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Post by Deleted on Oct 8, 2019 13:59:33 GMT
I don’t have a problem with Medicare for all once I know how much it is going to cost and how it’s going to be paid for. Apparently I’m not the only one.
From the Washington Post..
”Will Medicare-for-all hurt the middle class? Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders struggle with questions about its impact.”
“The two presidential candidates who have most strenuously backed Medicare-for-all are scrambling to ease concerns that it would create higher costs for many middle-class Americans.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are running on a multitrillion-dollar plan Sanders wrote to provide health insurance coverage to all Americans through the federal government, rather than from private insurers. Although they have frequently stressed that the middle class would see overall costs go down, a wide range of experts — including one whom Sanders has relied upon — say it is impossible to make those guarantees based on the plans that the candidates have outlined so far.
“Obviously, all of the 180 million people who have private insurance are not going to pay less. It’s impossible to have an ‘everybody wins’ scenario here,” said Kenneth Thorpe, chairman of the health policy department at Emory University. “The plan is by design incredibly disruptive. As a result, you create enormous winners and losers.”
There’s no question it hits the middle class,” he added.
John Holahan, a health policy expert at the nonpartisan Urban Institute agreed: “Even though high-income people are going to pay a lot more, this has to hit the middle class.”
Several other economists who specialize in health care say it is difficult to predict how most Americans would be impacted, given far-reaching effects to the nation’s two most complicated systems, health care and taxes. They include one to whom the Sanders campaign referred The Washington Post.
Robert Pollin, a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst who has consulted with Sanders, said he has been baffled by how the senator from Vermont talks about the proposal and says there are not enough details to analyze how the middle class would be impacted.
I didn’t try to decipher. Theirs was too complicated,” he said. “They don’t go into a whole lot of detail. . . . The Sanders proposal to me was not clear enough to enable me to make the estimates on different types of families.”
Their skepticism comes as voters are seeking more assurances at town hall meetings and as former vice president Joe Biden focuses more tightly on his plan to build on President Barack Obama’s health-care law with a proposal that costs far less than the one from his two key rivals. New polling has also shown some of the political risks of Medicare-for-all, with voters growing more skeptical once they learn of the details.
After questions were posed over the past few weeks, the campaigns conceded that their plans still remained in flux. They put forward several new arguments and provided additional detail in their cost estimates, but their responses did not fully answer a key question: In a plan that would significantly alter the tax code and the health-care industry, how many and which Americans would ultimately be hit with higher costs?
The Sanders campaign said it would be able to address that question with more precision after it releases a comprehensive plan on reforming the nation’s tax laws. It would not specify when that plan would be released.
Health care has dominated the first three debates and promises to factor heavily into the next one on Oct. 15. The once largely philosophical debate about whether Americans should have a choice of insurers is turning toward more fundamental and specific questions about how much it would cost and who would pay for it.
Long confined to the fringes of the Democratic Party, Medicare-for-all has become more popular in recent years, helped along by the rise of Warren and Sanders. Now, in the eyes of many voters, the burden for explaining the nuts and bolts of the plan has fallen upon the candidates.
Medicare-for-all does appeal. It’s just how we’re going to pay for it,” said 37-year-old Yul Owens of Philadelphia, who attended an AFL-CIO candidate forum last month. “As long as somebody has a plan for how we’re going to fund these things, there’s not a problem at all.”
But the candidates’ plans don’t fully explain the funding. Sanders has said that his plan would be paid for in part with higher middle-class taxes, something that Warren has declined to directly acknowledge. They both make the case that any tax increases would be offset by health-care savings.
“If you’re making more than $29,000, in a progressive way, you will be paying more in taxes,” Sanders said in an interview conducted before his recent hospitalization. “But the increased taxes that you’re paying will be significantly less than what you were paying for premiums, co-payments and out of pocket expenses.”
Yet, in the way Sanders has outlined his proposal, that statement won’t apply to everyone. And his campaign has been unable to say at which income level Americans will start paying more in taxes than they are saving in health-care costs.
The Sanders campaign has sought to frame the debate over Medicare-for-all in personal terms, emphasizing how it would address the catastrophic financial toll health-care costs have taken on some Americans under the current system. He touted the plan repeatedly while being treated for a heart attack, noting that such sudden illnesses as his can be financially ruinous for those without coverage.
Warren, despite a reputation for coming up with plans on a wide variety of subjects, has so far largely outsourced her health-care proposal to Sanders. “I’m with Bernie,” she said at the first debate, signaling to fans of his plan that they would also have a champion in her.
Warren has been pressed in a variety of settings — on debate stages, in interviews, on late-night television shows — but has avoided the question of costs to the middle class. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews asked her the question in late July several times without an answer, to the point that he said in frustration, “I’m not getting anywhere.”
When asked specifically how she would finance Medicare-for-all, Warren’s campaign said that she is “reviewing the options” suggested by Sanders and is also examining “other options” for how to pay for the plan. Her campaign would not outline what that entails.
The campaign pointed to Warren’s previous statements pledging to not raise overall costs on middle-class families but would not outline how she would accomplish that with a plan that many economists, as well as Sanders, say will require significant tax hikes.
Right now, what we’ve got in Medicare-for-all is a framework, and it doesn’t have the details,” Warren said late last month in Keene, N.H., responding to a voter worried about losing his health care.
