Elizabeth Warren's Health Care Albatross

[brooklynite]

New York Times

The perils of becoming an ideological party are often framed in terms of culture-war issues, with Beto O’Rourke’s promises to seize guns and tax churches (sadly doomed to unfulfillment, with the expiration of his campaign) the liberal equivalent of Michele Bachmann’s crusading zeal. But ultimately ideological enforcement hurt McCain and Romney much more on pocketbook issues, health care and taxes especially, where under conservative pressure they ended up staking out positions that became anchors on their general-election campaigns.

That is the danger facing the Democrats, and particularly their quasi-front-runner Elizabeth Warren, with the issue of “Medicare for all.” Single-payer health care is, in certain ways, the liberal-activist equivalent of the conservative dream of a flat tax. It’s an idea of some merit if you’re designing a system from scratch and it polls O.K. if you don’t tell people about the trade-offs. But it tends to run into trouble quickly on the state level — with Vermont’s stillborn single-payer experience mirroring the flat-tax experiments of states like Kansas. And it has enough political vulnerabilities, in terms of costs and disruption both, that no sane Democrat should want it as the centerpiece of their national campaign.

Warren, who is definitely sane, clearly doesn’t want to make it her centerpiece; you can tell that she’d like to run on her promise to tax the wealthy to pay for free child care and college, with a dose of anti-corruption and trustbusting on the side. These ideas have their own difficulties, but they’re popular and responsive to the voters, and a good foil for Donald Trump’s record of corporate tax cuts and not much else.

But being a progressive candidate in a leftward-marching party required her to sign on to Medicare for all, and being the “I’ve got a plan for that” candidate in a party that still fetishizes wonkery required her to roll out a big, multi-trillion-dollar proposal on Friday. (Kamala Harris, the Tim Pawlenty of 2020, attempted Medicare-for-all evasiveness and fell off the map.) So now if Warren wins the nomination she’s going to drag a multi-trillion dollar renovation of the American health care system into the fall campaign — even though everyone understands that the renovation won’t happen, even though Warren herself would rather talk about other policies that poll better. An ideological party is a harsh mistress.

[abqtommy]

1. Of course, the writers at the NYT have their own slant on things. I remember that it was quite a

struggle for the Obama administration to get the ACA passed, and that was with all 3 major branches
of government in Democratic hands. One thing I'll say for Elizabeth Warren, and that's how she has galvanized the discussion over health care and other policies. It appears to me that candidates with
policy proposals that get a lot of push-back are doing something right. Even if the only thing we get out of the health care debate is a strengthened ACA then we'll have gained something. If we get
Medicare For All then that would really be something.

[blm]

2. Obama campaigned for Dems in 2018 touting Med4All as a good idea and

as a winning issue for Dems.

No one is saying it can be done overnight or even in one term, but, the critics will spin that lie in order to defeat the candidate that is most likely to find the path to do it.

[Cha]

12. President Obama said this in December 2018..

'Republicans will never stop': Obama slams GOP after ruling against Affordable Care Act

snip//

Former President Barack Obama responded Saturday on social media to a federal judge's ruling that core aspects of the Affordable Care Act were unconstitutional, calling the decision "a reminder that Republicans will never stop trying to undo" the protections offered by his signature health care law

"If they can’t get it done in Congress, they’ll keep trying in the courts, even when it puts people’s pre-existing conditions coverage at risk," Obama said in a Facebook post. "The only way to convince them to stop trying to repeal this law, and start working to make health care better, is to keep voting, in big numbers, in every election, for people who’ll protect and improve our care."

snip//

Barack Obama Tweet:

There are two things you need to know today about health care.

First, today’s the last day of open enrollment. That means it’s the deadline to make sure you and the people you love have health insurance in 2019. So head over to HealthCare.gov to get covered!

Second, you might have heard about a federal court decision on a Republican lawsuit trying to strike down the Affordable Care Act in its entirety. That can be a scary thing to hear, particularly if you or someone you ...

See More

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/12/16/obama-responds-obamacare-ruling/2329964002/

[blm]

15. That doesn't change his positive view of Med4All

No one is saying it will happen overnight. But it’s time to start working seriously to transition towards it over the next 5-10 years.

