What is Medicare for All?
nan said:
PVW said:
I've seen this argument advanced before, but I'm not sure I agree. How does one begin by asking for "only medicare" and in negotiations end up at "public option?" I think those two are different enough policies that you can't easily go from one to the other.
It seems that if you aim for the moon (eg M4A), failing means burning up on re-entry, whereas if you try to fly to L.A, you might land in Phoenix.
You might end up with Medicare for All as written. I'm guessing there would be a fight to save the profitable Medicare Advantage plans and other supplemental insurance. So, it's possible, it would get rolled out without those and you would still have to buy supplements for hearing, eyes, dental, and some other things. Still would be better than the public option.
But I thought that Bernie the Savior's plan included all those things, as well as unicorn dust and ponies !
And no, polls showing people are open to changing their insurance is NOT the same thing as people supportive of eliminating private insurance. It's an opening, at best, but one I've yet to see evidence M4A is successfully building on.
nan said:
You might end up with Medicare for All as written.
Does any major bill EVER get passed as written?
So, here we have a candidate who is willing to fight for Medicare for All, tooth and nail. When are we going to have someone like that again? When are some of you going to stop saying, "Oh, we can't have that so why bother even trying?"
The other proposals will keep millions without healthcare and not deal with the escalating costs. What do you lose by going for Medicare for All--the whole enchilada?
It would be so great for this country to untie healthcare from employment and to have every person covered. That would be so great for future generations and the economy. People would be free to start new businesses without worrying about healthcare for themselves or employees. People would have more money and more security.
None of the other options give that.
drummerboy said:
where'd the edit button go?
Jamie took it off while fixing a bug. Evidently, for a short time, we could edit anyone's post. We missed all the fun.
nan said:
The other proposals will keep millions without healthcare and not deal with the escalating costs. What do you lose by going for Medicare for All--the whole enchilada?
Potentially quite a bit.
M4A requires simultaneously pulling off several very heavy political lifts -- dramatically expanding the level and scope of services covered by Medicare, making it available to everyone, and eliminating private insurance. Any one of those on their own would be a very ambitious goal, and tying them all together makes it likely that it's got to be all or nothing. At that point, the majority of the president's capital will be spent and it's probably not until the next Democratic administration that anything else happens on health care, and even then the party would likely be pretty gun shy after such a huge failure and so would likely have much smaller ambitions.
And of course that leaves an opening for the next Republican administration to possibly even roll back the success we've had so far, so a push for M4A might actually leave us worse off than we are now. That's a pretty big risk! I also think you overstate the benefits of "only medicare" over the public option. Seems to be you still get the majority of the benefits of M4A, with much higher odds of success.
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Let's step back from the specifics of health care and break the political dynamic down. Which of these two approaches, generally speaking, do you think people would be more likely to respond to:
"I'm going to take away something you have now but give you something I promise will be much better."
"I'm going to offer you something I promise will be much better, and if you agree you can switch to it from what you have now."
PVW said:
Potentially quite a bit.
M4A requires simultaneously pulling off several very heavy political lifts -- dramatically expanding the level and scope of services covered by Medicare, making it available to everyone, and eliminating private insurance. Any one of those on their own would be a very ambitious goal, and tying them all together makes it likely that it's got to be all or nothing. At that point, the majority of the president's capital will be spent and it's probably not until the next Democratic administration that anything else happens on health care, and even then the party would likely be pretty gun shy after such a huge failure and so would likely have much smaller ambitions.
And of course that leaves an opening for the next Republican administration to possibly even roll back the success we've had so far, so a push for M4A might actually leave us worse off than we are now. That's a pretty big risk! I also think you overstate the benefits of "only medicare" over the public option. Seems to be you still get the majority of the benefits of M4A, with much higher odds of success.
---
Let's step back from the specifics of health care and break the political dynamic down. Which of these two approaches, generally speaking, do you think people would be more likely to respond to:
"I'm going to take away something you have now but give you something I promise will be much better."
"I'm going to offer you something I promise will be much better, and if you agree you can switch to it from what you have now."
Other, poorer countries have this kind of health coverage. The rising cost of healthcare makes the other proposals untenable. I think we should go for it. I agree it is a heavy lift. But, let's not roll over and give up because that is a death sentence for so many, maybe even us. This is why I support Bernie. He understands that it will be difficult and the only way it will happen is if people band together and demand it. There are more of us than them. Real change starts at the bottom.
nan said:
There are more of us than them.
See, that's the problem. I keep counting and coming up very short. Show me at least one poll directly asking about eliminating private insurance that garners majority support.
PVW said:
See, that's the problem. I keep counting and coming up very short. Show me at least one poll directly asking about eliminating private insurance that garners majority support.
Bernie Sanders has over a million volunteers who all support eliminating private insurance.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/02/us/politics/2020-democratic-fundraising.html
He has made it clear that after the election, we will just be starting our work.
nan said:
PVW said:
See, that's the problem. I keep counting and coming up very short. Show me at least one poll directly asking about eliminating private insurance that garners majority support.
Bernie Sanders has over a million volunteers who all support eliminating private insurance.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/02/us/politics/2020-democratic-fundraising.html
He has made it clear that after the election, we will just be starting our work.
That's one borough in New York -- a lot of people to share part of a city with, but very far from a national majority.
PVW said:
That's one borough in New York -- a lot of people to share part of a city with, but very far from a national majority.