She also floated the idea of offering “cash equivalents” to union members who lose favorable insurance plans that have been negotiated during the transition to Medicare-for-all. (Sanders also has proposed assistance for those workers.)
Sanders estimates that his plan would cost $30 trillion to $40 trillion over 10 years. But his campaign clarified that — because he would use the spending already going toward Medicare, Medicaid and other health-related government programs — he would only need to come up about $15 trillion in new revenue.
He has proposed several tax increases to help pay for it, all of which add up to $16.2 trillion. Those details are crucial to projecting how an average American family might be impacted by the transition to Medicare-for-all.
A portion of the revenue for Sanders’s plan would come from an additional 4 percent tax on income for families making more than $29,000, which he estimates would raise $3.5 trillion. He would also impose an additional 7.5 percent payroll tax, raising $3.9 trillion. Although Sanders would levy the payroll tax only on employers with payrolls over $2 million, economists generally assume that all payroll tax increases are passed along to workers in the form of wage cuts, slower wage increases or job losses.
The senator has proposed generating further revenue by making more affluent Americans pay more in taxes, including raising the top marginal tax rates, limiting itemized deductions and establishing a wealth tax.
Sanders has argued that his plan would be cheaper than maintaining the status quo — putting forward a $50 trillion figure to maintain current health-care spending over the next 10 years — but fact-checkers have said that figure is dubious. The Post’s Fact Checker gave him three Pinocchios for the comment.
Sanders also has provided estimates for a family of four earning $50,000. He estimates that the family would no longer pay $5,277 in premiums and would see their taxes go up by $844 — seeing a savings of about $4,400. The employer, instead of paying $12,865 a year in health-care premiums for the family, would have a payroll tax increase of $3,750 — for a savings of $9,000.
But the employer would break even if the insured is an individual making $50,000 — rather than a family of four, which have higher premiums — according to Fact Checker. The financial impact on an individual would depend on whether the employer passes on the additional costs they could incur on employees making above $50,000.
Sanders and Warren have declined to specify what they view as “middle class” — something Pew Research Center puts at $45,200 to $135,600, based on 2016 data — but economists say that most taxpayers would pay more in taxes than they would save from having the federal government absorb the cost of health-care premiums.
Thorpe’s analysis of the Medicare-for-all plan that Sanders outlined in 2016 found that about 71 percent of those with private insurance would pay more in new taxes than they would save by having health insurance covered by the federal government. Thorpe estimated Sanders’s plan is underfunded and would need higher taxes than he has proposed; Sanders’s updated health-care plan, released this year, imposed higher taxes than his earlier proposal but still not as high as Thorpe says would be needed.
“Most of the proposals to move to Medicare-for-all would involve substantial tax increases that would affect most people,” said Katherine Baicker, an economist at the University of Chicago who specializes in health policy. “These are going to be big tax increases. The tax brackets may have to shift. You may have to do more than just dialing up the top tax bracket in a realistic accounting.”
“I think it seems likely under most proposals taxes would have to go up substantially unless you dramatically cut the health care you’re getting,” she added. “And I don’t think most proposals envision substantially cutting back on care. And most envision expanding care which means you’re spending more unless you dramatically cut the price per service.”
Pollin, the professor who has briefed the Sanders campaign on his plan, said his in-depth study of how Medicare-for-all would work was paid for by National Nurses United, which has backed Sanders and supported Medicare-for-all. Pollin briefed the campaign, and Sanders himself, on his findings.
Pollin said he believes the goals are achievable and has come up with a different proposal to pay for the plan that he says would ensure low- and middle-class Americans would not see overall costs go up. But that is not the same as Sanders’s plan.
Biden has proposed adding a public option that would allow people to choose between a private insurance plan or one offered by the federal government. His plan would cost an estimated $750 billion, which he would pay for by repealing the tax cuts for the wealthy that were passed in 2017 and by raising capital gains taxes.
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Post by Merge on Oct 8, 2019 15:02:57 GMT
Well, under the current system we have Medicare for some and Social Security for some. I'd suggest we figure out how to pay for it all, because the SS system is projected to be out of money the year I turn 61.
This is kind of like me saying, oh, the electric bill is high - I just can't see how we'll pay for it. The answer is that we don't have a choice. We pay it or our lights get turned off. We make cuts in other areas. We pool our resources. But the bill has to be paid whether everyone is "fine with it" or not.
America doesn't have a choice. We figure out healthcare AND social security or we continue to get poorer and sicker as a nation. The income disparity between folks who can afford medical care, and who can afford to actually retire, and those who can't do either, widens - and the whole nation suffers.
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Post by ntsf on Oct 8, 2019 15:22:42 GMT
this is why I would not vote for bernie or elizabeth among other reasons. we need to maybe transistion to an insurance system more like switzerland.. where the insurance companies are required to cover everyone..
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Post by Merge on Oct 8, 2019 15:36:34 GMT
this is why I would not vote for bernie or elizabeth among other reasons. we need to maybe transistion to an insurance system more like switzerland.. where the insurance companies are required to cover everyone.. What happens to people who can't pay for the insurance? Is insurance tied to people's jobs? Is some insurance better than others? Do insurance companies profit off the premiums people pay (i.e., are they motivated to decline coverage of certain things to increase shareholder value, as is currently the case in the U.S.). We cannot continue the way we are going. If you'd vote for Trump to avoid improving healthcare, I think we have radically different priorities. IMO we have the means to make this happen, but not the political will. Most politicians realize solving a problem doesn't get anyone re-elected. They'd rather spend those trillions creating problems -fighting wars- because wars get people re-elected. |
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Post by ntsf on Oct 8, 2019 15:54:50 GMT
I would never vote for trump.. we need to slowly transfer insurance away from work.. to a national system.. but we can use insurance companies. like social security everyone signed up. and increase taxes on corporations, and increase taxes on rich people.