What’s wrong is fomenting the fear of it within the Democratic Party so it doesn’t happen at all. And doing it for crass, political jockeying in a primary.

[turbinetree]

3. This Warren plan is not a "flat tax" in any shape or form and for this

Editorial to shape it has such is a disgrace......................

The current ACA health care tax......
Your cost for Marketplace health insurance is based on the income you file on your tax return. Your reported income also determines your eligibility for the tax credits associated with Marketplace health coverage. The tax system acts as a way for the government to provide assistance, by means of a tax credit, to those who need insurance but might not be able to afford it.


The Libertarian BS flat tax....................also known as the Steve Forbes tax...................
A flat-tax system is one in which everyone pays the same rate, regardless of income.

[femmedem]

9. I believe you are misunderstanding the editorial.

The writer isn't saying it's a flat tax--only that it resembles a flat tax in that it is an issue which would more easily come to fruition if it didn't involve dismantling an existing system.

(Don't get me wrong; I think the flat tax is an awful, unequitable idea and in that way is the exact opposite of Medicare for all.)

[Gothmog]

4. The assumptions underlying the Warren plan are not realisitc

Link to tweet

The bad news is that Warren’s assumptions are crazier than keeping a pet rhinoceros, after which, who cares that her calculator works? This is to actual policymaking as the plastic noodles in a ramen-bar window is to lunch.

To wit: Warren says she can deliver a generous Medicare-for-all plan with only $20.5 trillion in additional federal spending. That’s a quarter to a third less than any serious estimate of the plan from outside her campaign. How will she get there? Why, by slashing administrative costs and then mandating that everything else cost less. Warren is not exactly the first progressive reformer to have this same idea, and if she pushes forward with it, she will be but the next in a long line to discover that she can’t make it work, politically or economically. As Philip Klein of the Washington Examiner dryly noted, Warren could just as well have written that Mexico was going to pay for her big, beautiful plan.....

The best you can say for all of this is that none of it will happen. If Warren makes it to the White House, and tries to pass a plan, the Congressional Budget Office will eventually attach more reasonable numbers, with more defensible assumptions, sparking an even more spectacular political blowback than the one that greeted Friday’s announcement. Outside of the progressive Twitterati, there isn’t necessarily an enormous constituency for spending $20.5 trillion to herd every American into a national health insurance program; there would be even less support for spending what Warren’s plan would actually cost
.
And even if she somehow pushed her program through, there’s a good chance that courts would strike it down, because so many of the revenue-raisers may be unconstitutional. Between the problems with her wealth taxes (Article I, Section 9), her plan to divert employer premiums to the government (ex post facto taxation of health benefits) and her requirement that state and local governments toss $3 trillion into the kitty (anti-commandeering doctrine), Warren would be a couple of adverse court decisions away from a $15 trillion hole in her $20 trillion plan.

Stripped of the Warren plan’s math-like veneer and the unreasonable reasoning, this is all rather embarrassing — or to steal a phrase, more of a slogan than a plan. It’s certainly not one of the highlights of Warren’s campaign.

[melman]

8. Megan McArdle

LOL

[blm]

16. Wow. Again posting a RW op ed from Hugh Hewitt's favorite guest?

Why don’t you post all her op Ed’s railing against Obama while you’re at it?

Can’t believe that you would post her opinions against Dem proposals here, G.

[ritapria]

5. NYT message to 500k who go broke under current system : Live with it , loser

500,000 people - every year

[crazytown]

6. Seems like some competing campaigns are nervous.

"this is the real thing — not some left-leaning version of voodoo economics" - Krugman

[melman]

7. Ross Douthat

LOL

[BeyondGeography]

10. No shit

[question everything]

11. It is not about the cost; it is not about tax - mostly. It is about taking people's choice

of private plans.

So much for the party of "pro choice."

[Cha]

13. No kidding.

[Lexblues]

14. It's hard for politician to run on taking something away

That's not what Dem politicians typically do...it's Republicans that run on taking stuff away. It's much easier to give people something than take it away. People naturally have fear of something worse. That's why M4A is a political loser in the GE.