@the Conster:
I think there’s more to this than meets the eye. From your earlier link:
Pelosi surely has a personal preference on which approach would be best for ensuring that Americans get good health care. But I suspect that right now any words coming out of her mouth are more about winning seats in the House and the Senate in 2020 rather than aligning herself with any presidential candidate’s policies.
Raven Onthill
It is always good to see solidarity among the opponents of fascism.
PJ
@the Conster: Why do you think she is so popular now (1 or 2 in most polls for Democrats, and beating Trump in polls of random voters) if you think she will lose to Trump and bring down the House?
Ksmiami
@O. Felix Culpa: no appeal to middle America and not strategic enough for electoral college win – not to mention her appeal would be stronger if the economy was weaker but it’s not so far. I’m a nobody though so…
trollhattan
@Chris Johnson:
Great post. I’ll suggest the Central American comparison to what Trump and the Republicans are waging is better ascribed to the works of Slobodan Milošević. Just ask Steve Bannon.
trollhattan
@PJ:
Only by studying the underpants gnomes can we learn the true path.
PJ
@PJ: ETA: The “I’m afraid of losing my private insurance” people are the “I got mine, fuck you” people. Whether they decide the fate of the country has been what every election has been about (in my lifetime, anyway).
bupalos
@rikyrah: Wow some of the folks on here jumping into the weak defensive crouch are literally the last people I would have expected.
Just trying to be clear, the criticism here is that candidates shouldn’t have actual policy plans, because that allows Republicans to claim ridiculous things about those plans? It’s safer to to not have any policy plans, so they have to claim ridiculous things about the candidates themselves?
the Conster
@PJ:
She’s been given a lot of good press, and had very little pushback. Most Dem primary voters are still undecided, and her support is overwhelmingly white.
germy
@bupalos:
We need a tabula rasa candidate.
japa21
@Martin: That’s the point. Medicare is not a single payor health plan. It’s average coverage which requires so much more added in by the patient to make it good coverage. A lot of people will think of it is Medicare when what is being proposed is not Medicare. In fact, Medicare, when compared to most employer based coverage is the lesser of the two.
It just becomes very confusing when you end up saying “We call it Medicare for All but it in no way resembles Medicare.”
The polling might be okay right now, but wait until the GOP gets done destroying it.
Immanentize
@Mary G: My God that was the worst telling of what happened in the 1972 race ever. Nixon was crushing every Dem. McGovern was never going to win and I doubt he was actually ever in the lead as described. The economy under Nixon was strong and Vietnam was still on the ballot. But the difference between 1968 and ’72 was that casualties in ’72 were way down from the 1968 Vietnam craziness (won’t you please come to Chicago?). And Nixon had his secret plan…. Also, Nixon ran an anti-crime, racist campaign which was appealing to even Dem stongholds and groups like organized labor when organized labor still had a huge organizational power. Comparing now to then and Warren to McGovern is something only a Trump could believe.
trollhattan
@the Conster:
Ha-ha-ha-ha! Have you been in a yearlong coma? (You’ll never guess who won the Superbowl)
the Conster
@PJ:
“This debate has reemerged in the runup to 2020. Bernie Sanders’s Medicare-for-all plan, as currently written, would cancel every private insurance plan in the country. Polling suggests that’s lethal: When told that Medicare-for-all would abolish private insurance, respondents flip from favoring the plan by a 56 percent to 38 percent margin to opposing it by a 58 percent to 37 percent margin. These numbers, when combined with the Obamacare backlash and the Clintoncare experience, have underscored reformers’ view that a plan that takes away the private insurance people have and like is doomed.”
Ruckus
@Ella in New Mexico:
I use the VA and I had an issue a couple months ago. My boss drove me to the VA hospital because I couldn’t get there otherwise. While I was waiting for my doc, he took a walk. He came back an said (and I’m not quoting just recalling) I like this place, everyone seems to be working towards your health and well being.
I like it as well. I’ve had private insurance for most of my life so didn’t get into the VA system till a few years ago. I’m impressed and like the care. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not perfect but then people are involved so it never will be. What people would not like about it is that there isn’t a doc within 20 miles of me. And the money thing has made the local clinics less than they should/could be and fewer of them. And plenty of my fellow vets do not seem to be overjoyed about the care. But if they had to go out into the real world, that would most likely change their minds. It’s the we don’t know what we’ve got till we lose it syndrome. I have a vet buddy with cancer and Medicare Advantage. His stories of his care aren’t nearly as good as mine and yet he won’t go to the VA. He’s heard stories and he seems convinced that it is worse. It isn’t. He’s even taken me to some procedures and has seen what my boss saw. He’s like most people, he’ll stick to what he knows and just complain about it.
MoxieM
I would give my left ..something … to have care 3/4 as good as what my daughter gets in Germany (I don’t have an ovary to give any more thanks to an endometrioma. anyway.) Kid is now on bog-standard state health insurance, her BF is insured through a special State-run plan for artists and creative types (can you imagine that in the good ole USA). Kid was formerly on a private non-resident plan that covered more than mine ever did, all for the kingly sum of €1,200/year. I could go on …like the 3 weeks at the sea side spa for extra recovery for a broken bone… but it would just make you all as jealous as I am. (oh, and the trip to the spa was on public transport, of course. Gah!)
I’m one of those individual subscribers ineligible for subsidy, yet, of course, barely able to cope with the monthly premium which does nothing except gain me entry into a network, where I pay deductibles, coinsurance, and the lot. Horrific. And the state by state variation is astonishing, and absurd. I had to move from a state with some of the best insurance options (MA) because I could only afford to live in areas where really qualified docs were thin on the ground. (If you can’t live within the Rt 495 radius, forget it.) I moved to a state with crappy insurance options, but I can easily access terrific care here. How is this possible? We need a national solution.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@The Blog Dahlia:
when did BernieCare become my principles? Did I miss a vote? Do you have have to have a rose in a twitter handle to be counted?
trollhattan
@Immanentize:
Will only add the Southern Strategy, which vacuumed up George Wallace’s 1968 voting block. And all those illegal (and unnecessary, because insanity) shenanigans we’d find out about in a year’s time.
Raven Onthill
David Dayen’s analysis, over at The American Prospect: https://prospect.org/health/warrens-medicare-for-all-plan-includes-no-new-taxes-on-the-middle-class.
He points out also that this is a politically shrewd plan which “Allows her to go on offense against Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, and others, asking them why they don’t cover everyone, why they don’t cut costs, why they don’t want to end the horror of medical bankruptcies and unnecessary deaths.”
the Conster
@trollhattan:
Oh please. The only people that have demanded accountability from her are on the debate stage with her, and she was able to get along with her aw shucks sing along with me, memaw and pepaw and my plans for everything with the media, until she couldn’t anymore. Saying “I’m with Bernie” isn’t enough now.
PJ
@japa21: The GOP will work to destroy any Democratic health care plan, including just maintaining the ACA. That’s not a reason to put forth a plan that you believe in and get people excited about voting for you because they think it will work, too.
the Conster
@Raven Onthill:
Has Dayen heard of *Republicans*?
Brachiator
@PJ:
This is not true. People have often fought hard to get good insurance coverage, especially people in unions. You cannot expect them to automatically bow down before Medicare for All just because someone claims that they have a magic wand that will sweep all past problems away.