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Post by Merge on Oct 8, 2019 15:59:01 GMT
I would never vote for trump.. we need to slowly transfer insurance away from work.. to a national system.. but we can use insurance companies. like social security everyone signed up. and increase taxes on corporations, and increase taxes on rich people. As long as we're using for-profit insurance companies, money that is meant for healthcare will be siphoned into corporate pockets. And in this election, any vote for a third party candidate will be a de facto vote for Trump, unless you happen to live in a very blue state. |
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Apr 23, 2024 17:04:33 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Oct 8, 2019 16:52:51 GMT
The Gazette in Iowa..
“Some Democrats worry leftward liberal lurch hurts 2020 chances”
“DES MOINES — The question is about as old as politics in a democracy itself: Does a political party that moves away from centrist policies toward ideological extremes risk alienating middle-of-the-road voters — and thus losing?
For Democrats in the 2020 presidential election, that debate is not breaking new ground. But the stakes in this election for Democrats amplify its importance.
Democrats are hankering to evict Republican President Donald Trump from the White House. Democratic voters regularly say that when they are surveying their party’s expansive field of candidates, they are looking for someone who can beat Trump.
What they do not agree on is whether some of the Democrats’ presidential candidates, and by extension the primary debate in general, is moving so far to the liberal left that it could wind up hurting the candidate when he or she is facing Trump in the November 2020 election.
Democratic candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are staunch proponents of Medicare-for-all, in which the federal government would eliminate private health insurance and create a completely government-run health care system. Beto O’Rourke has proposed a mandatory federal government buyback of military-style assault weapons. Multiple candidates have endorsed reducing illegally crossing the border into the United States to a civil infraction, and providing immigrants in the country illegally access to health insurance.
While these and other policy stances make many Democratic voters cheer, they make other Democrats cringe.
Place Matt Bennett in the latter column.
Bennett is co-founder of Third Way, a Washington, D.C., think tank that promotes, in its words, “modern, center-left ideas.” He was in Iowa recently as part of Third Way’s effort to influence the influencers: people in early caucus or primary states and general election swing states who are connected to campaigns and advocacy groups.
Bennett’s message to Democrats: Don’t go crazy during the primary.
“And our fear is we’re kind of going crazy,” Bennett said during an interview in Des Moines. “We’re kind of letting Twitter dictate what these candidates are doing and saying. And that’s a terrible idea. And it could imperil us in really significant ways.”
It’s a sentiment shared by some of the candidates in the presidential race themselves.
“I do think there are candidates in this race that are lurching way over, and I’m not even sure I can describe it as progressive. It’s just sort of impractical proposals that may sound good on the internet or on social media, but when they come up to living and breathing human beings just don’t make sense as proposals. And I am worried about the damage that’s doing,” Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, one of the presidential candidates, said recently during recording for “Iowa Press” on Iowa Public Television.
“In order to beat Donald Trump, we’re going to have to win some purple states like mine and like (Iowa) and like others around this country,” Bennet said. “And if we’re not aiming for that in the primary ... I learned very early on that you don’t say one thing in a primary and something else in a general election.”
Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, who stresses his credential as the only Democratic presidential candidate to win a statewide race in a state won by Trump in 2016, shares Bennet’s concern.
“These debates are disconnected from people’s lives and we have to actually be talking about the challenges people have each and every day,” Bullock said during a recent trip to Iowa.
The Democratic electorate seems divided on how much to worry.
In a September poll from CNN, a plurality of potential primary voters — 49 percent — said they fear nominating a candidate who is too liberal.
And yet many other Democrats say they do not share that concern. Some of them could be found recently at the Polk County Democrats’ Streak Fry, which featured appearances by 17 of the presidential candidates. Some Democrats there said they are comfortable with the policy debates in the primary, and even suggested some candidates could stand to be a little more liberal.
“I’m way far to the left myself, so I’m very happy with that,” said Lou Fenech, of Cedar Falls, who said he likes Warren “a lot” but also likes Sanders, Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg.
“I think too many of us worry about that and we compromise and we shift to a center that is shifting further to the (ideological) right,” he said.
Lorae Johnson, of West Des Moines, said she is “good with” the left-leaning debate in the primary field. She even said of Buttigieg, her favorite candidate (she said Warren is a close second), “In fact I think Pete could go a little more to the left.”
Matt Bennett is warning the party and the candidates to be careful to not be too swayed by voters like Lou Fenech and Lorae Johnson.
“The activists who are driving the conversation on Twitter, who are showing up at campaign events a year and a half before anyone votes, they do not speak either for the general electorate but certainly not even for the broader democratic electorate,” Bennett said.
“And that it is very dangerous if our party goes too far to the left. And we can see them leapfrogging each other in an attempt to go to the left in these debates,” he said. ”And we think that’s a really, really dangerous thing.”
Bennett said his analysis is that the key to the 2020 election for Democrats is winning over voters who in 2012 went for former Democratic President Barack Obama but in 2016 for Trump.
