Can We Please Stop Fighting About 'Medicare for All'?

[elleng]

'One policy proposal has defined this Democratic race. It’s time to move on.

With strong support among the Democratic Party’s base, “Medicare for all” has emerged as a test of progressive bona fides in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

It has also emerged as something of a political morass into which the candidates keep stumbling.

Most recently, the businessman Andrew Yang faced scrutiny over his position on the idea of creating a government-run health insurance system that essentially would eliminate private coverage. . .

“Medicare for all is not the name of a bill” but the basic goal of universal coverage, argued Mr. Yang, noting that his plan “would be based on Medicare and expanding it over time to more and more Americans.” . .

Amid all this confusion, Mr. Yang was right about one thing: When announcing his plan, he warned that Democrats were “having the wrong conversation on health care” and “spending too much time fighting over the differences between Medicare for all” and other ideas, such as expanding the Affordable Care Act or establishing a public option to operate alongside private plans, a hybrid model that another Democratic candidate, Pete Buttigieg, has called Medicare for all who want it.

The American health care system is, no doubt, deeply flawed, and health care was a hot topic in the 2018 midterm elections. But Medicare for all has dominated the Democratic race for too long, serving neither the candidates nor the electorate well.

A plan to blow up that system and throw 149 million people off their private insurance, while embraced by progressives, is viewed more skeptically by moderates and swing voters. A poll conducted in the fall by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Cook Political Report found that 62 percent of swing voters in the former “blue wall” states of Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin consider Medicare for all a “bad idea.” The foundation’s C.E.O., Drew Altman, wrote in Axios, “If the Democratic nominee comes to be defined by the idea of Medicare for all, that could be a political problem in key battleground states.” . .

Even among Democrats, Medicare for all polls worse than the less revolutionary alternatives of the sort being offered by Mr. Buttigieg and others, including Mr. Biden and Senator Amy Klobuchar.'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/opinion/medicare-for-all-democrats.html

[janterry]

1. Maybe we should stop saying we're going to THROW people off their insurance

As Warren said - it's not their insurance companies that people love

it's their doctors -- they trust their doctors.

[dlk]

2. Medicare for all would need to be passed by congress

Even with healthcare for all Americans being a critical issue, the arguments over throwing millions off their current coverage are divisive by design. With so much at stake in this next election, we would be better served focusing on what unites us.

[BeyondGeography]

3. It's a joke...Democrats couldn't even get a surprise medical billing fix through Congress last month

It wasn’t even the Republicans’ fault. Richard Neal killed it. Google his name alongside private equity giant Blackstone and see what happens.

As a party, we are an absolute mess on health care. We take money from the HC lobby, we are scared to death of their attacks whenever we talk about reforming the system and we attack each other’s plans for personal political profit. Until those dynamics change, nothing will change.

[FiveGoodMen]

4. Do you want to legalize other forms of murder while we're at it?

(Who knows how well that will poll?)

[CaptYossarian]

5. You confused me with that, but you're right. It's about semantics and how the other side

spins our words.

Assisted suicide is thought of as murder, but with the pets we love, we say it's "humane".

I consider the "pro-life" Repubs to actually be pro-death because they're always wanting to take millions of Americans (including infants and children) off the ACA, going back to their good old days when 40,000 Americans died annually. Look at that number: 40,000. Vietnam lasted for a decade and we lost 59,000 troops and it still hurts.

The GOP fellates the NRA and allows 92 Americans to die each day because of a gun pandemic unique to our country. What is so pro-life about being anti-woman? That's what it really means.

These same slithering, suit-wearing bastards want to destroy Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare--a move that would cause the deaths of countless people who worked and paid into these programs.

And they think all species can survive without clean air and water--because Profits Trump Everything.

But Medicare For All is for the greater good, so the other side says we can't afford it. Yet we can somehow afford a wall-to-wall wall to keep out people of color, Space Force to keep out Klingons, weekly golf outings to Mar-a-Brothel, and infinite wars over oil.

Their side says "All lives are precious", but suffer a massive stroke when they see a Black Lives Matter t-shirt.

It's about semantics.

[CaptYossarian]

6. I obviously added the anti-woman sentence to the wrong rant.