During a secret meeting, a top Pelosi health aide told medical insurers that there was no need to worry about Medicare for All passing

boing
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trump’s buddy and MAGA donor Sheldon Anderson sure seems concerned:

“In 2018, $421 million has been spent on lobbying efforts for health-related issues. As of the 2018 midterms, pharmaceuticals and health products dominate lobbying, spending $216 million this cycle. By comparison, the second highest spender is hospitals and nursing homes at $73 million. Health professionals come in third, spending $68 million in 2018.”

“By far the biggest individual contributors from this sector came from the Adelson Drug Clinic. Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, the owners of this clinic and major conservative political donors, have spent $56 million on the 2018 election cycle.” OpenSecrets.org

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More over there isn’t even a consistent version of Medicare for all. You got versions that preclude private insurance, that poll pretty poorly. Medicare as a public option. Medicare as a public option as a step to precluding private insurance. We haven’t even gotten to the point where a rough consensus exists to start working out details and practicalities.

So there isn’t really anything to pass in the short term. So there’s no chance that it’s going to happen in the next 2 years, or likely the next 6. In the meantime there’s a system in place badly in need of improvement.

We’re getting the same “oh my God they’re killing it” and “pass it now” nonsense about the Green New Deal. A proposal to create a policy has turned into an assumption that its something that can go right now. People need to stop shit housing over programs that don’t technically exist yet.

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There is a non-trivial chance Democrats will control both chambers of Congress and the White House in less than two years. If that happens I hope we have a Speaker who is at least open to the idea of Medicare-for-All.

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I understand that it will be a slow move to single payer, all the same I would prefer if the Speaker was on board, and didn’t have assistants making presentations to insurance companies trying to get their support for a moderate approach. They shouldn’t be meeting with those mother fuckers at all, never mind kissing their asses.

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That’s two years away. There is no reason to think this “briefing” was a long term goals meeting. In the business world, planning two years ahead is about a long term as they tend to get!

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Seems to me that to doubt the accuracy of all reporting is probably a good baseline. The rest is just an ad hominem argument vv GG.

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She’s a canny politician who knows where her bread is buttered. As long as there’s butter…

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On the one hand, I get that with the current political landscape it’s worse than a long-shot to get something like Medicare-for-all passed by the House, Congress and Trump. So viewed like that, it is wasted effort.

But, to the same point, anything that would be worthwhile for the Dems to try and pass has the same hurdles to clear, and the government shutdown shows just how intractable the current administration can be.

So, does that mean all effort is wasted effort? Should they sit back, twiddle their thumbs, and wait for a better tomorrow that might not come? Or try to move on something that the people want, whether they make it or not?

If it’s viewed as a battle, and not the war, you can lose a battle and still win the war.

A majority of Americans are in favor of not being financially ruined if they have to go to the hospital, no? Personally, I have a $500 co-pay for ER visits; unless I see bone or stop breathing, I’m not going to the hospital. Twice last week I had chest pains, crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. It’s a hell of a way to live.

So, if the House passes something like a Medicare-for-all bill that isn’t laden with GOP interference, and then Congress kills it – or even better, passes it and Trump kills it – they will all be known as the fuckers that have taken up permanent housing in the pockets of the corporations; and it will be used against them in future elections by progressives that want this unholy union between corporations and our lawmakers to be split asunder.

Because here’s the thing. No matter how healthy you try to be, you are going to end up in the hospital at some point, unless you are “lucky” and struck dead on the spot instead.

When you get to the hospital, that’s pretty much it for your financial solvency. Unless you are one of the moneyed class already, or have fantastic health insurance (which pretty much requires you have gobs of money, or – ironically – work for the government); you’re fucked when that happens in this country.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

All it takes is for the shills that pretend to represent the people of this country to do their fucking jobs, instead of nosing around and lapping at the hands of whomever has the money to float their way, like cash starved dogs with no thought for anyone outside their own skin.