“It is very, very possible to persuade Trump voters to come back, or to come for the first time to Democrats, particularly in the suburbs. And it’s a super-high yield bet when you do it,” Bennett said. “Persuasion is the thing that’s going to win this election, and probably it will be Obama-Trump Democrat voters that win the election for Democrats in 2020, if we win. And it will be in those places that we talked about.”
Those places include many Iowa counties along the Mississippi River and the state’s northern border with Minnesota.
When asked whether the primary is steering the Democratic Party too far to the left, Buttigieg attempted to split the difference, warning against “purity tests” while saying the party still can stand for “bold” ideas.
“But there’s a way to do that that doesn’t just switch off half the American people,” Buttigieg said in an interview. “And that’s going to be really important not just in terms of how to win, but in terms of how to govern.
“If we want to do some of the most ambitious things done in my lifetime or longer around health (care), around guns, around wages, around immigration then we’ve got to keep that American majority on board.”
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Post by Merge on Oct 8, 2019 17:03:31 GMT
Personally, I think the “too liberal” narrative is being pushed hard by the Biden camp. If Biden’s your guy, that’s fine, but that doesn’t mean that other candidates can’t win while promoting progressive views.
I’ll just issue my weekly reminder here that we lost with a centrist in 2016.
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Apr 23, 2024 17:04:33 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Oct 8, 2019 17:13:31 GMT
Personally, I think the “too liberal” narrative is being pushed hard by the Biden camp. If Biden’s your guy, that’s fine, but that doesn’t mean that other candidates can’t win while promoting progressive views. I’ll just issue my weekly reminder here that we lost with a centrist in 2016. Lost with a centrist because of the Russians and Comey’s letter about nothing 11 days before the election. Even with that she managed to get 3 million more votes than trump. Which would mean the majority of people who voted, voted for a centrist. |
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Post by lucyg on Oct 8, 2019 17:24:00 GMT
Personally, I think the “too liberal” narrative is being pushed hard by the Biden camp. If Biden’s your guy, that’s fine, but that doesn’t mean that other candidates can’t win while promoting progressive views. I’ll just issue my weekly reminder here that we lost with a centrist in 2016. Lost with a centrist because of the Russians and Comey’s letter about nothing 11 days before the election. Even with that she managed to get 3 million more votes than trump. Which would mean the majority of people who voted, voted for a centrist. And 25 years of Republicans attacking her at every turn. From the moment she became First Lady. I am still shocked at the number of otherwise-sensible people who bought into the outright lies the right wing (and the Russians) worked so hard to spread. |
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Post by revirdsuba99 on Oct 8, 2019 17:29:21 GMT
Lost with a centrist because of the Russians and Comey’s letter about nothing 11 days before the election. Even with that she managed to get 3 million more votes than trump. Which would mean the majority of people who voted, voted for a centrist. Unfortunately. We need moderate! I am more than happy with my medical coverage. I worked over 30 years to earn it! I have no problem with Medicare for those who want it. Subsidized is ok too. |
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Post by Merge on Oct 8, 2019 17:30:27 GMT
Personally, I think the “too liberal” narrative is being pushed hard by the Biden camp. If Biden’s your guy, that’s fine, but that doesn’t mean that other candidates can’t win while promoting progressive views. I’ll just issue my weekly reminder here that we lost with a centrist in 2016. Lost with a centrist because of the Russians and Comey’s letter about nothing 11 days before the election. Even with that she managed to get 3 million more votes than trump. Which would mean the majority of people who voted, voted for a centrist. And as we're frequently reminded, the majority vote doesn't matter - racking up blue votes in already blue states doesn't win a presidential election. If we want to win in 2020, we also have to turn out all the people in states like mine, and in swing states, who found Hillary uncompelling. Many people of color who voted for Obama didn't turn out for Hillary. We're not going to change that by running an old, white man who doesn't actually stand for anything. Going back to the topic at hand - I'm frequently surprised how many Democrats who support and rely on the social safety net themselves suddenly get cold feet when it comes to nationalizing health care. In some cases, it feels very much like, "I've got mine, but I'm not sure we can afford for you to get yours." Makes it hard to take those people seriously as Democrats - we're supposed to be the party of inclusion. |
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Post by Merge on Oct 8, 2019 17:32:21 GMT
Lost with a centrist because of the Russians and Comey’s letter about nothing 11 days before the election. Even with that she managed to get 3 million more votes than trump. Which would mean the majority of people who voted, voted for a centrist. Unfortunately. We need moderate! I am more than happy with my medical coverage. I worked over 30 years to earn it! And because you're happy, it doesn't matter that others are going without necessary coverage? That's what I'm hearing. I don't mean to (and don't have time to) get in an argument with every retired liberal on the board about this topic again, but dang. It's all well and good for us to make sure you have health care, and for you to drain social security dry on my back, but making sure every single person has healthcare is just a bridge too far. |
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Post by revirdsuba99 on Oct 8, 2019 17:41:29 GMT
I don't mean to (and don't have time to) get in an argument with every retired liberal on the board about this topic again, but dang. It's all well and good for us to make sure you have health care, and for you to drain social security dry on my back, but making sure every single person has healthcare is just a bridge too far. I don't agree. I have supported everyone for healthcare. I have Medicare as well as secondary paid by my former employer. I started working when I was 14 and retired after 70. I think I have contributed, didn't even use medicare or SS until then. Everyone needs to remember Medicare does not pay the bills, nowhere near! |