We also have an ongoing problem delivering health care. Does any proposed plan magically increase coverage in under-served rural areas? Even in California, which has Covered California, Medi-Cal and other programs, people have problems finding and getting to doctors. There is still much to get done.
Cacti
The US healthcare system in present form is the largest employer in 14 states, including 8 reliably blue ones: Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland, Delaware, Minnesota, and Oregon.
And one important swing state: Pennsylvania
A Dem plan promising to cut 2 million jobs across the industry will send Trump to a second term in a landslide.
the Conster
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Exactly. I’m just up to here with pie in the sky bullshit. I was when it was just Bernie’s free everything bullshit, and now Liz is just like “hold my beer”. WTF.
trollhattan
@the Conster:
You’re either brain-damaged or a plant (potted or otherwise).
chris
@Momentary:
LOL! That’s perfect. Thank you.
After a visit to the clinic or the hospital I meet with friends in the local Tim’s and we bitch about the cost of parking. $4.00! Can you imagine? Goddamn Canadian government.
PJ
@Brachiator: It’s not a magic fucking wand. It’s a goal. Warren hasn’t released the details of her plan on how to get there but she has said it’s going to take 10 years. Everyone knows that the reality of whatever gets enacted will be something different.
As you say, there is a ton of work to be done on our health care system, and figuring out how to provide coverage to everyone is only one part of it. But it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do something about that part.
Chris Johnson
Also remember that you have to let the trolls get the last word and say ‘yes but the Democrat is doomed and is going to lose, we might as well not vote’.
Because they are being paid by the word, and you are not :)
the Conster
@trollhattan:
Yes, it’s brain damage to acknowledge reality, that the problem in this country is white supremacy and that the reason we can’t have all the pie in the sky we want is because the majority of white people vote GOP to hurt the people they hate, not so that their taxes will be raised to help *those people*. What country do you think we live in? The country where Liz claimed to be NA and white Dems seem to be fine with it. I’m not defending her on that. Not gonna do it.
Betty Cracker
This is why we have primaries. May the best candidate win! :)
Cacti
@Chris Johnson:
Said the new guy who likes to call everyone else a troll.
zzyzx
@the Conster: I don’t trust any poll that asks after telling one feature of a plan. I’ve seen it used to both prop up a plan and show lack of support and in either case it feels like a bad tactic to me. Yes if you tell people one bad/good thing about a policy and don’t give counter arguments, some people will change their views.
Ella in New Mexico
@trollhattan:
More like 2+ years. Same major player in what became a huge, omnipresent anti-Sanders/pro-divisiveness energy here at BJ during the primaries and to be honest, practically disappeared after the 2016 election with the exception of a few check in posts…I decided back then that the newly emerging news of Russian trolls infiltrating progressive blogs and SM to flame a Sanders v. Clinton war and get Sanders supporters to vote 3rd party or stay home be could actually be infecting our safe little harbor here at BJ.
As I noted under John’s post the other day I really hope that’s not happening again.
the Conster
@zzyzx:
The argument for M4All is that costs will go down, but really, no one really knows how much, for whom, and how. That’s a hard sell.
Ella in New Mexico
@Chris Johnson: see my previous post at 281
Chris Johnson
@Cacti: https://balloon-juice.com/2009/04/01/cat-handcuffs-aka-pig-in-a-blanket/
Top that, Boris ;) (I believe any frontpager can confirm that’s the same email and that’s me. Ten years posting service, at your service :) )
The cartoon is dead and off the net, even the ad network is dead and off the internet, but Balloon Juice is still here and I’m still posting, ten years older and unfortunately quite a bit wiser :P
the Conster
@Ella in New Mexico:
Oh please. I’ve been commenting here for over 10 years, and yes, I fucking hate that divisive Russian asset Sanders and have for years. If I were a Russian troll, I’d be pushing for him and Liz.
WhatsMyNym
The one issue folks aren’t bringing up is the rapid pace of retirements in the medical fields. The younger folks don’t want to bother buying an existing medical practice (cost) or setting up a new, and are more open to working for a hospital related practice or an HMO. My county hospital employs most of the medical community in our end of the county and is doing a good job of attracting more specialists into our semi-rural area.
Cacti
The Warren stans get as cultish as the Bernistas when you question the wisdom of the blessed mother of all progressivism.
Ella in New Mexico
@the Conster: yes, I remember very, very well. As well as the scarcity of posts once Trump won.
Liz Warren is the farthest thing from a Russian Asset we could get. And your throwing her in with Sanders is a tell.
Mandalay
@Chris Johnson:
How about knocking off calling people trolls just because you disagree with them? It’s dumb and lazy, and says far more about the person making the accusation than the person being accused.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Ella in New Mexico:
I literally laughed out loud when I saw your plea for civility and substantive discourse, cause I also remember 2016…
Chris Johnson
@Ella in New Mexico: It is happening again. I didn’t let it stop me from voting for Clinton last time, and I was way more naive about the extent of it. I’m not getting conned this time. I know how it works, have watched it on places like Reddit. It really is a thing.
Trolling cannot stop you from having principles and voting for Dems. The rest is just how panicked you are going to let yourself become when fed disinformation and propaganda. And that goes doubly for you folks here who are NOT trolls but have been listening to the wrong fucking people. Get off Twitter, for starters. (and any Reddit political spaces, and dare I say it, Facebook?)
WhatsMyNym
@Cacti:
How many of those billing/admin would retire in the next 10 years.
Whats the churn rate on those type of jobs? I expect it’s very high because of low pay, boring work.
Cacti
@Ella in New Mexico:
Warren was the one who chose to hitch her political wagon to Sanders. She was even bleating the same lies about “Bernie wuz robbed!”.
FlipYrWhig
I just want to say that, as a 40-something man with no children who barely consumes health care at all, I will be happy to support any health care proposal that makes the whole thing less downright inscrutable and stops me from having to open envelopes with bill-like statements emblazoned “THIS IS NOT A BILL.” My wife and I have 4 advanced degrees between us and understand fuck-all about how these things work, or are supposed to. Understanding them shouldn’t require mental energy. I can only imagine how much of a mental toll, or, better yet, mental *tax*, my epileptic friend or my friend with an autism-spectrum child have to pay when these incomprehensible envelopes arrive. Get rid of it all.
Ruckus
@Kent:
As do I. But. Republicans have been going downhill like an Olympic ski jump since at least RR. And there doesn’t seem to be any bottom so I’d guess that it is entirely possible that they have worse waiting in the wings. The wealthy love them some republican tax plans and don’t really care about anything else, they have that money to get them through the rest and could give a fuck about anybody else.
the Conster
@Cacti:
Here we go again. Like if you care about the good middle class jobs held by people in the medical insurance field, you must not want everyone to be insured. Like acknowledging the political realities in a world where there are a majority of white people who want to vote for Republicans decade after decade means you’re a corporate *centrist* shill. In the 70s I was a shop steward of a public service union organized by a Trotskyite, and can claim to be to the left of anyone on here – I know my Marx – but then Reagan happened and I will never again be fooled that the majority of white people want to share the country with people they hate. Which is why we don’t have nice things.
Ella in New Mexico
@Mandalay: I think we’ve all learned enough over the past few years to know that not only are election disrupting trolls a possibility, they’re almost guaranteed and we’d be smart to challenge people we assume are just average BJ posters here. Especially if they’re coming in with a hardline agenda or get weirdly intensely negatively personal about a candidate (with the exception of Tulsi Gabbard, of course.)