Huh? It's the whole country. He has way more individual supporters than any other candidate. They had to create a separate map without him so you could view them. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/02/us/politics/2020-democratic-fundraising.html
Like it or not, there are multiple Medicare for All proposals and, assuming we get M4A at some point (as most Americans hope) it will invariably not exactly match any of them. Apologies if this has already been posted; it’s hard to keep up; but the New York Times has an interesting article and poll on this (from earlier this year) that I stumbled across today. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/21/upshot/up-medicareforall.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
You may have to be a subscriber to read it. (Does the NYT allow a few free articles per month?)
nan said:
Huh? It's the whole country. He has way more individual supporters than any other candidate. They had to create a separate map without him so you could view them. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/02/us/politics/2020-democratic-fundraising.html
I believe PVW was saying that 1 million volunteers nationwide is equivalent to the population of a NYC borough. Unless you honestly thought someone was trying to convince you that out of the whole country, only the population of Staten Island are volunteering for Bernie, in which case I might suggest you have your optical prescription adjusted.
Robert_Casotto said:
link to video of Kim Iversen’s views on this?
Iversen's videos seem to have a different focus, but since you seem to like her, here is her page on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoJTOwZxbvq8Al8Qat2zgTA/videos
Enjoy!
Dennis_Seelbach said:
But I thought that Bernie the Savior's plan included all those things, as well as unicorn dust and ponies !
Every other country has some form of what you call unicorn dust and ponies, so maybe we should not be listening to people who trivialize it and try to convince us to think of healthcare as a right as something beyond the rainbow.
ridski said:
I believe PVW was saying that 1 million volunteers nationwide is equivalent to the population of a NYC borough. Unless you honestly thought someone was trying to convince you that out of the whole country, only the population of Staten Island are volunteering for Bernie, in which case I might suggest you have your optical prescription adjusted.
That's 1 million volunteers to start with, and they are all over the country. Sanders gets huge turnout at his rallies--there is no reason to suggest that would stop after he was elected.
sac said:
Like it or not, there are multiple Medicare for All proposals and, assuming we get M4A at some point (as most Americans hope) it will invariably not exactly match any of them. Apologies if this has already been posted; it’s hard to keep up; but the New York Times has an interesting article and poll on this (from earlier this year) that I stumbled across today. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/21/upshot/up-medicareforall.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
You may have to be a subscriber to read it. (Does the NYT allow a few free articles per month?)
The New York Times hired an unqualified reporter just to smear Sanders, so they are not the go-to-guys on evaluating healthcare, even when presenting it as "objective" experts. I notice from this article that they review 10 proposals, but only the Sanders/Jaypal version calls for extensive changes--they make it look like those examples are extreme. Meanwhile, most of these are not Medicare for All proposals. They are Medicare for Some. Also, when I took the polls in the article, the majority of people wanted the same things I did--the whole system changed to single-payer paid through taxes.
51% of people said they supported ending employer-based insurance. They say that most people under 65 are happy with their health insurance from work and might "rebel" is it is taken away--no evidence provided. The NYTs experts say that ending employer-based healthcare is politically infeasible. They don't say more about this, but the message is clear--don't even bother seeking the best solution and accept less--a lot less. They title the whole article with the word, "Beware." This is the type of "common sense" arguments that should arouse the most skepticism. Also, they put in the scare line about everyone's taxes doubling, which is not true. Except for people making over $400K a year, people will end up paying less for healthcare than they do now. Where is that in this article?
They end up saying that a public option seems the most reasonable--but they do not give any of the negatives on that or say how much it would cost or how many would not be able to afford that. They cite the "Center for American Progress" which is a corporate Democrat thinktank, headed by Neera Tanden. So, no surprise at the conclusions.
The Sanders/Jaypal versions give the most coverage for the cheapest cost. That's where we should be heading.
nan - is Canada really the best analogy to M4A? Would you admit that the following is true?
"So, in Canada, rather than having a single national health care system, we actually have 13 provincial and territorial health care systems," Grepin explains. "So, that might be something that people don't fully realize. It's not a national system. And so, as a result, there's actually quite a lot of variation across the provinces in terms of how things are done."
She also pointed out that Canada isn't strictly a single-payer system.
"Another thing that people sort of misunderstand about Canada is that some people like to say that we have a single-payer health care system and that's true for some things," she says. "But actually, we have a very multi-payer health care system in Canada and that a lot of things are actually paid for through private health insurance in Canada."
nan said:
The New York Times hired an unqualified reporter just to smear Sanders,
When are you going to stop making this ridiculous assertion?
drummerboy said:
nan said:
The New York Times hired an unqualified reporter just to smear Sanders,
When are you going to stop making this ridiculous assertion?
She won’t.
ridski said:
drummerboy said:
nan said:
The New York Times hired an unqualified reporter just to smear Sanders,
When are you going to stop making this ridiculous assertion?
She won’t.
oh
drummerboy said:
When are you going to stop making this ridiculous assertion?
It's 100% true. I have provided evidence.
nan said:
It's 100% true. I have provided evidence.
It's 0% true and you have not provided evidence for your specific claim. As I've shown you already. The fact that you think this is true is, again, quite disconcerting.
drummerboy said:
It's 0% true and you have not provided evidence for your specific claim. As I've shown you already. The fact that you think this is true is, again, quite disconcerting.
The fact that you can't see the nose on your face is quite disconcerting. I guess we will add this to the list of things you don't acknowledge, like Hillary's secret deal for the 2016 election, the one Donna Brazille revealed in her book.
nan said:
The New York Times hired an unqualified reporter just to smear Sanders, so they are not the go-to-guys on evaluating healthcare, even when presenting it as "objective" experts.
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You might end up with Medicare for All as written. I'm guessing there would be a fight to save the profitable Medicare Advantage plans and other supplemental insurance. So, it's possible, it would get rolled out without those and you would still have to buy supplements for hearing, eyes, dental, and some other things. Still would be better than the public option.