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Post by lucyg on Oct 8, 2019 17:44:20 GMT
Unfortunately. We need moderate! I am more than happy with my medical coverage. I worked over 30 years to earn it! And because you're happy, it doesn't matter that others are going without necessary coverage? That's what I'm hearing. I don't mean to (and don't have time to) get in an argument with every retired liberal on the board about this topic again, but dang. It's all well and good for us to make sure you have health care, and for you to drain social security dry on my back, but making sure every single person has healthcare is just a bridge too far. I don’t have a problem with Medicare for all. I have a problem with insisting that Medicare for all and right.now.this.minute is the only acceptable solution, because I don’t think the majority of the country is quite there yet. So that attitude also puts off lots of people. Just different people. And it’s not just retired people who think that way. Plenty of working people with good insurance are afraid of the alternatives. So please don’t lay it all at door of old people. |
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Post by Merge on Oct 8, 2019 18:13:26 GMT
And because you're happy, it doesn't matter that others are going without necessary coverage? That's what I'm hearing. I don't mean to (and don't have time to) get in an argument with every retired liberal on the board about this topic again, but dang. It's all well and good for us to make sure you have health care, and for you to drain social security dry on my back, but making sure every single person has healthcare is just a bridge too far. I don’t have a problem with Medicare for all. I have a problem with insisting that Medicare for all and right.now.this.minute is the only acceptable solution, because I don’t think the majority of the country is quite there yet. So that attitude also puts off lots of people. Just different people. And it’s not just retired people who think that way. Plenty of working people with good insurance are afraid of the alternatives. So please don’t lay it all at door of old people. I know it's not just retired people. But those are the ones who seem most inclined to disagree with me on this issue, on this board.  Personally, I see healthcare as a human right, so I absolutely think that right now is the right time. It's simply not acceptable to me that people are sick and dying in the richest country in the world, or bankrupting themselves trying to stay alive, when we have the means to stop it. It's not acceptable and it's not OK to wait around for others to start feeling comfortable about people having basic human rights. We did that with civil rights (people weren't ready for de-segregation) and gay rights (people weren't ready for gay marriage) and women's rights (people weren't ready for women to be ... people, I guess), and at some point you just have to rip the band-aid off and let those people get over it. |
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Post by Merge on Oct 8, 2019 18:20:03 GMT
I don't mean to (and don't have time to) get in an argument with every retired liberal on the board about this topic again, but dang. It's all well and good for us to make sure you have health care, and for you to drain social security dry on my back, but making sure every single person has healthcare is just a bridge too far. I don't agree. I have supported everyone for healthcare. I have Medicare as well as secondary paid by my former employer. I started working when I was 14 and retired after 70. I think I have contributed, didn't even use medicare or SS until then. Everyone needs to remember Medicare does not pay the bills, nowhere near! Majority of people using SS right now, or soon to be using it, will outlive what they contributed to the system - by years if not decades. Those of us still working are paying the bill for that, and also facing the reality that SS will likely not be there for us. **Many people of my generation will be unable to retire at all if SS is not there for them. We are fortunate enough to have saved for retirement, but as I frequently remind my Republican-voting husband, one cancer diagnosis could drain our savings and put us at the mercy of a SS system that seems unlikely to be there for us.** It seems to me that if we all can do that for retired folks, we collectively ought to be able to get together and make sure that people have healthcare. And I think it would be nice if people currently collecting my social security dollars would at least help us make that possible. Put another way: if I'm not going to get to collect what I've paid into SS because it's going to you, at least help me ensure that my kids and I (your kids, your grandkids) will not go without necessary healthcare. That's my appeal to my parents' generation, and if my parents were still alive, I'd be making the same pitch to them. (They'd probably be Trumpers, but I'd make the pitch anyway.) |
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Apr 23, 2024 17:04:33 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Oct 8, 2019 19:23:56 GMT
“And because you're happy, it doesn't matter that others are going without necessary coverage? That's what I'm hearing.”
Then you are making assumptions that are wrong.
Yes I’m getting Social Security and I’m on Medicare.
But I pay attention. For years there has been talk about SS & Medicare running out of money. And I agree and know changes have to be made. At the time they put together SS & Medicare I’m pretty sure they thought there wouldn’t be the problems facing SS & Medicare that there are today.
There are other Federal Programs that actually help folks that are either underfunded or about to be axed all together.
All because of the lack of money.
Enter Sanders and Warren with their BIG ideas. Medicare for all, forgiving student loans free college, and lets don’t forget the Green New Deal.
Great, I can get behind most of what they are proposing, but if we already have programs in trouble because of lack of money, how is the Feds suppose to pay for all these all priced programs? Why tax the rich of course.
Ok, three questions..
1. What is the true cost of all these programs?
2. Realistically how much revenue can you get taxing the rich in every way possible?
3. What happens to the existing programs like SS that are currently underfunded? Where is the funding coming to fix them?
Back to Medicare for All and the true cost. Sanders wrote a white paper outlining his vision for Medicare for All prior to the 2016 election. So I read it. Now it’s probably been changed since then, but what I read was flawed in that it did not include the true cost of switching people to Medicare.
1. The cost to increase the “infrastructure “ to handle the increase of folks from the current 44M currently on Medicare to 320M+ to cover all Americans.