Seriously, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it might just be a fucking duck. ;-)
Brachiator
@PJ:
We did something about it. It’s called the Affordable Care Act.
And again, my main point is that it is simply incorrect to accuse people who are happy with their current insurance plans of just being selfish.
That said, I look forward to learning more about what Warren is offering.
Another Scott
@O. Felix Culpa: Yet another Nancy weighs in – Nancy LeTourneau at WaMo:
Warren’s plan is part of the process of thinking about what can be done in the future, and what we can do now. We know that the current US system is not sustainable and will have to be changed – too many people can’t afford it, and too many people aren’t covered. We can’t change it without talking about it first.
Cheers,
Scott.
David ??Booooooo?? Koch
This is a good improvement.
I will say when people noted that raising taxes on the middle class was a really bad idea they would be attacked for not blindly supporting every Warren plank. Yet, here, Warren herself comes around and agrees.
This allows Warren to smack Wilmer in the face for his cockamamie proposal to raise taxes on hard working people.
Chris Johnson
@Ella in New Mexico: Or a chump. I can’t forgive Bernie for some of what he did and what he allowed to happen. I gave him money, real money. I might as well have left that to the Russians. He turned out not to need MY money, at all.
Funny how people seem not nearly so mad at Bernie for starting the MedicareForAll thing, when he is polling in second place (maybe: depends if it’s a real poll). You gotta take down the woman who could win and actually do this stuff with plans and ability to govern, but if the same words are said by a guy who has not demonstrated equal competence, that gets a pass?
jk
@Kay:
Understatement of the past 3 months! Biden is a goddamn moron. On the campaign trail, he’s a disaster who can’t get through a news cycle without saying something stupid that his staff has to walk back. He’s clearly too old and with each passing day he comes across as more lethargic and out of touch with voters. His Senate record is shit, he has no charisma and no gravitas. He has the worst public speaking skills of any candidate still running.
Elizabeth Warren is clearly the best choice available.
Betty Cracker
I’m thinking about posting a thread one day with the following strict rule: no negativity about anyone running in the Democratic primary allowed — thread participants just make the case for their candidate and/or policies without running down other people’s candidates/policies. Just in that one thread.
Given the general crabby-ass mindset around here, this hypothetical thread would have to contain bold-type, all-caps notice that negative comments would get deleted. And I would have to post it on a day when I have a lot of free time to police the thread, and it would have to be time-limited so I wouldn’t have to police it indefinitely.
I can’t decide if would be a great thread or get maybe 27 comments and then crickets. Arguing is fun!
Chris Johnson
@jk: That would be why Russia wants him to be the candidate, and why Trump was trying to do HIS part for the cause and screwing it up completely. All roads lead to Russia, and Trump threatening Ukraine to come up with anti-Biden stuff is completely in line with Russia trying really hard to make sure Biden is the candidate.
Trump fucked it up, like he fucks everything up, because he’s not supposed to come up with the heavy anti-Biden corruption narrative until AFTER the primaries, and he’s not supposed to get caught trying to extort foreign governments to play along. But it just underscores the fact that Russia wants Biden as the Dem to beat.
PJ
@Brachiator: Despite the ACA, there are still tens of millions of uninsured people in the US. (And believe me, I am grateful for it, because I wouldn’t be able to afford insurance otherwise.) And many people who have insurance will still rack up tens of thousands in medical debt because of deductibles and co-pays and out-of-network costs and insurers denying claims. It is insufficient, and it was never intended to be the final step in guaranteeing health care to people.
I don’t think everyone who likes their private insurance is just being selfish, but I think being opposed to public insurance because it will be different than what people have now is being selfish. The only reason we are having this debate at all is because insurance company executives (and not a few doctors and hospital executives) don’t want to give up their hookers and blow.
catclub
@Immanentize:
and the labor power thing was very bad for McGovern – labor was against him, but maybe not other possible Democratic nominees?
Labor may not be as powerful now, but MUCH less likely to side with Trump in 2020, no matter who is the Democratic candidate.
Blue Stater
@rikyrah: Those who lose their jobs with insurance companies can easily find employment as buggy-whip manufacturers. Get real. The employment market changes.
rikyrah
I am not a Russian Troll.
I am not a passerby in observing American politics.
I deal with the system we have…not the one for ponies and unicorns.
The woman said, from her own plan, that it would cost 2 million jobs.
She has also said that she’s too pure to accept PAC money.
Anyone naive enough to think that the insurance industry is going to go down without a fight. So, think about their millions upon millions spent .
Then the GOP ads. Like I said, 2 million jobs lost…speaks for itself.
They aren’t being honest about them actually DESTROYING MEDICARE AS WE KNOW IT. They took the name of something popular – MEDICARE – all the while with the intentions of actually demolishing it.
We have a party so hateful and spiteful, that, in a number of states, they don’t care about their own people losing access to care due to rural hospital closings…they won’t expand Medicaid….
And, you think that folks are going to be ok with letting this plan tear up healthcare as we know it?
Plus, this can’t be done with reconciliation. So, let’s say you actually get it past the House…tell me how you get to 60 votes in the Senate….even if the Democrats take over the Senate in 2020? Show me the support – on the Democratic Senate side – for destroying the filibuster.
Is nobody going to bring up that a nice part of this depends upon Comprehensive Immigration Reform passing? Or, is that too trollish to point out.
the Conster
@Ella in New Mexico:
She may not be a Russian asset, but she sure helped Bernie catapult the *it was rigged* Russian active measures. She and Bernie and that fuck Michael Moore went on their *it was economic anxiety, not the Russians* town hall tour together too. She let Trump bait her with that NA DNA nonsense, which she’s now scrubbed from her website. So ridiculous. She has terrible judgment, and I don’t trust her.
trollhattan
@Ella in New Mexico:
As Adam has pointed out, they have a lot of irons in the fire at all times because they never know which ones will bear fruit. Once cannot count anything out.
O. Felix Culpa
@Another Scott:
QFT.
I’ll also add, as a real-life boots-on-the-ground organizer, I’m finding it interesting that both former Berrnie supporters and former Hillary supporters are flocking to Elizabeth. With enthusiasm. My sample includes millennials and those with a few more decades under their belt. She’s a unity candidate! My sample includes POC, but only a few AA’s, since our state has a low percentage AA population. Her weakness in that segment needs to be addressed.
ETA: To be clear, not ALL Bernies are moving to EW. I also know some hardcore cultists, but their decibel-level belies their weak numbers. I lean EW, but would be happy with several other candidates on the roster. I would be dejected with Biden and yet work for him, were he our candidate.
taumaturgo
@rikyrah: @rikyrah: With your closed mind attitude of surrendering before even putting on a fight you are certainly correct and the wonderful status quo will continue to reign supreme.
Ella in New Mexico
Warren’s terrific, and really deserves a lot of credit for sticking her neck out with some great ideas that she actually puts down on paper. She’s been doing it since W’s administration, and I actually was a big “stan” of hers when all she had was a professorship and a blog at TPM. But she’s not perfect. NONE OF THEM ARE PERFECT.
But what prompts some of us to worry we’re being trolled-pushed is that like in 2015-2015, I see is a lot of hardline anti-Warren talk lately from a narrow group of posters that is pretty much un-warranted in how global it is– as if she has absolutely no redeeming ideas or qualities and if you even suggest something positive about her you’re some kind of idiot.
