Democratic (Party) Direction

That college tuition plan is pretty brilliant

It's pretty brilliant that she calls it "free higher education" when it's not free!

xp: what Tomboto said. "Free higher education" would mean "free like high school" -- it's a service you get in exchange for your taxes, no conditions.

well the conditions should be "able & inclined to keep up with the material"

yeah these types of programs feel like a way to get something that sounds bernie-esque and populist in place at the state level (which obviously does restrict your options - hard to tax Wall Street from Columbus)... without raising any taxes or pissing off any on-the-fence suburban republican types. "don't worry, don't worry, they'll be humiliatingly indentured to the state and have to jump through whatever hoops we make them! you like that, right?" i mean it might really help out tons and tons of people i guess so that's not to be entirely sneezed at but i'm with tombot and wish we could skip past these lame compromise-in-advance half-measures.

timkaine... prefers more choice in marketplace

This is such crap. If you have the ability to choose your doctor and together with your doctor you can choose your course of treatment, you've got the important choices covered. Why is a choice of which insurance company's arcane rules and impenetrable charges you are subjected to supposed to be of value to a sick person?

first time I've ever heard of Tim Kaine being pro choice https://t.co/JSKQDRYJSi

— maura quint (@behindyourback) September 11, 2017

you go, bernie. our current health care system is evil and bad for the economy both. put the (russian-colluding / deficit-spending / silver-spoon knob-slobbering / anti-christian) republicans on the defensive, dems

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/13/opinion/bernie-sanders-medicare-single-payer.html?mcubz=3&_r=0

Meanwhile I get my cable back after #Irmanonsense, turn on MSNBC, and listen to Chuck Todd with palpable enthusiasm wondering if Medicaid for all will "split" the party.

The Plan Would Be Fully Paid For By:

- snip -

A 2.2 percent income-based premium paid by households.

https://berniesanders.com/issues/medicare-for-all/

lol ill take it! the individual mandate penalty right now is 2.5% and that's for NOT having health care.

looking okay OK

http://newsok.com/democrats-win-special-election-in-norman/article/5563866

bernie is so fucking stupid it's unbelievable. chait otm

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/09/sanderss-bill-gets-u-s-zero-percent-closer-to-single-payer.html

lol

matt yglesias wrote an actually worthwhile version of this point of view recently: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/29/16196608/wonks-single-payer

chait is such a fuckin' tool.

I cannot tell anymore if sleepingbag is being sarcastic or just going all in for the SBs

I guess the "so fucking stupid it's unbelievable" is OTT enough to indicate not-actually-trolling

Chait is always a total jackass whenever anyone brings up nationalizing / re-nationalizing privatized services. His wife is a charter school network exec. I'm sure he was a big vote in favor of hiring Andrew Sullivan at nymag, too.

What I don't understand is how you go from writing The Big Con to being such a devoted capitalism-first neoliberal. When he writes shit like this he turns into the McArdle of the center-left

i like matt yglesias, i don't like jonathan chait or josh barro

— Sam (@VaguelySteamy) September 9, 2017

It's okay to push for something big without having every detail of its implementation worked out. Like your support for the Iraq War. https://t.co/ZqKb0mOgvT

— Matt Bors (@MattBors) September 13, 2017

matt yglesias wrote an actually worthwhile version of this point of view recently: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/29/16196608/wonks-single-payer

― k3vin k., Wednesday, September 13, 2017 4:26 PM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's fine too. the problem is that leftists' interest in the particulars of something like this starts and ends with emotions, so you get someone with zero understanding of how to accomplish something potentially good like this leading the charge and turning it into 'well i don't know about you but i think things should be v good and not ever bad?... i guess i'm just not hitlery enough to not care about people dying?'. my feelings about bernie are basically what ppl keep saying to hillary: 'shut up, go away'

xp it's not that he doesn't have 'every' detail worked out, it's that he doesn't have 'any thing' worked out

Chait is often unreadable.

https://youtu.be/VxBQZPkdQMM

I don't think asshats like Chait understand how shitty the healthcare system is even for people with decent jobs and employer based plans. It's like they're using talking points from 20 years ago.

the problem is that leftists' interest in the particulars of something like this starts and ends with emotions

I think by "emotions" you mean "demolishing a system in which people die and/or are bankrupted needlessly as quickly and thoroughly as possiblr"

Ask me about my coworkers $35k medivac healthcare bill for her newborn son sometime. The hospital that signed off on it was owned by the insurer who refused to pay it. She's a lawyer, doesn't mean she has an extra $35k lying around.

My HSA plan is great though. I love having no idea what a pediatrician visit will cost.

let's all calm down and remember that single payer is and will always be impossible because the united states has unique complications that make it much harder to implement than the entire rest of the world

this is real exciting i am so glad to see something like this proposed for real even if it has no chance finally fucking finally.

i hope Bernie does this every year even with fools screaming at him along the way.

lets get this idea out there. if it's flawed let's come up with ways to make it better.