2. The cost of actual healthcare coverage was not accurate. Again I pay attention. One of the biggest issues with the ACA individual market and the pricing was the insurance industry was way off in the estimated cost for all the new sick folks who would finally get insurance and could now see about taking care of their ailments. They blew it. What is missing from Sanders figures is the cost to insure all the folks that couldn’t get insurance because the red states would not expand a Medicaid. So the reason that messed up the individual market, could very well be the reason that would throw Sanders numbers on the cost out the window.
Which brings me back to my original questions about these programs to the Warren’s and the Sanders and the Democratic Party. What does it cost and how are you going to pay for it. And I will add one more question, what about the existing programs like SS, how are they going to do to fix that?
I want everyone to have healthcare coverage. We need to fight climate change. The whole time I have been typing this I have been getting texts from Sonoma County officials telling me what I need to do if PG&E shuts off my electricity for the next several days because of the fire danger from high winds.
But I also firmly believe that one of the biggest reasons voters stay home is because of all the promises made by politicians that fail. More than a few voters that voted for Obama, chose to vote for trump and said it was because Obama didn’t deliver what he promised and they saw Hillary as a continuation of Obama’s policies.
IMO what the Democrats need to do is be realistic in their message because it will help them win back The White House, keep the majority in the House, get the majority in the Senate and keep the majorities for a couple of election cycles so we can get something done.
And IMO you aren’t going to do it with pie in the sky programs without solid facts to back them up.
At this point these ambitious plans being tossed out there by Warren and Sanders are lacking in detail. IMO.
And to “just do it” doesn’t work for me either because I don’t want these programs to face the problems SS and Medicare are facing today down the road.
Oh yes, I’m not one of those who thinks I have “mine” and to hell with everyone else. I believe if I have “mine” so should everyone else.
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Post by Merge on Oct 8, 2019 19:23:58 GMT
Sorry, this just popped up on my Twitter (clearly I'm getting a lot of planning done today) and I had to share - from a Quinnipiac national poll released today. Warren is leading among Democratic contenders with 29% of voters, Biden with 26% and Sanders with 16%. All three poll very well against Trump nationally. I'm not sure it's true that only a centrist can win this one. All three also win recent polls against Trump even in Texas. This goes back to my original statement that the idea that Warren is too far left to be electable is being pushed mostly by the Biden camp. The numbers don't bear that out and haven't for a while now. Personally, I think a Warren/Castro ticket could deliver Texas for the Democrats. 38 electoral votes just here for the taking. |
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Post by nlwilkins on Oct 8, 2019 20:08:26 GMT
To start down the road of Medicare for all, we need to address the high cost of health care and how much it costs just to stay healthy. Just to see my PCP for a follow up costs almost $500. For a pre-op visit with a Nurse Practitioner cost $188. Each visit was less than twenty minutes. I realize that there are costs involved that are not readily available, but geez, that is a lot of money per hour pouring into the clinic. For just my PCP it adds up to over $11,000 a day. then you start to look at the cost of medicine, it is nauseating. Before you consider health insurance, look at the actual cost of medical care itself.
It used to be that you could pay off your hospital bills yourself if you worked at it. I know cause quite of few of us used to do it back in our early years. Now, it would be impossible. Sure we worried about the big ones such as cancer, so we got "cancer insurance" and felt better.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 8, 2019 20:18:15 GMT
linkThird Way Poll - 10-2-2019 “Democratic Primary Voters to Candidates: Run the 2018 Playbook””Third Way’s latest national poll of likely 2020 Democratic primary voters shows that four months out from Iowa, the race for the Democratic nomination still is anyone’s game: Former Vice President Joe Biden leads the field with 34% support, Senator Elizabeth Warren is second at 17%, and Senator Bernie Sanders is third at 15%. California Senator Kamala Harris (7%) and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg (5%) round out the top tier. One-in-four primary voters are currently undecided or are supporting a candidate outside of the top tier, and fully half of undecided voters say they won’t decide until the weeks leading up to their state’s contest. What primary voters do know for sure is that to win in 2020, Democrats should take a page from their own 2018 playbook: Three-in-four primary voters are motivated by the same priorities that brought them to the polls in 2018. A majority want a Democratic nominee who is a unifier who can get things done—just like the Democrats who delivered victory in 2018. Two-thirds think it’s important for the 2020 candidates to take positions in the primary that they can defend against attacks in the general election. Yet when asked if they feel the candidates are speaking to them when they discuss their ideas and solutions, or instead to other people, primary voters are divided. For the one in 10 who post on Twitter daily, they feel candidates are speaking more to them by 34 points. For those who don’t tweet, there’s only a five-point margin between those who think the candidates are speaking to them versus others. Primary voters know how Democrats won with a broad coalition in 2018, and candidates who embrace that playbook are likely to rise going into Iowa and beyond. The race for the nomination is still up in the air.All year, Third Way has worked with David Binder Research to conduct quarterly polls of Democratic primary voters. The latest, fielded from September 19th to 22nd, shows Joe Biden leading the field with the support of 34% of voters. This gives him a two-to-one lead over his nearest competitor, Elizabeth Warren at 17%, while Bernie Sanders is at 15%. Kamala Harris (7%) and Pete Buttigieg (5%) round out the top five, while no other candidate reaches 4%. Biden draws support from a multi-racial coalition; he leads with white (33%), African American (43%), and Latinx voters (32%). But compared to public polls earlier in the summer, Warren has increased her support with voters of color from single digits to 13% with African Americans and 15% with Latinx voters. Age is a major cleavage in the primary; Sanders leads Biden by 13 points with voters under 35, while those over 45 back Biden over Warren by 24 points. But notably, those in the 35–44 age cohort are split between Biden and Warren. Among 2016 primary voters, Biden leads Warren by 26 points with voters who supported Hillary Clinton, while Sanders retains a meager 37% of his 2016 supporters. “ Despite Biden’s substantial lead in the current horserace, the primary is far from over: One-in-four voters are undecided or supporting a candidate outside of the top five. This quarter of primary voters is enough to put any candidate in the delegate hunt, if they break the right way. Among the voters who are undecided right now, fully half say they won’t decide until the weeks leading up to their state’s contest. But while they’re far from solidified, some voters are ruling out certain candidates: 23% say they will not back Sanders, compared to 14% for Biden and 13% for Warren, while lower-tiered candidates like Tom Steyer (24%), Julián Castro (23%), and Andrew Yang (22%) are also being ruled out at comparatively high rates. As the contenders compete for votes ahead of the primaries and caucuses, one evaluation voters will make is where candidates fall on the ideological spectrum relative to their own worldview. We asked Democratic primary voters to identify themselves on an ideological scale from 0 (liberal) to 100 (conservative), and then to identify the top 2020 contenders, as well as Trump and Barack Obama, on the same scale.” There is more to the poll. Link above
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Post by Deleted on Dec 13, 2019 0:17:40 GMT
Last week Rachel Maddow interviewed Mayor Pete. I like Rachel and try and watch her show every night. And while she is a bit more left than I am, she does tend to keep it in check on her show. Until her interview with Mayor Pete. It was a progressive interviewing a moderate. It was weird.