Most folks are still looking at the different options at this stage of the game, even if we have our favorites. I like parts of every single legit Dem candidate’s agenda (NOT Tulsi or the hopeless vanity candidates) right now, but just because I don’t think their time is now doesn’t make me an intense hater of say, Julian Castro or Amy Klobuchar or Mayor Pete.
I question why certain posters are trying to foreclose the discussion and debate here, and to be honest, I think it’s pretty obvious who’s doing it and why.
PJ
@Betty Cracker: I think it is in the nature of liberals to seek out the faults of their candidates (particularly the ones they are not personally supporting) because in their own lives, they tend to seek out their own faults, and those of the people close to them, and question whether they are doing the right thing. But so often it devolves into a pissing match over either which candidate is purer in character or ideology (which usually makes little difference in how that candidate will vote or govern), or conversely (and perversely) over which candidate will appeal more to voters who don’t hold liberal values (and I realize that’s a broad coalition that is constantly changing and not a set thing). Both arguments are tedious and pointless, but the “electability” thing particularly irritates me because the only way to know is to actually have an election, and even then there’s much more at work than simply being more popular (Donald Trump was the very picture of someone unelectable, and yet, due to the electoral college and voter suppression and media manipulation and Russian active measures, he got elected.)
Ruckus
@MisterForkbeard:
Harris has been my fav since day one. She doesn’t play the news media like EW so she doesn’t resonate well with a lot of people. And there were/are still a lot of candidates, most of whom have less than a snowball’s chance in hell. Harris has substance and ideas but she is a real threat to the conservative pillaging of the economy/country, on more than one level. And that scares a lot of people, many of whom are being hurt by that pillaging. It’s the same argument against M4A, it changes too much too soon. Even though the system/politics/healthcare is rather broken and change is the only possibility to fix it. Change can be scary and change of systems that people don’t understand how they work in the first place is even more so. Want proof? Look at the dipshits in congress yelling about impeachment and how lopsided it is, the stunts to prove that and just plan not doing what they are supposed to be doing. “It’s too hard!” The last yell before the tantrum starts. If you are 5 yrs old. I’d say that there has to be a better way, but my time on this rock has shown me that is wrong, only because so many stopped growing at 5, because it’s easier.
Cacti
@taumaturgo:
A good strategist knows what fights can and can’t be won before they’ve even started.
Ella in New Mexico
@the Conster: Ok, I’ll bite. Who you campaigning for here? Any one in particular?
Betty Cracker
@Chris Johnson: I’m not convinced Russia wants Trump to run against Biden. It’s true the fever swamp conspiracy theory Trump is pursuing that smears Biden seems to have originated with Russian trolls. But Trump likes it because it posits that he won the 2016 election all by his genius self, and Russia likes it because they want the sanctions lifted and Ukraine isolated. I think they’re running strategies to smear any Democrat who gets within a mile of the nomination. And yeah, I think it’ll work to some extent, just hopefully not enough to matter in the end.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
It’s very possible that Trump actually fears Biden the most because to Trump, the WH is reserved for old Protestant white guys and “Biden’s the One.”
“They’re coming for me Ivanka, what do I do?”
jk
@Chris Johnson:
I can’t imagine a more depressing spectacle than a Trump vs Biden race, two rambling, incoherent over the hill white guys
I want our next President to be as thoughtful and articulate as a 16 year old foreign born climate change activist.
Any Democrat, other than Biden, can pass that threshold.
Chris Johnson
@taumaturgo: That’s not fair. Rikyrah isn’t a troll or quitter, near as I can tell.
I think what’s happening to her is, Twitter. That’s where her links often come from. I used to hang out in r/chapotraphouse for a while there (it’s hilariously garbage now, but in retrospect it always kind of was) so I know what’s happening.
The purpose of weaponized trolling is not always to directly convince people, but to produce an atmosphere where ALL the discourse around you says one thing. Often it’s ‘oh no’ scaremongering, oh wouldn’t it be awful (and then lists of why it’s awful). It’s exploiting every social metric to make the sky above you seem green, to turn the air to pravda.
Rikyrah seems really nice, but it’s Twitter causing this. It’s a flood of propaganda coming across, and a decent person getting swayed by what seems like unavoidable reality. ‘everybody is saying it’. I would just say, vote for the Dem no matter what, and maybe take a social-media vacation? ‘Cos man, is it ever heavy weather out there. I had to give up on Chapo reddit COMPLETELY. It is totally stagemanaged by coordinated Russian downvoters watching ‘new’. Twitter operates differently but is, if anything, even more heavily worked.
O. Felix Culpa
@Ruckus:
That phenomenon is problematic, and it’s not clear it’s Kamala’s fault. There’s evidence to suggest that the media have rendered her invisible. I would argue she’s far more charismatic than EW, yet gets far less coverage. It’s not easy being mixed-race and female in this world. I feel frustrated and sad on her behalf. She deserves better.
Ella in New Mexico
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
YOU DARE MOCK ME?!! I will smite you with a plague of a million video cuts of Marianne Williamson in her last debate :-D
Butter emails!!!
So make your cases for Joe Biden. Because he’s the only candidate that checks the following 2 boxes mentioned in this thread.
1. Preserves the current two tiered health care system, keeping 2 million jobs.
2. Polls consistently over 10% with African Americans.
Item 1 eliminates Bernie and Warren from consideration. Item 2 eliminates Buttigieg and Harris as well as anyone else not in the top 5. That leaves Biden.
Ella in New Mexico
@rikyrah:
Rikyrah you are the LEAST likely poster her I’d ever designate as a Russian troll.
taumaturgo
@PJ: Also Betty, a major factor for Trump was his base – for the worse – closed rank with him and didn’t equivocate about his obvious faults and lack of temperament for the office. Today, as a good thing the same phenomenon is happening on our side, liberals are fed-up with the centrist corporate democrat’s lip service and fear-mongering tactics. The younger Democrats will go after legalizing bribery, confront and defeat Republicans who refuse to work in consensus, reject corrupt corporate donations, and for once, stand up and fight for the small donors who are filling their election war chess. A new day is dawning.
piratedan
for me, as I’ve watched the battle back and forth between those who supposedly have a horse in the race, as I watch the stridency of The Conster, who only comes out to play when there’s Warren bashing to be done (sorry Man, that’s you’re MO) and others who are playing the pragmatic card.. understand that it’s a plan, a road map to try and aspire to that provisionally offers more affordable coverage to more people at the expense of the wealthy (thereby a stroke against the current income inequality that we see today) and those who are busy performing the paperwork pushing of the private insurance agency.
Plans change, the real work is establishing a skeleton to put things onto, building the muscles and the ligaments that allow the structure to move and perform. It’s all well and good to piss about the nature of the skeleton itself, but until you actually build one and are prepared to argue for it, then imho, you should feel free to be constructive about its structure rather than pissing about its existence until you’re ready to reveal your own.
No one likes the thought of seeing a workforce reduction but I tend to believe that most of what we would see is a shift, away from those people doing coding work for an insurance agency to deny/delay/pay claims and more jobs for more folks performing coding to approve and track claims with the government. Its the treating of health care as a right instead of as a privilege and that shaping of the narrative is what is being missed in our discussion so far it seems to me and that is a VERY BIG BIDEN DEAL.
Citizen Alan
@the Conster:
You seem to be under the impression that the CEOs who run private health insurance companies are flaming liberals.
Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Absolutely. This is the largest hurdle in making substantive changes to health care coverage in America. The inertia is massive, and since the bedrock foundational “principle” of conservatism is “I got mine, fuck you” with its corollary “Devil take the hindmost” the Republican Party is perfectly positioned to appeal to the fears and concerns of this huge cohort of already-insured reliable voters. Doesn’t mean the fascists can successfully appeal to everyone in that cohort, of course not. Enough of them, though (from the Republican, right-leaning independent, and conservadem camps), that it’s extremely difficult to make significant improvements to health care coverage in our great nation.
It’s why Obamacare really is a big fucking deal, as far short of what’s really needed to get us on par with the rest of the civilized world as it is. And why I think M4A is very much a bridge too far, even just aspirationally on the campaign trail.
taumaturgo
@Cacti: Climate change, take over the judiciary, take over of the regulation apparatus in Washington, create divisions within the military, thousands dying because they lack affordable access to health care and drugs, starving wages jobs w/o benefits, are a few of the non-pressing issues that call for incremental, not too much action.
Marcopolo
@Betty Cracker: As someone who has decided for Warren, yet still likes all the other folks running more or less (except Tulsi) I look forward to this bold experiment. I’d also love a thread where posters had to say something they liked about the candidates who are not their #1 choice. I’ll be there if I see it and I am pretty sure I can say something nice about everyone (except Tulsi).
Chris Johnson
I wonder if we can get a TBogg unit if the anti-Warren folks play along? :)
Chris Johnson
@taumaturgo: Climate change is one of those ‘oh fuck no’ situations. Healthcare will get swamped with casualties no matter WHAT kind of health care we have, if climate disaster keeps ramping up. It’s the biggest of fucking deals and there’s no time: even more than healthcare, only radical action’s gonna save us.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@O. Felix Culpa:
She definitely strikes me as the most charismatic candidate, but I see Warren’s wonky, earnest dorkiness as a kind of charisma, too. It clearly rubs a lot of people the wrong way, even here.
Both of those are factors, too, I think
@Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot: I’m a bit more charitable toward the risk averse. I think one of the most important stats in politics, that was much discussed a year or so ago but has kind of faded: Could you deal with an unexpected $1000 bill, and IIRC about 40% of the country said no. That’s one trip to the emergency room (or a new set of tires). I think a lot of people in that position who have insurance, even if it’s crappy insurance (even if they know it’s crappy insurance), feel like they’ve achieved some kind of stability, they can get by, God willing, and for the love of god don’t rock the boat.
taumaturgo
@Chris Johnson: “Then the GOP ads. Like I said, 2 million jobs lost…speaks for itself.
They aren’t being honest about them actually DESTROYING MEDICARE AS WE KNOW IT. They took the name of something popular – MEDICARE – all the while with the intentions of actually demolishing it.
We have a party so hateful and spiteful, that, in a number of states, they don’t care about their own people losing access to care due to rural hospital closings…they won’t expand Medicaid….
And, you think that folks are going to be ok with letting this plan tear up healthcare as we know it?”
All this came from Twiter? please advise your friend Twitter is doing no favor.
Ruckus
@PJ:
It is more than just the wealthy as concerns healthcare.
People look around and see millions uninsured, while they have some. They often wonder, while looking at bills, at bullshit letters, at the news of people not having insurance and they want to hold on to what they have, not lose everything. I’ve been without HC insurance, and it’s a bitch. I’m lucky and could use the VA, but the vast majority can not. They are stuck with the system we have and can and should be scared that whatever changes are made will make their situation worse.
We have a system that rewards those that make bucket loads of money, be they companies or persons. Not what they do but what they earn. Because no one would be paying them for nothing. And that scares people because they don’t have the drive to fuck millions for money. And they believe, right or not that massive change will continue to serve the few at the expense of many, them in particular. Massive change for all is a step that many will not want to even think about. And it’s because we all live in the real world of pressure to earn more, have more, just to show that we are worth something. trump is a prime example, he has to put his name on everything to show that he’s worth a shit. And of course he shows he’s not because well, trump.
Any massive political change will be difficult. The ACA was big and better and it got watered down almost immediately because someone somewhere got less. That’s the way the people with the most power want it, everyone else to live in fear, because that they can control. A better life, happy, healthy, that doesn’t benefit them at all.
Citizen Alan
@Cacti:
Pretty sure it’s more to do with voter suppression than in public outrage over proposals meant to stop Americans from dying in poverty.
Marcopolo
@Ella in New Mexico: Second this. Conster tell me who’s running that really excites you and why.
Chris Johnson
@taumaturgo: Dems are hotheads. I’ve gotten just as worked up about stuff and I made NO friends around here while I was posting like that. Looks like it’s rikyrah’s turn to get real agitated about what seems to be wrong.
And yeah, Twitter is doing none of us any favors.
PJ
@Ruckus: Yep.
chopper
@Cacti:
Single-payer/universal-comprehensive type healthcare has been a policy objective of the progressive movement for decades. Sanders most certainly didn’t invent the idea.
GOVCHRIS1988
Ok, I see people who support Warren here who are just busting against some arguments GOP’ers will make in the general election against this plan. The job loss one is a big one. I don’t think there is anyone here that thinks that running on a plan that will kill TWO MILLION healthcare jobs, most of which employ black people, especially here in the south where I live is a good idea. I mean, any way you slice it, you’re giving the GOP an effective talking point that could make people either stay home, vote third party or vote Trump. I’m just saying you have to explain this plan to non political junkies effectively and in a way which the GOP counters fall flat. So far from above, I don’t see a lot of people doing that.
Another Scott
@Betty Cracker: We’ll have to try it on the new site where we can ExPr3s5 OuR 0uTrAg3 in color, also too.
Hehe.
Seriously, if we can’t beat up on candidates before the voting even starts, then it’s hard to know when we can. But, yeah, we don’t want to go overboard – we’re (mostly) all on the same team.
Cheers,
Scott.
zzyzx
Maybe I’m the Russian troll!!!
(I’d only be that if Phish did a long Russia tour.)
Marcopolo
@Ruckus: My personal horror story was having appendicitis w/out health insurance. What a fucking nightmare. I get my coverage via the ACA right now & love just the fact I have insurance & it works (used it a few months ago) but it is still stupidly ridiculous to see bills for thousands and tens of thousands of dollars that (at least in my experience) I paid 10% (or less) of while on insurance. If I recall I got ~50% off when I had no insurance. And the paperwork & bureaucratic bullshit I had to navigate took a year or two off my life. I can only imagine how that is for folks with poor reading comprehension or ESL issues.
Betty Cracker
@O. Felix Culpa: I think Warren’s plan thing is the kind of gimmick (in the best sense — it’s genuine and in keeping with her entire career) that the media can latch onto, and that has helped enormously. Was it strategic brilliance or an outgrowth of Warren’s policy wonk personality? Hard to say, but it’s worked well for her so far.
I like Harris too. If I could choose just one candidate to have a beer with (the dumbest political metric a media hack ever conceived), it would be Harris. She’s genuinely funny. It’s possible that the media is sandbagging her on purpose. I know her most ardent fans take it as an article of faith, but I don’t see it. I think it’s a crowded field, and her campaign hasn’t caught on so far. Maybe it will! But it hasn’t yet, not in a sustained way.
