Elizabeth Warren's Healthcare Plan Has All the Ambition Democratic Voters Should Demand

[BlueMTexpat]

The senator professor fit healthcare into her core message on corruption and the money power.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a29667387/elizabeth-warren-healthcare-plan-corruption-inequality/

Let us get the requisite hunk of cynical reality out of the way right here at the top. Absent the kind of national landslide that killed off the Whigs and Federalists, or a sudden discovery within the Republicans of a vestigial collective conscience, no Democrat's healthcare plan will get through to the president's desk out of a Senate led by Mitch McConnell. Therefore, any debate on the topic within the Democratic primary process is largely aspirational. (After all, only Joe Biden has publicly endorsed the actual existence of that mythical beast: The Republican Who Can Be Reasoned With.)

Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's good to aspire to things. It's good to throw the cap over the wall. It also helps if your plan is as carefully constructed and precisely reasoned as the one Senator Professor Warren put out there on Friday, the one that so thoroughly answers the question, "How're you gonna pay for it?" that people should be embarrassed to ask it again. Dave Dayen at The American Prospect has as good a summary of the 9,300 pages as you can find. (Dayen shrewdly points out that single-payer plans are generally held to a ludicrously high standard by politicians and pundits.) And he makes one magnificent catch: the Warren plan re-institutes a systemic risk fee that was eliminated in the negotiations over the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill at the request of...wait for it...Scott Brown. SPW has a plan. She also has a memory.

There are three elements of the new plan worth studying right off the top. First of all, it is designed as a mechanism for universal coverage. Long ago, in 2003, I was riding around Iowa with Howard Dean when he still was the only person running for president—George W. Bush hadn't yet announced for re-election—and he emphasized that the primary goal of any overhaul of the healthcare system should be universal coverage and not necessarily cost controls. Warren's plan does that.

Second, it is perfectly consonant with the anti-corruption, anti-monopoly power theme of her entire campaign. The plan aims to bring antitrust enforcement to the healthcare sector.

And third, it factors into its calculations a cut in the defense budget, which used to be a big deal for Democrats, but which hasn't been a top-line item in presidential campaigns for a while. ...

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I for one am getting tired of the dings against Elizabeth Warren for doing exactly what so many supposedly wanted her to do.

Yes, there are certainly elements and things that need to be discussed. That is why it is a plan, subject to development and revision.

And, until we all become as expert in financial matters as she is, let us try to listen and read more ... and learn. Please.

[BlueMTexpat]

1. And here is the analysis

that Charles Pierce is referring to: https://prospect.org/health/warrens-medicare-for-all-plan-includes-no-new-taxes-on-the-middle-class/

[BlueMTexpat]

2. From Dave Dayen's link above:

...
The detailed plan will test the limits of voter endurance: The Medium post clocks in at over 9,300 words. But the concept is quite simple: Figure out what it costs to pay for health care for the entire country, figure out how much you can reduce that spending, add in health funding that the government already pays for, and then make up the difference.

The whole thing is kind of a ridiculous political exercise, a burden placed upon single-payer advocates that other health care reform plans never have to shoulder. Warren perhaps hopes that she can drill down to such detail to take the issue off the table politically, and challenge other campaigns to step up with similar substance.

But in doing so, Warren’s team incorporates a number of other policy preferences outside of health care, including comprehensive immigration reform, banking regulation, initiatives to fight inequality, antitrust enforcement, boosts to unionization, tax compliance, anti-corruption measures, military spending, and more. It really reflects an entire agenda and value set that values working families over the oligarchs currently running roughshod over America.

While there would be enormous challenges to advancing such a complete economic and social transformation, the plan does a meticulous job of answering the nagging “how will you pay for that” question, while attempting to shift the debate by foregrounding the significant benefits of universal coverage, and the personal freedoms it would usher in. ...

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Much more detail at the link.

