Joe Biden, Senator from Citibank (oops, DELAWARE), to Run for President

all this talk of moving certain conversations to this thread or that thread or starting a Huff Joe Biden's Balls Thread or whatever is wrongheaded as there is only #onethread

"wrongthreaded" imo

Turnout in the election reached a 120 year high. The idea that a better candidate would have appealed to much larger numbers of voters seems like a stretch.

...if the exact same proportion of voters would vote the same way in a two-party system regardless of candidate, why have there ever been US elections?

The public option is no easier or more likely to get past Joe Manchin's daughter/the GOP than Medicare For All and is worse policy - it's not universal (permanently at risk of being gutted like every other means-tested program - and the public option would be means tested for cost) and wouldn't do much at controlling healthcare cost as a percentage of GDP.

Biden's public option exist(s/ed) to strip support and movement from single-payer, in order to please the donor class (and it failed even at that - messaging the Biden campaign worked with Third Way on was used against him in the general).

The real meat of Biden's healthcare program is more subsidies for the execs at insurance companies, which still leaves an early middle-aged person making $50k a year paying 10% of their take-home for decent insurance.

'Decent' insurance that still results in situations like this

My friend Kaylin wrote this abt one month before she died, 4 years ago today. I loved her. She shld not have had to spend the last months of her life fighting w her insurance company. I will never accept the unspeakable cruelty of US healthcare system. Medicare for all. Now. pic.twitter.com/1oiRKj6rnS

— elaine (@p_splashartist) November 22, 2020

Anything short of Medicare for All is so pathetic as to not be worth paying attention to not to mention, as Milo says, not going to happen

I prefer demanding good things that aren’t going to happen to demanding to kind of bad things that aren’t going to happen.

https://i.imgur.com/WnHmlIW.jpg

Everybody knows they are mostly going to be D.C. careerists with public-private revolving door experience and assorted think tank/Ivy League/corporate credentials. Nearly all of them will have things on their resumes to be very mad about, if you so choose. What my new book presupposes is... maybe that sucks?

It's funny to see a friend's tweets on this thread, I just wish they weren't so deadly serious.

To think that I was "lucky" spending approximately 10k out of pocket for my medical care in 2019, a year when I made 27k, is absolutely ludicrous. Of course, that medical care amounted to approximately 1.05 million dollars, but that's just another reason why the entire healthcare system in the US needs to be overhauled, because I was getting nickeled and dimed for the absolute dumbest shit.

glad you came out the other side of that ordeal table

AOC convincingly explained the possibly-fatal flaws with the public option route in, like, two minutes flat. I don't have a link handy but I posted it on the AOC thread maybe a month ago.

Thanks, Dan. I am, too.

I will be frank and say that the ACA saved my life. If I can imagine anything positive about the Biden admin besides a change in the tenor of discourse, perhaps, it is that executive attacks on something *resembling* better health care will probably slow to a halt.

That said, M4A or bust.

“ Biden's public option exist(s/ed) to strip support and movement from single-payer, in order to please the donor class (and it failed even at that - messaging the Biden campaign worked with Third Way on was used against him in the general).”

Eh that’s pretty silly and conspiratorial imo.

The only way you get to m4a is through sone incremental expansion. That’s the only path that builds the necessary public support for Universal Health Care. The m4A advocacy these past few years really ticked up by not framing it as the extension of what the ACA started instead of this “everything else but M4a is pathetic/for millionaires”. Might as well just ran your head into a wall a thousand times.

is that covered?

lol

only way you get to m4a is through sone incremental expansion. That’s the only path that builds the necessary public support for Universal Health Care.

the public already support it, a pandemic killing over 1,000 ppl a day would have been the perfect popular time to campaign on it

^^^

No the opposite in fact. Radically overhauling the health care industry during that time would have been incredibly toxic. The immediate issues/concerns people had with the pandemic weren’t like “I can’t afford to see a doctor”

when some Bernie people were saying that near the end of the primary they were wildly misreading the moment.

the public supports it, and I support it, but much like the ACA, you have to fight tooth and nail to keep the White House for like, 3 or more terms after passing it to avoid the inevitable "lol let's undo everything the Dems just did" campaigns that will intentionally weaken the program.

there really is no greater form of insanity than defending the US private insurance industry in 2020. also Medicare needs to be reformed for M4A to at least cover 90% coinsurance. 80/20 sound ok-ish until you have one hospital admission, 20% of several thousand dollars is an amount most people can afford. my parents neither are working and are trying to afford monthly payments for my dad's costly April hospitalization. he reached OOP on it but it's a pretty high maximum for his advantage plan, so he owed a ton after his Medicare Advantage plan paid.

The immediate issues/concerns people had with the pandemic weren’t like “I can’t afford to see a doctor”

wouldn't that...make them more amenable to overhaul the system?

not that people being contradictory is a shock - when I was in the call center wing of my business, I'd hear people describe their horrifying medical ordeals and how it left them with a mountain of debt and they'd still bitch about socialism and the nanny state out of the other side of their mouths.