I’ve got some very modest expertise in messaging, and I thought Harris’s emphasis on TRUTH and the repetition of that theme, etc., was a great strategy against a serial liar opponent in the general, but I’m not sure it makes as much sense in the primary.
chopper
@GOVCHRIS1988:
Guess we’ll never have decent healthcare in this country then, cause any positive change is going to threaten those jobs. We’re stuck with a shitty system cause god forbid the claim-denying middlemen have to find new employment.
Ruckus
@Marcopolo:
I’ll start.
Harris is my first choice. She has experience. She has workable plans that will help without starting completely over.
Warren is my second. And the reason is that a lot/all of her policies are going to have to have a massive push from congress. And she wouldn’t be there to do any pushing. She could do coaxing but that’s not the same.
Everyone else is next.
The biggest issue is too much time and given their results or not enough time/experience to get results.
Then we have the vanity.
They have no substance in any way.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, the takeaway from this thread seems to be that no Dem can win except maybe that Tabula Rasa chick and she has a funny name.
ETA: And wasn’t she a cop or something?
Betty Cracker
Beto’s dropping out, according to my iPhone.
zzyzx
@chopper: that is an interesting debate in general and one of the reasons our coalition is so hard to keep together. Having to cobble together all of the people who suffer under the current system who all have competing needs is rough.
Marcopolo
@Ruckus: Thank you for this comment.
Harris was always up there w/ Warren for me (admission: I have given to Warren, Harris, Inslee, Castro, & Buttigieg). She’s my #2. Tough, smart, sense of humor. Definitely not gonna overlook sex/race as a particular hurdle for her but I don’t get why at least she hasn’t caught on more w/ AA women voters—BJ blog population excepted :)). As a middle-aged white dude I don’t think I have any insight into that whatsoever. But her lack of traction in SC has been mind boggling.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chris Johnson: Look, you are a loon. Rikyrah is not. There is no comparison to be made.
GOVCHRIS1988
@chopper: Ok, first of all, stop being a smart assed, condescending progressive prick to someone you need to vote for your candidate in a Democratic primary. That shit does nothing to actually attract people, but repels them like hell and your job should be to persuade people, not pisses them off. Secondly, I didn’t argue the current system is great. No one is. Anybody that is a Liberal/Progressive/Democratic leaning voter believes our system needs to be overhauled and improved. But that being said, I generally have serious concern about this plan and going into an election with a plan that would basically have two million people out of a job, millions losing their current healthcare with just a promise that there will be other jobs and our healthcare will be way better, with no true good answers to beat back conservative talking points to utter uselessness has me concerned.
Chris Johnson
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m not going to contribute to the negativity that had you saying recently that you barely post anymore. Nor am I pursuing the Bernie-hyping ways that probably got me on your shitlist: I fucked up, for the best of intentions, and got taken for a ride just as much as Saint Sparrow of Vermont.
On the other hand, abuse from you? Yeah, that’s more of a badge of honor. And in a weird way it’s genuinely nice to see you still posting away and whacking your choice of moles :)
I’d be really enthusiastic to vote for Harris as well. Not my first choice but definitely my second. (once burned twice shy: Bernie is NOT on the list, and I’m open to real progressive primary rivals for him, but I’ll be very suspicious they are fake or even Russian operatives)
Oh: if me being all Red Dawn about russians under the bed is what qualifies me for a loon, whoa dude: wake up. If it is hippie punching, I don’t think you’re going to see a lot of change there :)
Ruckus
@Marcopolo:
Our healthcare insurance/healthcare systems are broken. And they are broken on purpose, because that makes more money. The ACA helped with that a lot but it’s been weakened by whom? Yes that’s right conservatives. So we are going to have a massive overhaul of the entire system? I’ve got a not gunna happen for you, right here. Would it be better? Could it be worse? Both are possibilities if the ideas get done, but how is that going to happen?
And what about all the other systems that are broken now? We need to reinvent almost all the systems because they are all broken. Thanks republicans/vlad. Conservatives always wanted the government broken, since day one. It’s taken them almost 250 yrs but they have managed to do quite a bit of damage. I’m not sure there is a consensus or the ability to actually build it again. I’d like to be genuinely surprised.
J R in WV
@Marcopolo:
@Ksmiami:
If you would read other comments before jumping in the mud with both feet, you would get less mud on you. A scientific poll quoted just 2 comments before your blunt and wrong assertion shows that Warren has more than a chance. She’s very near a shoo-in, because everyone thinks everyone should have access to health care. Everyone but Trumpistas, anyway.
Regarding big pharma and life sustaining medications, I think if a corporation wants really high dollar newly discovered drugs to be their very own profit center, they should be required to provide common medications invented years ago to everyone who requires that medication to live, at a production cost booked against their profit balance.
In other words, if people need insulin and you want to profit from new treatments for cancer or psychosis, you need to provide that insulin at production cost against your profit from your new miracle drugs.
Killing people [or allowing people to die] who need insulin is murder, and no one gets to commit murder for profit, and that’s what is happening today! It needs to be explicit that murder is murder, and not providing a well known drug like insulin is murder.
Cacti
@chopper:
Single payer is a left wing hobby horse, and is not an interchangeable term for universal healthcare or health insurance coverage.
topclimber
@japa21: Once M4A is explained as EXPANDING Medicare benefits to include supplemental insurance, might you attract some retirees to the cause–those laboring under costly Medigap and RX plans? (Hello Florida!) The point is to make healthcare affordable to all age groups.
I agree it is more an an aspirational plan than one that will be likely to pass in the next couple of elections cycles. But talking about it will make incremental improvements better and more plausible.
Ruckus
@O. Felix Culpa:
I’m in your camp, I don’t think it is her fault. I think she scares the conservatives right down to their socks. She’s smart, she has experience running a large governmental bureaucratic organization, something that none of the other candidates have. Conservatives already know that more people will vote for a woman candidate than their crappy one, and that their crappy one has alienated a lot of the country. For me a prime concept of who the conservatives hate and fear the most is a candidate that can wipe the floor with their guy. That’s the person that will get the worst coverage, because if they got anything like reasonable coverage they’d win hands down.
MomSense
@rikyrah:
You are absolutely so right in your comments. I’m actually furious about the magical thinking that has taken hold of far too many Democrats. The people who are the best equipped to survive a second trump term seem to be the most ardent supporters of this unicorn and pony plan.
All we have to do is look at the last two elections. One of, if not the biggest midterm wave in history in 2018 gave us a lot of data about voter preferences. We elected record numbers of women and women of color. We did not elect M4all candidates in swing/heavily contested districts even when they were the default white males. Look at the results in the districts that are in play and must win in 2020. They are not M4All winners.
I’m imagining my phone calls and how in the world am I going to explain the 2 million in job losses to people who have never recovered from 2008. Hell I’m calling in to places that never recovered from the paper mills and shoe factories closing decades ago. We’re experimenting with telemedicine and visiting cardiac care because rural hospitals are either closing or not able to fund cardiac units. Our poor perimeter counties are dealing with infant and maternal mortality rates that are in line with the poorest countries in the world.
People are not dreaming big when it comes to health care. They are hanging on by their fucking fingernails. The psychology of living that way doesn’t make you want to take bigger risks – it makes you try to hold on to what you have.
the Conster
@Marcopolo:
I’m waiting to see who comes out of South Carolina with the AA vote. I will vote for Warren in the GE, but hope I don’t have to. Harris and Klobuchar are who I hope prevails. I liked Inslee a lot.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chris Johnson: Dude, I have never had a problem with people throwing sharp elbows around here. The negativity that I mention could also be described as defeatism.
