This one was from Bernie.
He accused Jake Tapper of pushing Big Pharma talking points in his
hostile questions about Medicare For All and then – this is what I love – noted
that in two or three minutes they would break for commercials and CNN would air
Big Pharma commercials, so CNN was making money from the negative talking
points. Now that really breaks the
fourth wall, as they say in the theater.
By the way, I am on Medicare, and I can keep my doctor and all that good stuff.
13 comments:
Professor Wolff,
If you watch the debate you can clearly see that as Bernie is making that point, the moderators are hand wringing and interrupting him in a desperate effort to appease their corporate sponsors.
There were zingers all night!
the times they are a changin...?
I'm on Medicare and can keep my doctor too. But Medicare doesn't cover hearing aids, and last year when I had to plunk down $4,500 for new ones, I would have been delighted to have one of those policies that did.
Uhmm... Sanders is explicit and careful to say every single time that the "Medicare" that will be "for all" will be a revised expanded version of it, one that includes "dental, hearing aids and eyeglasses." He says this every single time.
I was literally too impatient and weary to state that Talha. Thank you!
So Bernie says that dental, hearing aids and eyeglasses will be included in his Medicare for All plan. That's great, and I would love to have it. I'm not sure, though, that if I already had that coverage, I'd risk giving it up for the chance that Bernie could get that coverage through the House and the Senate. Doubters are unlikely to vote for him in the first place. So why promise something that, albeit great, you won't be able to deliver any more than Obama could get a public option?
"I'm not sure, though, that if I already had that coverage, I'd risk giving it up for the chance that Bernie could get that coverage through the House and the Senate."
Why would you give it up before Bernie got it passed...
There's literally no reason to believe that Bernie - given his voting record - would ever make Americans worse off in terms of their healthcare BEFORE he gambled on making them better off.
Also, again, you're just fear mongering here on false pragmatism. Seriously, what percentage of the population is basking in their impeccable private health insurance plan with such gusto and confidence that they are a major electoral concern here? The majority of voters in both parties want Medicare for all. Now we need to sell them on how and why it works, and addresses your contrived fears.
Obama never wanted the public option. We've already had this debate.
I thought you said somewhere that you agreed with me that it couldn't get through Congress.
How do you know that Obama never wanted the public option?
We already discussed the latter.
There is no certain conclusion, that can be reached on August 1st 2019, one way or the other, that Bernie's bill will or won't pass congress. That's speculation beyond the bounds of reason, and when you engage in per-ordained 'pragmatic' criticism you foreclose the future in a self fulfilling prophecy (hence you're a rear guard liberal, conserving the status quo).
Moreover, whether or not it can pass - hell let's just assume it will never pass - IN NO WAY ENTAILS that Bernie would FIRST ban private insurance, leaving tens of millions destitute, and only AFTER that, try to pass Medicare for all. So your arguments against Bernie's Medicare for all bill remain spurious.
DP said:
"That's great, and I would love to have it. I'm not sure, though, that if I already had that coverage, I'd risk giving it up for the chance that Bernie could get that coverage through the House and the Senate. Doubters are unlikely to vote for him in the first place."
I'm sorry but this is so evidently wrong as to make utterly transparent that there is no real substantive concern here at all--just fear-mongering in service of incrementalism.
As Chris has already made plain, it is just absolutely ridiculous to contemplate having to "first" give up private coverage and "then" hope that Medicare-for-All passes. OF COURSE private coverage is only made unlawful once Medicare-for-All is put in place. It is done in the same Act, with various transition windows, etc. The concern that one might first make private insurance that competes with MFA unlawful before passing MFA itself, is just so transparently silly as to make one wonder how anyone get so contorted as to contemplate it. Unless, of course, it's the result of fear-mongering in service of the status quo.
Talha
Good point. I wrote too quickly. To state again, my fear isn't what will happen after he election, but what will happen during the campaign and on election day. If the Democrat argues for Medicare for All, not just those who want it, I believe Trump will eat him/her alive. He'll go into western PA and Michigan and Wisconsin where all those auto and steel workers who have great policies live and tell them the Dems will take away their policy. It doesn't matter if Bernie says his proposal to Congress will include glasses and hearing aids and be the greatest policy since sliced bread. I believe they won't risk it--nor should they. It would face the full onslaught of the insurance industry, and probably the medical industry as well. They love Obamacare,though. It subsidizes new customers.
Fair enough, David. That's a different debate. And on *that* debate, it simply needs to be explained--more clearly and carefully than has been done by Bernie or Warren so far--that "Medicare-for-All-Who-Want-It" is simply untenable. For reasons I explained in another thread, namely: To allow folks to buy private insurance for stuff that MFA already covers, is to allow private insurance to siphon off all the cheaper-to-insure (those without kids, those without pre-existing conditions, the young, those without disability) folks, leaving the public insurer to cover all the more expensive folks--while of course allowing the former to transfer into the latter when it suits them (i.e., when they have kids, get older or have a major ill-health episode that drives up their private premiums). So as to infeasibly drive up the costs of public coverage and generate an illusory "efficiency" of private coverage.
And another point: you still keep talking about them "risking it." But they are not risking anything: either comprehensive MFA will be passed or it won't, and their private/employer-based coverage will remain in-tact.
Right, I'm still not seeing the risk here.
The very fact that the press and the democratic party have convinced the so-called-left voting populace that it's Bernie - and not these very institutions - who is going to harm organized labor and their accomplishments, is a complete Machivellian and Orwellian inversion of history. To even regurgitate this argument as if it's legitimate, is obscene and frightening. Similar to when the alt-right convinces people that it's they who aren't the racists or sexist.
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