[wasupaloopa]

3. Sure let us stop using critical thinking and trust our

lives to someone much brighter and better educated than we are!

While we are at it, let’s ignore the majority of voters who do not want to be forced into a government run health care system.

Damn the torpedoes full speed ahead!

[BlueMTexpat]

4. Until you have read

Elizabeth Warren's 9,300 word proposal and can come up a real and reasoned critique of it, please keep trying to learn.

[wasupaloopa]

8. No. Until we take over the government do we do not have time to read 9,300 pages!

M4A will not defeat trump. It will do just the opposite. It will give people a reason to vote against us.

You need to look at what we need to take back power. You need to get your head out of ideals and get in to pragmatism.

Unless we win big in 2020, there will never be universal afordable health care. The courts will be so pacted with conservatives it will take generations to get back to even considering it.

I am afraid we will not defeat trump if Warren is the nominee. She gives you a reason to vote for her but she gives more people reasons to vote against her.

[BlueMTexpat]

13. That's your opinion.

You are entitled to it.

It's not mine. And I am entitled to mine.

[BlueMTexpat]

15. Btw, you

can also read the summary in #1.

Try and post some reasoned rebuttal instead of knee-jerk reactionism. Please.

[DownriverDem]

16. Agree

We are a Center/Left country. We need a Center/Left candidate. Too many folks don't seem to get that.

[hedda_foil]

19. Words -- 9,300 WORDS -- not pages.

[Magoo48]

10. Exactly,

Contempt prior to investigation is never a healthy stance.

[erlewyne]

5. I am with Warren and I sure will nave to sacrifice.

I am living off Social Security right now and it is not enough.

I had to pay for my insurance for two years and was going broke
until Medicare kicked in and I know how unfair it is.

If everybody would pay their taxes Warren's plan would work
and all insurances are a racket (car, home).

[DownriverDem]

17. Do you

really think folks are going to pay their taxes? I believe that trump would love to run against Warren.

[Kurt V.]

6. K&R

[brutus smith]

7. Agree

Why do so many Dems sound like repubs when it comes to healthcare? Isn't healthcare our main objective?

[DownriverDem]

18. Center/Left Country

That is not repub. It's reality.

[Sancho]

9. The elephant in the room....

...is that in most other countries with universal health care, the doctors (and other parts of the system) are paid less than in the US. They make a good living, but the systems internationally (hospitals, drug stores, etc.) do not support the salaries/profits that are typical here.

One reason that there is resistance to medicare for all is not simply the cost savings and negotiation with drug companies and the profit loss from insurance administration....but salaries for most health care professionals would be like other government jobs, and not whatever the monopoly dictates.

Your typical MD would make $50,000 to $150,000 less per year, and you would not have as many high-priced specialists with billboards on every road. Pharmacists, technicians, therapists, etc. would have different salaries and job descriptions.

Yes, as a union officer I have negotiated health care plans INSTEAD OF SALARY for years...so there's no way to get those salaries back into the contract if we jump to a universal plan, but I could see some sort of phase-in if health care switched to M4A and we demanded higher salaries as the cost of health care went down. The loser in the deal would be the employee salaries of hospitals, doctors, and drug companies.

Just my take on it...

[Raven123]

11. I agree with the opinion of the OP

I haven’t read the proposal and I suspect some posters and candidates haven’t either. A proposal that Warren claims to have spent a lot of time developing has been criticized as unworkable by some with knee-jerk-reflex speed.

I don’t know what I will think about it until I read some, but I appreciate any candidate who puts an effort into a policy proposal.

[BlueMTexpat]

14. Thank you for your

reasoned response.

[KPN]

12. Thanks for posting this excellent OP.

I agree. The dings against Warren are tiring. I’m tired of being a party that says “we can’t” first and then sets the goalposts. Never mind that there’s usually no detailed plan for paying for those “we can’t get what we want so let’s shoot for less” goals either - but that don’t matter, we probably can’t get there anyway.