ACA didn't win a lot of people over because it was imperfect and wound up being massively expensive for a large proportion of people, including my own mother, for mediocre plans. but an actual M4A system might change their minds after the first few claims kicked in.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-23/biden-linked-firm-tests-messages-to-undercut-medicare-for-all
https://citizentruth.org/top-democratic-consultants-have-worked-for-anti-medicare-for-all-campaign/

The Partnership for America’s Health Care Future (PAHCF), a nonprofit created last year to oppose plans to create a comprehensive, universal health care system, paid almost $760,000 to Bully Pulpit Interactive, a communications and digital marketing firm that has worked with the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC).

The dark money organization paid almost $185,000 to Anzalone Liszt Grove Research, a polling firm that has been working with former Vice President Biden’s Democratic presidential campaign, the DSCC, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The firm recently tested attack lines on Medicare for All for Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank. PAHCF also paid $140,000 to Blue Engine Message & Media, a firm that was founded by former campaign staffers for President Barack Obama. (Blue Engine is now known as Seven Letter.)

(As I said, this didn't work, as the Partnership for America's Healthcare Future then turned on Biden once Medicare For All was a dead issue.)

Biden's (few) progressive moves over the most recent cycle have all been calculated to claw back at strides made by the 'progressive wing.' No wealth tax or concrete plans to deal with inequality but we'll agree to a minimum wage increase 11 years after Democrats could have passed one when Obama had 57 Senators. No single-payer healthcare, but we'll float a public option our Senators wouldn't pass last time and spent months telling you how evil single-payer healthcare is.

the public supports it, and I support it, but much like the ACA, you have to fight tooth and nail to keep the White House for like, 3 or more terms after passing it to avoid the inevitable "lol let's undo everything the Dems just did" campaigns that will intentionally weaken the program.

This is the fundamental argument for M4A rather than "incremental expansion" (which, again, are no more likely to pass than M4A) - universal programs are harder to kill.

Bush didn't crater after Iraq or Katrina - he fucked up by talking about privatizing Social Security.

“ "incremental expansion" (which, again, are no more likely to pass than M4A)”

Ehhh idk about that.

i'm against incremental expansion of the ACA as it's basically been crippled to the point where at best, you'll get it back to what it was in 2014.

the drawback = the ACA was the springboard that Republicans/Tea Party campaigned on which resulted in the ridiculous Red Wave of 2010. But...I don't think you can let things like that factor into your decision. At some point, you gotta just swing for the fences.

Is Big Don actually Joe Biden

― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Wednesday, November 25, 2020 10:06 AM (one hour ago)

Is Big Don actually Anthem, Inc

wrinklepaws

It’s worth remembering that the GOP unable to get their ACA repeal through even with all three chambers in large part because of intense public outcry.

Ehhh idk about that.

Best case scenario that Joe Manchin is the swing vote, he's going to do either of those?

The better policy is just as difficult to achieve as the bad policy - but inspires activism and broad public support from your party's voters. No one's volunteering to phone bank for more subsidies for Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

The immediate issues/concerns people had with the pandemic weren’t like “I can’t afford to see a doctor”

what kind of horseshit is this

No Milo I wasn’t thinking it would be something that happens with a GOP controlled senate

The Manchin scenario isn't a GOP controlled Senate

I wish there was a Manchin scenario, but we're not even going to get that

the very worst Robert Ludlum

did we defund his butt yet

I wonder if any of us are really ready for what a healthcare debate will look like in the age of Q. There will be insanity. They're going to act like this is the Final Solution, they're all being lined up for enslavement or extinction.

They are but not in the way they think

Biden is Q iirc.

Biden has work insurance, he skips the Q

I don’t know what the tell you man. The public option exists, has been a long term progressive goal, would help a lot of people out and he ran on it. I don’t that the difference between that and M4A is the best reason to go all blackpill but w\e you do you Jack.

― “Big” Don Abernathy, Tuesday, November 24, 2020 6:03 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

This is a funhouse mirror version of Rs treating Romneycare (aka the ACA) as some socialist plot instead of the product of conservative thinktanks.

No the public option passing would actually be major social legislation. Well yeah I know that the right wing think tank thing is something people say but not really true about the ACA. Right thing think tanks wouldn’t conceive of Medicaid expansion just for one thing and also Republicans desperation to repeal it is reason enough for us to know not to repeat that talking point.

There should be some questioning of “the public option is compromised corporatist shit (lol) but m4a is the ideal oh and both things are EQUALLY a non-starter in the senate”.

I use to believe in that theory that you go for the most ambitious legislation possible to get the best deal but idk that’s like out of some dumb book about how to win negotiations. Especially when you’re announcing that it’s a tactic at the outset.

But the public option is compromised corporatist shit, full stop.

Haha holy shit

No that’s...aggressively ignorant. Sorry.

I would say I missed gabbneb but I actually didn’t.

i do like* that ilx gets a wacky new centrist every few months

*not the right word

pub option was some wack olive branch 2008 shit that the Dems couldn’t even muster the sack to get behind. the kids are on some M4A now, old man.

*skateboards away*

here you go Big Don

You're aggressively ignorant, Big Don. Please leave.

If I thought everything outside of full m4a was garbage or a evil plot I would probably just kill myself. Because also maybe it would effectively demonstrate the severity of my feelings toward healthcare policy? I know I would be like “woah check out what this badass did. Maybe he has a point”