Recently it became known that for a couple of years Mayor Pete worked for McKinsey Management Consulting Firm. When this came out there was a demand to know his client list was. Because he signed an NDA he couldn’t disclose it until he got McKinsey’s ok. Which either the day before or the day of the interview.
One name on the list was Blue Cross so Rachel asked him what he did and he said he looked at overhead costs. So they chatted some more and then the last question Rachel asked at the very end of the show was did he think they work he did for Blue Cross result in the company letting 1,000 people go. He replied he didn’t think so because his work was finished for 2 years before the layoffs. Rachel thanked him and, as she does , turned away and looked at her notes. Mayor Pete wanted to get in one point after the suggestion his work was responsible for 1,000 people losing their jobs and that was those who support Medicare 4 all want to eliminate all insurance jobs. It was a rushed answer that given a bit more time would have come out a little bit different in that he would have tied it to folks who work for healthcare insurance providers.
But he is right, by eliminating private healthcare insurance over 400,000 people will lose their jobs. When it dawned on me people would be losing their jobs if Medicare 4 All became the law of the land I asked my friend google how many people work for healthcare insurance providers and found as of 2018 over 800,000 people work for Life/Annuity carriers and Healthcare carriers. So I split the number in half. But apparently the number is even higher.
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Post by tracyarts on Dec 13, 2019 1:00:15 GMT
I agree. We pay a lot for our health insurance plan, but really like it. DH and I both have serious autoimmune diseases and multiple complications. We take very expensive medications and need a lot of regular follow ups and lab tests. I don't know if a "one plan for all" could provide the level of care we need. I don't know if they'd balk at the brand name high dollar prescriptions. Or the frequency of scheduled follow ups. We're fine with paying what we pay for our healthcare every year, we just prioritize it in the budget. I want to maintain the same level of care as long as possible, and can't see a national plan providing the same coverage as a high deductible high coverage plan. Lost with a centrist because of the Russians and Comey’s letter about nothing 11 days before the election. Even with that she managed to get 3 million more votes than trump. Which would mean the majority of people who voted, voted for a centrist. Unfortunately. We need moderate! I am more than happy with my medical coverage. I worked over 30 years to earn it! I have no problem with Medicare for those who want it. Subsidized is ok too. |
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Post by librarylady on Dec 13, 2019 1:50:30 GMT
Personally, I think the “too liberal” narrative is being pushed hard by the Biden camp. If Biden’s your guy, that’s fine, but that doesn’t mean that other candidates can’t win while promoting progressive views. I’ll just issue my weekly reminder here that we lost with a centrist in 2016. Lost with a centrist because of the Russians and Comey’s letter about nothing 11 days before the election. Even with that she managed to get 3 million more votes than trump. Which would mean the majority of people who voted, voted for a centrist.
He won because he ran a smarter campaign. He went after the electoral votes, rather than the popular vote. Her handlers didn't calculate the electoral votes and we saw what happened.
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Post by Merge on Dec 13, 2019 2:25:33 GMT
The idea that we as a country must deny millions access to health care so we can continue to pour billions into a private industry, enriching its shareholders and keeping people employed, is morally repugnant to me.
Some people have to get sick and die so others can keep their jobs. Yeah, that makes sense. Seems to me we that some number of current private insurance company workers could be employed by a single payer system, and others could be absorbed into other private industry. This could be done gradually and companies could be incentivized to hire and retrain displaced insurance workers.
But let’s not fool ourselves that anyone in power is actually concerned about insurance workers who might lose their jobs. This is all a push from insurance company CEOs and shareholders, and their lobbyists, who don’t want to lose their billions. And it’s disgusting.
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Post by Merge on Dec 13, 2019 2:28:35 GMT
Lost with a centrist because of the Russians and Comey’s letter about nothing 11 days before the election. Even with that she managed to get 3 million more votes than trump. Which would mean the majority of people who voted, voted for a centrist.