Just keeping it in the conversation is useful. At very worst it will scare insurers into behaving better temporarily and maybe lead to some minor Obamacare concession improvements

yeah, the more support it gets, the more reason the healthcare lobbies have for trying to ensure Obamacare remains viable. There's even a possibility for a gradual evolution towards single-payer as they cede risk pools and markets where they can't make a profit.

nationalize all health insurance companies imo

just eliminate them really, what are they for?

there will always be paperwork, just a lot less of it

I'm kinda bummed out. No attempt at a realistic price tag for the system, and a funding paper that's woefully inadequate. This could have been done in week one. It also reminds me why I disliked Sanders so much and kinda thought he was a sanctimonious asshole. Plus I now realize I'm probably two weeks away from another temp ban. Tops.
:(:(:(:(:(:(:(

Great bill, exciting to keep the conversation going. Sanders is offering a lot more than Hilary.

isn't it vague in kind of the classic way of legislation that you actually *do* hope to pass someday? so long as they acknowledge that they will have to pay for it ("additional tax revenue goes here" kinda thing) as opposed to republican "this tax cut will magically pay for itself with GROWTH!" talk.... imo beyond that are reasonable details to put off til you're really in the thick of hammering out a bill that's going to come to a vote.

strategically, i *personally* would be fine with marking the targets more explicitly, as sanders did during the campaign, but if a slightly vaguer bill helps him get all these different senators to buy in, who cares? it's a fucking paradigm shift for major party leaders to be publicly committing to this as an "aspirational" end goal.

a bunch of supposedly centrist, technocratic dem senators -- booker, gillibrand, etc -- have signed onto this idea -- but concern trolling from DaouBraous is definitely useful.

obviously, support for a single-payer plan should be a litmus test for dems, especially ones with national ambitions. i know many of us are used to the wildly successful obama-style "negotiate with yourself first" strategy, but bringing this issue to the forefront of left-leaning political discussion is a worthwhile goal, even if there's no chance for passage in the next 4 years. that said, democrats should use this downtime to actually come up with an improved version of the bill that can work in real life, rather than using the GOP strategy of campaigning on "repeal and replace" without actually having a workable replacement. getting broad support for the idea now is the correct first step

xp

It is exceedingly dumb for any dem to outwardly oppose single-payer at this juncture. It is similar to repeal and replace in regards to the fact that it will never pass, so why not vote for it to appease your base?

john conyers has also been introducing a single-payer bill in the house every year for over a decade, and his bill currently has over 100 cosponsors, over half the house democratic caucus. there are better lenses through which to view this issue than the 2016 primary and your personal feelings about bernie sanders

I mean, they should also vote for it because it's the best and most helpful policy, but politicians in general don't really think that way

Sometimes politicians also think about reelection campaigns and how much money the healthcare industry has to throw at their opponents - not that it's much of an excuse!

Plus I now realize I'm probably two weeks away from another temp ban. Tops.

see now that you can see the behavior and anticipate the consequences, yo can start thinking about how to change the behavior before it occurs

Voodoo Chilli is probably right, many centrists support the plan because they don't care anyway, assume it will never happen, and is just using it to score free points. So they will never actually pass it. I don't get how anyone expect Bernie Sanders to be able to pass it, he seems unable to actually grasp that he doesn't have 99% support on everything he proposes. So in the end, I just don't get who anyone thinks will build upon this. Hillary Clinton should probably shut up, but yesterday, at the same time as Sanders was unveiling this plan, she was sputtering that he never ever even knew how much his proposals would cost, and it turns out she was right. And it's a shitty bill to move the 'overton' window on public welfare when it can't even include the words 'tax raise', but has to talk about 'progressive tax rates' and 'fair share'. That's not actually how welfare systems work in the rest of the world. At the very least raise revenue to get to 3,2 trillion, because in the end you should probably raise a lot more to pay for a bunch of other great stuff.

what an incoherent and useless post. thanks.

I don't get how anyone expect Bernie Sanders to be able to pass it, he seems unable to actually grasp that he doesn't have 99% support on everything he proposes.

I'm pretty sure the Vermont independent who caucuses with a party that's been in the minority for most of the last quarter century gets it.

he seems unable to actually grasp that he doesn't have 99% support on everything he proposes

lol yes, that would be why he defines himself as an insider, fighting against no powerful interests, in an effort that will require no hard work and asks nothing of its supporters. with that in mind it's really weird how he keeps sending out all those emails asking for help and describing a long term fight that won't be easy. but maybe they have to do that or they lose the domain name or something. anyway i'll be sure to let him know that you're among the one in a hundred people he believes stand in his way, probably will help him narrow things down.

He seems to think the battle will be long and hard because of vested interests and evil elites. Shit like this:

In other words, what this struggle is about really, honestly, is not a health care debate. Should health care be guaranteed to all people? Most people say yes. Are we wasting an enormous amount of money in the current system? Most people would say yes. Can we take on the drug companies and the insurance companies and Wall Street and their unlimited sums of money to influence Congress? That is another issue, and that's a major political struggle that we have to engage in.

That's him answering a question about 61% of Americans being satisfied with their health care, btw. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/9/13/16297228/bernie-sanders-medicare-single-payer

Voodoo Chilli is probably right, many centrists support the plan because they don't care anyway, assume it will never happen, and is just using it to score free points. So they will never actually pass it.

I didn't say that it would never pass, just that if this current bill makes it to a vote, the majority republican senate would vote it down. Which is obvious.

I also didn't say that "centrists don't care." The single thing that is most important to every single politician in America is winning re-election (or winning election to higher office), and the Dems who are not supporting Medicare For All in its current form are not convinced that it's a winning electoral strategy with their constituents. Sanders proposing Medicare For All is a fairly sound political strategy, imo, because his aim is more to prove the broad support for a single-payer system, and thereby convincing Centrist Dems of its long-term viability, than to actually try to pass this thing, which has far too many veto points to make it out of the bill stage.

"He seems to think the battle will be long and hard because of vested interests and evil elites."

my god, the man is insane, call the men in the white suits

Right, it's not like insurers felt the need to rapidly issue forceful statements in opposition

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/insurers-slam-single-payer-proposal/article/2634259