I went from listening on NPR to watching live. Two take-aways:
Tulsi Gabbard is weird. And not in a good way.
Every time Biden says he’s the only one up there who’s gotten something done, he looks old and he looks like an ass.
Extra Credit: People need to stop asking how M4A will be paid for. It makes them look like idiots. We already pay for health care. Just take everything that’s currently paid through health insurance, subtract 15% and that will be taxes. It’s fundamentally disingenuous to call that a tax increase.
I’ve seen her a lot. She doesn’t seem quite right today, a little slower and more forced than usual. Possibly she overprepared.
Extra Credit: People need to stop asking how M4A will be paid for. It makes them look like idiots. We already pay for health care.
No exactly; there’s quite a lot of care that just doesn’t get provided in the current system, exactly because people can’t afford to pay for it.
I agree though that the “will you raise taxes yes or no” question is a stupid gotcha. Warren needs to come up with a glib riposte.
In the billionaire thread I predicted Steyer’s presence would take some wind out of the centrist arguments against taxing the wealthy. I’m happy to see I was correct, though it would have been great to see him get a little more time on that.
It sounds like Bernie got him back good on that one tonight:
Also, y’know, Warren only conceptualized, pushed for, and successfully launched an entire federal agency. But sure, Biden’s the only one who’s gotten anything done.
Warren talks like a college professor. The transcript is ready for publication with no edits. Good for her.
Bernie is a little less polished, but not much.
Biden is all over the place, but he said “we are going to raise taxes on the wealthy,” so he didn’t quite dodge the question. He just reminds me a lot of John Kerry. Nominating him would be a mistake, but he’d probably beat Trump anyway. Any of these people could beat Trump.
Bernie just had a freaking heart procedure. He gets a pass on polish. I’m surprised the moderators didn’t ask him to get up and dance, Mick Jagger-style.
At the high water mark of the ACA, 90% of Americans were covered. Literally, take that exact level of coverage, which approaches diminishing returns, take the exact level of care, and transfer those costs in health insurance and convert them to taxes towards single-payer, and you’ll be 15% ahead on day one.
Then subtract the amount that the medical-insurance complex pads our bills to increase the bottom line of direct insurance costs in order to increase their top line (which increases the 15% profit they are allowed to collect). Using deductive reasoning, that’s 25-30% (based on what other developed nations spend on health care per capita).
Then add in the savings from a massive bargaining position of a single-payer heath insurer has with hospitals, pharma, med device companies, etc., and there’s more than enough overhead to cover everyone for everything.
i was sad that nobody got radical with the final “who’s your scary friend” question.
everyone picked conservative republicans, nobody picked a person on the radical left, and nobody but nobody took a stance that there are some kind of behaviors which can’t be tolerated in a free and just society.
instead, everyone was implying all america needs to do is come together. kumbaya. when actually what we need to do is dismantle white supremacy.
gabbard even said something along the lines of there are no “deplorables” in america. ugh
tom steyer’s “surprising friend” was some person who was not of the same gender or race as himself. i found that answer kinda weird. like, id hope that would not be shocking that someone might be friends with someone not of their own gender and race.
I absolutely agree with this. However, if ACA was all that good then the minor changes proposed by Biden et all would be good enough. ACA only guarantees a handful of “essential health benefits”, and still has sometimes-high deductibles.
I’ve lived in two countries with universal health care, the services get a high level of use and the expectations are high. Even with added efficiencies, moving to a first-world single-payer universal health plan is unlikely to be cost-neutral (unless we can bargain physician and hospital administrator salaries down to the levels of other countries).
The good news is that we’re going to get quite a lot more for every dollar spent, but I don’t know how to package that for journalists that are driving trollies for damaging sound bites.
What the hell was she going on about how we were “arming Al Nusra and Al Kaida?” Does she think the Kurds are the same as the bad guys? And why is she so into defending the Syrian government? She needs to move on with her life.
Huh? I know it sounds bad to some, but elimination of private (non-supplemental) health insurance is critical to realize all of the potential savings. Going even 50% public option/50% private badly erodes two of the key mechanisms for cost savings: 1. the private health insurers are going to keep billing as high as possible to pad their top line, which will cause carry-over cost increases to the public option, and 2. it erodes the public options ability to negotiate down prices.
Those aren’t sidebars to M4A, they are critical to the whole deal. In addition, it’s politically important to make sure that the wealthy aren’t getting special treatment through private insurance.
I think that’s one of the reasons Warren isn’t biting on the questions the media and other candidates are trying to force on her. Because it inevitably leads to the soundbite of “Yes, taxes will go up for the middle class” and you know they will cut the clip there instead of allowing the end of the sentence “replacing all of your out-of-pocket health expenditures with an additional savings of 15%.”
Agreed. Someone should suggest she talk with soldiers who have worked directly with the Kurds before she attempts to talk about something she doesn’t understand.
Mayor Pete and Joe Kennedy III aren’t shitty politicians because they’re not old enough or experienced enough, they’re shitty politicians because they’re shitty politicians.
Yes, though the point was raised not in connection to these efficiencies but in relation to the amount of necessary health care not currently featured in cost analysis.
it’s politically important to make sure that the wealthy aren’t getting special treatment through private insurance
I’m not sure much can be done about that, short of banning private practice. Non-NHS medical care is a booming business on Harley Street in London.
Someone should suggest she talk with soldiers who have worked directly with the Kurds before she attempts to talk about something she doesn’t understand.
Does Îlham Ahmed count?
I don’t think Tulsi did a good job yesterday – she couldn’t stop repeating the phrase “regime-change war”, for example – but she does have a good understanding of the region. She has strongly supported the Kurds in the past, and at the beginning of the year brought Ahmed to Trump’s SOTU address to troll him in opposition to his plans to pull out of Syria, but this week she has had trouble reconciling her support for the Kurds with her dislike of US involvement in the Middle East and her tolerance for people like Assad.
That is fair. I would take it as a win if no American ever loses their house or goes bankrupt as a result of healthcare expenses.
I do think there are more savings to be mined in preventative care vs emergency care. Those savings aren’t as great as some thought back in the '90s, but the Kaiser Foundation has published research that shows those savings are real.
But at least we can cut insurers out of the profit-taking.
Definitely. I still don’t understand why she’s throwing him under the bus like that, implying that his people are Al Q.