He won because he ran a smarter campaign. He went after the electoral votes, rather than the popular vote. Her handlers didn't calculate the electoral votes and we saw what happened.
Let’s not fool ourselves: he won because the dark underbelly of American racism and xenophobia is alive and well. If appealing to those baser instincts equals running a smarter campaign, then yes, that’s what he did. |
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Post by epeanymous on Dec 13, 2019 3:17:47 GMT
It's all interrelated. I work at a university, and one of the areas in which our spending has increased most (while we have not been increasing salaries or hiring new people) has been in heath care. When our costs go up, guess who we get the money from? Students. Guess what they have to do? Take out more student loans.
This isn't sustainable. And it *does not matter* who the Democratic nominee is -- the GOP is going to call them a socialist, loudly and repeatedly, and Trump voters aren't going to consider them for two seconds. Might as well get someone who excites the base and gets turnout.
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Post by lucyg on Dec 13, 2019 3:35:33 GMT
I don’t have a problem with Medicare for all. I have a problem with insisting that Medicare for all and right.now.this.minute is the only acceptable solution, because I don’t think the majority of the country is quite there yet. So that attitude also puts off lots of people. Just different people. And it’s not just retired people who think that way. Plenty of working people with good insurance are afraid of the alternatives. So please don’t lay it all at door of old people. I know it's not just retired people. But those are the ones who seem most inclined to disagree with me on this issue, on this board. Personally, I see healthcare as a human right, so I absolutely think that right now is the right time. It's simply not acceptable to me that people are sick and dying in the richest country in the world, or bankrupting themselves trying to stay alive, when we have the means to stop it. It's not acceptable and it's not OK to wait around for others to start feeling comfortable about people having basic human rights. We did that with civil rights (people weren't ready for de-segregation) and gay rights (people weren't ready for gay marriage) and women's rights (people weren't ready for women to be ... people, I guess), and at some point you just have to rip the band-aid off and let those people get over it. I don’t disagree with you at all. But my #1 priority is to get rid of Trump. Whatever it takes to do that is what we need to do. If it means putting other important business on the back burner, so be it. Because trust me, if he wins again, not only will there be no Medicare-for-all, no one except the very rich will be able to count on medical care at all in the long run. Might as well just crown him king for life, and Ivanka after him. |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 13, 2019 3:57:19 GMT
The idea that we as a country must deny millions access to health care so we can continue to pour billions into a private industry, enriching its shareholders and keeping people employed, is morally repugnant to me. Some people have to get sick and die so others can keep their jobs. Yeah, that makes sense. Seems to me we that some number of current private insurance company workers could be employed by a single payer system, and others could be absorbed into other private industry. This could be done gradually and companies could be incentivized to hire and retrain displaced insurance workers. But let’s not fool ourselves that anyone in power is actually concerned about insurance workers who might lose their jobs. This is all a push from insurance company CEOs and shareholders, and their lobbyists, who don’t want to lose their billions. And it’s disgusting. Psst Medicare for all is not the only option to provide all Americans with quality healthcare at a reasonable cost. It’s the one you chose to support and that is your choice. But your comments of “denying millions access to healthcare etc” and “some people have to get sick and die so others keep their jobs” are more than a bit dramatic and fundamentally incorrect. Scare tactics I think it’s called. It’s interesting how cavalier you are about people losing their jobs. I wonder if you feel the same way if both you and your husband lost your jobs tomorrow. Somehow I don’t think so. |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 13, 2019 5:38:42 GMT
In every presidential election that I can remember one of two people will win. Either the Democratic Nominee or the Republican Nominee. No one else, just one of those two.
Again for as long as I can remember, even though their choice didn’t have a chance to win, people have voted third party for a variety of reasons.
This is how trump won. trump ended up with a total of 304 electoral college votes and Hillary got 227.
There were three “swing states” that went to trump. Michigan, Wisconsin, & Pennsylvania.
In Michigan trump received 2,279,543 votes and Hilary received 2,268,839 votes. trump got 10,704 votes more than Hillary. MI has 16 electoral votes.
In Pennsylvania trump received 2,970,733 and Hillary received 2,926,441 votes. trump got 44,292 votes more than Hillary. PA has 20 electoral votes.
In Wisconsin trump received 1,405,284 votes and Hillary received 1,382,536 votes. trump received 22,748 votes more than Hillary. WI has 10 electoral votes.
Jill Stein received 51,463 (10,704) votes in MI, 49,941 (44,292) votes in PA, and 31,072 (22,748) in WI.
It is believe that those who voted for Stein would more than likely voted for a Democrat over a Republican.
In each of the three states the total votes for Stein were higher than trump’s totalvotes over Hillary.
If Hillary had won those three states, their 46 electoral votes would have gone to Hillary and the total would have been 273 for Hillary and 258 for trump. Since one needs 270 electoral votes to win, Hillary would have won. And we wouldn’t have that crazy corrupt idiot sitting in the Oval Office now.
I get that people may not be happy with the choices. I know I will absolutely hate it if Biden, Warren, or Sanders is the Democratic Nominee, but I will not vote third party to send a message of my displeasure for the choice but will vote for the Democratic Nominee period. Because I think the lesson from 2016, is we don’t have the luxury of voting for a third party candidate because we don’t like the Democrat or the Republican, especially since that candidate will not win. And because our votes do count.
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