I do think, however, that calling people who disagree with you Russian trolls or Russian-influenced pawns at the drop of a hat makes a commenter look stupid. YMMV.
O. Felix Culpa
@MomSense: Isn’t this why we have primaries, though? To put proposals out there and see whose ideas and political persona are most compelling? It’s fine to hate (or embrace) EW’s M4A plan. That should all shake out once the voting begins. The candidate whose policies are least popular among Democratic voters will be rejected. As for Republican attacks, I can guarantee you they’ll come up with batcrazy bullshit no matter who our nominee is. I mean, who would have thought they could effectively smear war hero Kerry? They are known brazen liars and no candidate will be immune.
David ??Booooooo?? Koch
Tbogg unit or bust
Ksmiami
@MomSense: ding dong ding you got it. The people who can afford a loss are Warren and sanders ardent supporters but I want to look out for the people who have and will continue to be hurt by the GOP. Warren has chased after the wrong pony and now she is unelectable
Elizabelle
@MomSense: You have just described a big segment of people who do not have healthcare. I know that you live in Maine, which is a particularly challenging state.
I don’t see where moving the Overton window and not settling for crumbs is not a plan.
We deserve better. The present system is just goddamned untenable.
I would suspect there might be even more jobs growth if healthcare were more readily available. It is a jobs program.
Ksmiami
@J R in WV: get back to me Next November – and for the record I hope you’re right but I don’t see it
Marcopolo
@Ruckus: Well, I’d say the concept you are looking for is “big structural change.” :P. I hear there is a candidate offering that. We’re in the midst of a primary. We’ll see how it plays out but I’ll take someone who both wants to shake things up (and puts out serious plans for doing so—which is where I contrast Warren w/ Sanders) over someone whose approach is incremental. If only because you’ll get more through compromise if you’ve staked out a final position closer to where you want to wind up.
Ella in New Mexico
@Ruckus: Thats so good to hear you have a good experience with the VA! Trump is trying to ensure that happens less, I assure you. Everything bad about the VA all boils down to shitty funding–including the less than stellar leadership it has suffered from as of late. And from what I’ve seen some of those “bad “leaders might actually have been good leaders if they weren’t being forced to do silly and impossible things without the resources to actually accomplish them.
Elizabelle
@Ksmiami: You are insufferable with your generalizations that are just not true.
Marcopolo
@Elizabelle: I’m actually curious, and I haven’t seen any numbers on this, but aren’t all these folks who do medical coding & paperwork also the folks who are one more “next automation step” away from losing their jobs already?
debbie
I don’t know why they don’t come up with a public option, let it compete with the for-profits, and prove itself better than private insurers. Let them wither on the vine. Then turn the public option into M4A. M4A will never succeed when it’s just a theory or a plan, no matter how well thought out.
O. Felix Culpa
@Ksmiami: On what basis do you know that ardent EW (or even Bernie ) supporters are the people who can afford a loss? Do you have empirical evidence to support that claim?
Cacti
@O. Felix Culpa:
Because most of their support comes from college educated white voters.
You’re welcome.
Butter Emails
@Cacti:
So you’re supporting Biden?
MomSense
@O. Felix Culpa:
No candidate will be immune but that doesn’t mean we go with any of them. Pick the one who can best weather the onslaught.
MomSense
@Elizabelle:
Go look up our Rep from CD2 – a district worth 2EV that went for Trump BTW. He’s not a liberal.
O. Felix Culpa
@MomSense: While I lean EW, I’m open to other candidates. Which one(s), in your view, would best withstand the onslaught?
Elizabelle
@Marcopolo: I would suspect so.
Seething over ksmiami. If the whole blog was like his/her comments, I would never, ever come back.
Ksmiami
@O. Felix Culpa: because upper middle class white kids are their biggest supporters
MomSense
@O. Felix Culpa:
Sadly I think people like Biden in a reason, fitness, and mystifying way. I think Harris will expand our voter base and having, just elected a prosecutor as Governor in Maine, Kamala is a cop is a smear that is very winnable. I also think Klobuchar has potential. I still say a Harris Murphy ticket would kick ass.
Ksmiami
@Elizabelle: and if you’re seething over some minor quibbles sorry- all I can say is if the Democrats don’t win the next election, there’s a good chance there isn’t another one
MomSense
@Ksmiami:
White, college educated and largely upper middle class and wealthier. They’re not going to get pulled off a bus or out of a store and detained because they were heard speaking Spanish as is happening in my border state
MomSense
@Marcopolo:
Try that response on a phone call with someone who works doing coding at your local hospital. When she says I’m really concerned about losing my job, you can reply “but your job was going to be outsourced before long anyway”. That will be super reassuring and certain to persuade her to vote for the Democrat.
Elizabelle
@MomSense: How about: Maine is so medically underserved, I think we can come up with a more meaningful job for you. And we will have some transition funds while we are coming up to speed?
MomSense
@Elizabelle:
Our governor and Democratic legislature expanded Medicaid back to what it was before LePage. We had expanded Medicaid in Maine before the rest of the nation. Medicaid is an excellent actuarial value, but physicians only accept Medicaid patients if they have enough higher reimbursement insurance payers to offset the lower Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement rates. And Medicare reimbursement rates are higher than medicaid so if we transition all those Medicaid patients to Medicare it will cost a lot more. Warren’s plan doesn’t take that into account.
MomSense
@Elizabelle:
There are no jobs in rural areas decades after the mills closed. no one will believe that.
O. Felix Culpa
@MomSense: I would gladly get on board with Harris. Who is Murphy, though? :)
I too live in a border state, one of the poorest in the union. We might also be seeing a generational divide: a lot of younger activists I know, whether POC or white, degreed or not, support some version of M4A.
MomSense
@O. Felix Culpa:
Murphy is a Senator from CT. He has said he doesn’t want to put his family through a presidential run but it would be more sellable perhaps without the slog of primary season.
JR
Really annoyed by this move. On a personal level, I don’t want the uncertainty of trading in my employer plan for one that will eventually be administered by Republicans, among other concerns. On a political level, it feels like it will motivate few for and many against.
Elizabelle
@MomSense: I have not read more than 10% of this thread; bookmarked it for later.
However, it is exciting to have a candidate, and candidates, who are talking about expanding what is possible. It’s the political will to get something into place; not the fine details at this point. How would Obama have fared if he had to spell out the Affordable Care Act, down to its last facet, before Iowa? Or even before inauguration?
The Republicans are not going to make any improvements, and actually carve back the inadequate care we have in place now.
I think it’s horrendous that we call ourselves a first world country and are terrified of losing what little we have.
FWIW, I do not have any healthcare at all right now. It’s too expensive, unsubsidized. That would not be the case if I lived in a better country.
Miss Bianca
@Cacti: Not all “college educated white voters” who like what Warren is saying have “nothing to lose”, as you so facilely contend. Some of us fell down below the poverty line some time ago and support what she’s saying because we have already lost A LOT.
Which isn’t to say I love her M4A plan, or couldn’t fancy any other candidate. But I find your contrarian BS on the topic of Warren grating on a level that’s…personal.
J R in WV
@Citizen Alan:
You see to be under the impression that the Conster is other than a Russian-optimised troll who hates women in leadership roles… it only comes out of the troll HQ when there’s abusing women candidates to be done.
It is a waste of time to attempt to educate the Conster, or to make them realize obvious truths about current political events.
