Democratic (Party) Direction

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

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

almost afraid to ask, but....fred, what does that sanders quote prove? spell it out for those of us who aren't shareblue readers

social security for all?

almost afraid to ask, but....fred, what does that sanders quote prove? spell it out for those of us who aren't shareblue readers

― k3vin k., 14. september 2017 17:21 (forty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

He was being asked about the 61% of Americans who were satisfied about the health care. The implication being that there might be a large amount of Americans who doesn't want to reform health care. Again. But he never talks about disagreements in the populace (as in, y'know, class struggles for instance) and instead just claims that 'most people' agree and then attacks elite groups.

Peter Daou, Frederik B...its been a bad time for Hilary stans.

sort of have a feeling that a career politician whose ideas have historically had trouble finding broad support understands that passing universal health care will not be easy. i'm not sure what bernie's personal optimism has to do with the issue at hand, considering it isn't just he but a large proportion of the democratic establishment who is now onboard. but i understand that continuing to view every issue as a referendum on bernie's likability is therapeutic for you so i'm just going to let you do your thing.

61% being "satisfied with health insurance" - a number that's dropping year over year, rapidly, and includes the population with Medicare/Medicaid/military/govt. plans that are much more satisfied than average - doesn't mean they oppose further reform.

His entire quote there is spot on - the current system (that 40% of Americans are still unhappy with) depends on increasing subsidies to insurers and pharmaceutical manufacturers (etc.). The function of single-payer to control costs is almost as important as universal coverage in the long run.

Actually if you bother to read what he says, he addresses this statement about the 61%, appropriately enough, by citing other polls of public opinion, suggesting that "most people say yes" to health care being a guarantee and to the current system being financially wasteful. Obviously these things poll differently depending how they're asked. You ask people if they are glad to have any health care at all, they're thrilled. I suspect that if you ask people "do you wish your health care were free, instead of costing what it currently does," the answer will make 61% seem like peanuts. So what's the point of focusing on his response to this one poll being thrown at him?

Attacking elite groups is smart politics btw when the elite groups are ones everybody hates (insurers and pharmaceutical companies) and what you want to change is precisely that the health care system is designed around those elite groups making huge profits at the expense of widespread human suffering. It's a pretty tight, clear, memorable argument, which is part of why Sanders is so popular in the first place, and able to continue building support for changing the system. I'd also point out that his focus on the financial waste of the existing system (which he also lingered on in his New York Times op-ed the other day) is not only OTM, but very smart rhetorical politics - it flips the whole ideology of efficiency and optimization and eliminating waste from being a neoliberal argument for "running government like a business" to being an argument for why certain things need to be government-run and not a business. You can see it being something that helps win over people whose normal favored arguments don't look as much like "health care is a right."

Your class struggle thing is a non-sequitur - it's not like the 61% who are "satisfied" with their current plan (which god knows what all range of attitudes that implies and entails) are at war with the 39% who aren't. We call the ruling class "the one percent" because they do not in fact make up sixty-one percent of Americans, but rather another, much smaller number.

but really i can wait to rain on fred's parade until the day i get my first universal health care card in the mail, which will also be the day the GOP starts organizing around the urgent and doomed fight to repeal #BernieCare. the thing is i now think there's at least a reasonable chance this day will actually come within my lifetime, maybe even the next decade. i would have laughed my ass off at someone hazarding that chance even a short time ago.

also 61% being satisfied maybe could means that a large chunk haven't needed much healthcare for long periods of time -- often the case for many. The expansion of healthcare -- as a policy and the feeling behind it that drove Sanders' campaign -- and the defence of the ACA after Trump's victory makes that stat laughable.

But this was meant to be Hilary's big week, why oh why should Bernie spoil it with this crazy talk. Its making Fred mad.

I sincerely hope everyone else is right and that you get single payer in four years, because you deserve it. But this whole rollout is just a faceplant to me. Badly put together and disingenuous. There's only funding for about 1,6 trillion out of the 3,2 trillion it would cost, and 1 trillion of that is listed as 'Savings'. It's stupid. And I'm not sure it's a good sign that the establishment is onboard, it just shows the unwillingness to tackle the difficult questions. Who wouldn't be supporting a plan that offered free health care for all AND savings for everyone? He should put in the necessary funding, have the spineless centrists balk, then run on the tough plan and defeat them.

This is nothing but rhetoric and sophistry. Smart examples of both, perhaps, but it won't get anyone anywhere. And again, I hope I'm wrong about that. But I suspect I'm not. And that's bumming me out.

lol okay w/e

This is nothing but rhetoric and sophistry.