MomSense
@Elizabelle:
It’s only unsubsidized at 400% FPL which is 48,460 per year for a single person. That’s a lot more than I make. It would be much more doable to expand the subsidies past 400% FPl and lower the Medicare eligibility age incrementally.
O. Felix Culpa
@MomSense: Name recognition might be a problem. ;) You clearly know more about him than I do, but from afar I’d be worried about a Tim Kaine redux: nice guy, but vanilla. But i’m open to persuasion.
Elizabelle
@MomSense: There is so much room for improvement.
ETA: I am still thinking about your comment re no jobs in rural Maine. I do believe you. Have no idea how one solves that problem. Hate to say it, I suspect a lot of the answer would be relocation. Which not everyone can do.
Marcopolo
@MomSense: Not at all the point I was making but you be you :). There are actually a hell of a lot of vocations that are in this position—vehicle drivers anyone? So obviously another huge challenge is to figure out a way to have an economy that creates enough jobs (and provides a workable transition path) for all these folks who will need to find a new line of work. It is a delicate balancing act to talk about these issues w/out coming across as condescending to the folks whose jobs are on the cutting block & that lets those folks know they are valued members of society who we really want to have a way to succeed (no matter where they live).
It’s pretty easy to screw this up (I’d say both Obama & HRC had their bad moments—guns & bibles, deplorables) & really hard if the person you are running against will say anything to pander to them (Trump/coal miners for example). Maybe it’s an impossible task but any good Prez candidate should aspire to doing this. I look forward to see how Warren addresses this because I am pretty sure she will.
O. Felix Culpa
Because I’m enjoying this discussion and also somewhat surprised at the heat level of the anti-Warren fervor in some of the comments (which feels like something more than policy disagreement), I return to wonder about a potential generational divide on the issue of M4A, among others. Most of us on this blog are…less young. The younger activists I know, whether Young Dems or unaffiliated but passionate clmate action protagonists, all seem to support some version of M4A. They would have to be dragged to the polls to vote for Biden. They’re not unanimous in their candidate preferences, but I think Biden will be a hard sell among younger voters, of any race, education level or economic class.
Marcopolo
@Elizabelle: Well, a really robust & comprehensive national rural broadband program would be a good start. Folks who live in rural areas should have the same affordable access to the modern Information Age as everyone else in the country. There are also aspects of the Green New Deal that touch on ensuring rural areas of the country participate in our moving to a sustainable economy.
Elizabelle
@Marcopolo: Just hit 400. This thread seems like the Itchy and Scratchy Show.
Anyway: good comment about broadband and the Green New Deal.
Butter Emails
@Elizabelle:
Canada’s partial solution was relocation. There was a story recently about an island village being relocated leaving one couple behind who had recently moved back to live off-grid.
Overpaying for Healthcare on the order of 8% of GDP is not a viable or cost effective method of addressing rural unemployment. Let’s phrase this another way. Raise your hand if you’re good with trading an additional 8% of GDP and adding 20 million more uninsured to generate 2 million more jobs.
eddie blake
@Cacti: dude, the dems fled from obama and the ACA in 2010 and they got decimated.
Cacti
@Miss Bianca:
Most Warren cultists do.
Elizabelle
@Cacti: I have had it with you. You are pied. Life is short, and I don’t want to watch the crabs in a barrel shit. I really don’t.
MomSense
@Marcopolo:
Hillary told the truth about coal jobs and people extrapolated to other job sectors. There were not 2 million jobs mining coal when she said that.
It’s not about what I personally think should happen, will or might happen- it’s about how it will sound to voters. Most voters aren’t following news or getting into the details of policy. You have to imagine how you would sell these ideas to people who are simultaneously hearing negative ads about them.
This whole policy debate is dumb because nothing will improve unless we win first. The goal has to be to win first.
the Conster
@MomSense:
I mean, seriously, this. We need to get the babies out of cages FIRST. WE NEED TO WIN. I don’t want to hear any more about different sizes of pie in the sky. I don’t want smoke blown up my ass. WHO CAN BEAT TRUMP IN THE SWING STATES. That’s all.
A Good Woman
I am on Medicare and I have insurance as a federal retiree via the FEHB that covers what Medicare doesn’t. My TX Aunt and Uncle had Medicare and her health insurance, which meant they paid nearly nothing out of pocket. I would gladly pay increased taxes if I knew I would not have to pay 2 premiums, deductibles and other out of pocket expenses, or fight with insurance companies for prescribed tests and treatments. Is that really so much to ask for?
Another Scott
@MomSense: Talking about change always comes before change.
150,000 x 12 x 10 = 18,000,000 is the net number of jobs the US economy would be expected to create over 10 years at current trends (assuming no recessions). Losing 2M over that time period isn’t something that the economy can’t handle.
And, of course, many of those insurance adjusters and coders would be qualified to get jobs in other aspects of the health care system – the work of interfacing between people and the system isn’t going to go away, it will be different kinds of work (instead of coding to find ways to deny coverage, it will be coding to get Medicare reimbursement, or coding to allow the CDC keep track of the nation’s health and figure out how to make it better, etc.). PCs and Xerox machines didn’t make paperwork in offices go away even though the job of “typist” probably effectively did.
Yes, there will be a painful transition. But there are always, eventually, painful transitions. Change is difficult, but stasis is deadly.
Cheers,
Scott.
Canadian shield
With the caveat that I didn’t read all of the above thread…I think there is a huge over-reach issue on the left. Bill Clinton started ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ as what he could do with the military which helped pushed the pawn to the end of the board. Obama was ‘man and woman is marriage’ at the beginning because that’s what he could push. I see a risk in going full left agenda. I believe in it, but America is a very conservative place. I liked the incremental changes, until Russia messed that up. But…the USA is a conservative place, don’t mess this up!
John S.
@Elizabelle:
Well you can’t say that someone who is prickly and unpleasant didn’t warn you with a nym like “cacti”. :-)
Elizabelle
@John S.: True that. LOL.
Ella in New Mexico
@Elizabelle:
Whelp, sadly I too will be applying the Pie filter for the first time to the two biggest offenders here in this thread.
Looks like the “split the Democrats and get them to eat each other 2.0” campaign is in full swing here at BJ. All us Normals here need to be very cautious if choosing to engage with the trolls-it gets really ugly and the carnage is really hard to clean up later.
smintheus
@Cacti: Nonsense. It’s plainly true and easily explained to the public that the ACA stands balanced upon a needle as Republicans keep trying to knock it over. They failed by the thinnest of margins to nullify it multiple times in multiple ways. There is no certainty that they won’t succeed in the relatively near future, taking away medical coverage from tens of millions and eliminating basic reforms that everybody else with private insurance now counts upon. Warren’s path is a way out of a strategically weak position that is not really defensible in the long term. That demonstrates the political wisdom of refusing to take the timid position of Biden and Buttigieg. It’s on them to explain why we should trust the Republicans not to continue to try to take private health insurance from the people they’ve been trying to take it away from.
smintheus
@O. Felix Culpa: You’re right. Current polling shows that Biden has virtually no support among voters under the age of 45. Buttigieg, the other leading anti-Warren candidate, has precious little support among younger voters. They’re both trying to appeal to people who have some kind of nostalgia for a (fictional) past that was ‘normal’ and ‘moderate’ that we need to return to. Young people don’t buy that bullsh*t. During their entire lives, they have watched Republicans in Washington behaving like freaks and monsters.