― Frederik B, Thursday, September 14, 2017 12:30 PM (six minutes ago)

for the love of god, someone make this the board description

Laughable concern trolling. Every single bit of detail doesn't need to be fully-worked out right this sec.

And it can be paid for. By the elites.

Who wouldn't be supporting a plan that offered free health care for all AND savings for everyone?

...

do you get how people build support for things and get legislation passed?

"Who wouldn't be supporting a plan that offered free health care for all AND savings for everyone?"

up until a minute ago, all those "spineless centrists" weren't! now suddenly it appears that everyone seen as a plausible candidate for president, except maybe lolcuomo, is in favor of single-payer universal health care. this is a watershed shift in Democratic (Party) Direction, and i could easily see it being seen by history as one of the most important political developments of the trump era.

it'd be disingenuous if he didn't admit it would have to be paid for, but not having each funding stream delineated isn't that. your math is what's disingenuous - you say bernie's plan would cost $3.2 trillion, but that's not the cost of bernie's plan, it's what america currently spends on health care. much of which does indeed vanish if you aren't dealing with profit and overhead of private insurance and naturally can roll back the tax breaks that exist as part of our current system. so his bringing up "Savings" is not wrong on its face, sorry.

just so everyone has it handy, here's sanders's math. it is, really, far more specific than i expected, or than it even needs to be at this stage.

The Plan Would Be Fully Paid For By:

A 6.2 percent income-based health care premium paid by employers. Revenue raised: $630 billion per year.

A 2.2 percent income-based premium paid by households. Revenue raised: $210 billion per year. This year, a family of four taking the standard deduction can have income up to $28,800 and not pay this tax under this plan. A family of four making $50,000 a year taking the standard deduction would only pay $466 this year.

Progressive income tax rates. Revenue raised: $110 billion a year.Under this plan the marginal income tax rate would be:

37 percent on income between $250,000 and $500,000.
43 percent on income between $500,000 and $2 million.
48 percent on income between $2 million and $10 million. (In 2013, only 113,000 households, the top 0.08 percent of taxpayers, had income between $2 million and $10 million.)
52 percent on income above $10 million. (In 2013, only 13,000 households, just 0.01 percent of taxpayers, had income exceeding $10 million.)

Taxing capital gains and dividends the same as income from work. Revenue raised: $92 billion per year. Warren Buffett, the second wealthiest American in the country, has said that he pays a lower effective tax rate than his secretary. The reason is that he receives most of his income from capital gains and dividends, which are taxed at a much lower rate than income from work. This plan will end the special tax break for capital gains and dividends on household income above $250,000.

Limit tax deductions for rich. Revenue raised: $15 billion per year. Under Bernie’s plan, households making over $250,000 would no longer be able to save more than 28 cents in taxes from every dollar in tax deductions. This limit would replace more complicated and less effective limits on tax breaks for the rich including the AMT, the personal exemption phase-out and the limit on itemized deductions.

The Responsible Estate Tax. Revenue raised: $21 billion per year.This provision would tax the estates of the wealthiest 0.3 percent (three-tenths of 1 percent) of Americans who inherit over $3.5 million at progressive rates and close loopholes in the estate tax.

Savings from health tax expenditures. Revenue raised: $310 billion per year. Several tax breaks that subsidize health care (health-related “tax expenditures”) would become obsolete and disappear under a single-payer health care system, saving $310 billion per year.Most importantly, health care provided by employers is compensation that is not subject to payroll taxes or income taxes under current law. This is a significant tax break that would effectively disappear under this plan because all Americans would receive health care through the new single-payer program instead of employer-based health care.

That's old, though, right? Here's the new paper https://www.sanders.senate.gov/download/options-to-finance-medicare-for-all

In my view, there needs to be vigorous debate as to the best way to finance our Medicare for All legislation. Below are a number of options to begin that discussion.

wow yeah how disingenuous, how stupid. what a wasted opportunity. if only he'd never published this, america might really have a chance at improving its health care system. :-(

(should be an ellipsis between the two sentences of the italicized text, sorry)

honestly if your first reaction to single payer entering the national conversation in a meaningful way for the first time in decades is negativity and nit-picking about funding, you can fuck off

do not feed the dane

Marmadon't

folks, the Will McAvoy twitter account is ending. who will lead the Dems now?!

Jimmy Smits hasn't done much lately, Aaron Sorkin could probably go ahead and launch West Wing: The Obama Years picking up right where the old show ended.

https://newrepublic.com/article/144811/centrist-democrats-even-stand-for?utm_content=buffer6b179&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

A whole two elected Democrats quoted in the entire article!

Kessler, Marshall and Troiano can choke on their piles of Silicon Valley's pocket change.