Would it though? Because that’s what I recall hearing about the ACA when the kneecapped version of it finally made it into law. “It’s not what we wanted, but it’s a step in the right direction. We’ll get there.”

Or will it be used to say, “See how much better it is now? We don’t need to go any further. This is good, right here.” And then the next time the GOP – or worse – take possession of the government, they grind it all right back into the ground, like they’ve been working to do with the ACA.

It’s easier to take things away a little at a time, like freedoms or reasons to go on living, than it is to take away something big all at once. Medicare-for-all would be BIG.

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Wendell Primus ?
Are we sure this isn’t something from The Onion?

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Yes, but a great many of them are worried about being financially ruined if someone else goes to the hospital. Or more generally if a whole lot of them go to the hospital and run up huge bills that get passed onto the public.

What isn’t appreciated is how the current system causes people to defer care, leading to a much more expensive problem down the road, which ends up being passed on to the public anyway. So if we stop pretending that people will be just as happy to lie down in the street and die instead of burdening society with their medical expenses then we can start talking about actual solutions to the problem.

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“Pretending” or “hoping”? “Demanding?”

As for deferring healthcare, and what that tends to lead to, yeah. I know about that as well. “I’m doing that now!”

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It’s pretty hard to get even the most die-hard Libertarians to admit that they believe a lot more people should be dying alone in the gutters of otherwise treatable/preventable conditions to bring down average healthcare costs.

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Let’s be even more honest: this is just one example of backroom wheelin’ and deelin’ that subverts the will of the governed by those doin’ the governing.

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is Pelosi’s position as speaker a fixed term or can she be removed somehow by a vote of “no confidence” that is triggered somehow?

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Indeed, as soon as you put what’s actually required to implement Medicare for all support drops dramatically. Mention raising taxes? Mention they’ll lose the insurance they now get through their employment? Any of that and support drops by 20% or more. Trying to implement Medicare for All will be political disaster. Not to mention the now very Conservative SCOTUS and the soon to be very Conservative appellants court, which the Republicans will use to gut any such plan even if enacted.

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Not necessarily.

For one “Medicare for all” doesn’t neccisarily mean people losing their existing insurance. There’s broadly 2 major versions. Public option, and full non optional public coverage. And a whole bunch of shades in between. One of the more interesting spins I’ve seen is public option on an opt out basis. Such that everyone is automatically enrolled in Medicare, and covered. But maintains the option to disenroll and line up insurance on their own.

The opposition on taxes shrinks, and even disappears if presented right. Comparisons to social security, and pointing out that that money is already basically removed by their employer. Losing employer benefits polls better when it’s presented not as taking away compensation, but as an employer no longer having to use your compensation to pay for your insurance. Both especially when you stress that it will cost less, potentially leading to larger paychecks.

What doesn’t tend to shifts is any presentation mentioning shutting out the insurance industry (seemly tied to fears of job losses), or any format that doesn’t give people a choice in the matter.

The take away from all that polling is that almost all of this is broadly popular if explained properly. And when there are numbers to back it up. So with a few tweaks it’s eminently doable.

But to make that happen you’re going to need to settle on which version to push, figure out the details and how to make it actually function. And only at that point can you build consensus in the party around it, and start to message it properly.

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Dang. You called it.

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Medicare for all precluding private insurance? what nonsense is this? Here in this part of the rest of the world, where we have the NHS, which is publicly run as well as publicly funded, there are still private hospitals and private medical insurance is still a thing.

the idea that a public option will lead to the banning of private medical insurance sounds like one of those paranoid 1950s red scare stories.

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" ACA and lowering drug prices would be a step towards medicare for all."

The ACA existed so Obama, the great conciliator, could give Private Insurance companies a for-profit windfall while pretending to care about health.

We will never move towards single-payer – government-backed, no profit motive involved, paid for by all and the same level of service for all – as long as there is private, capitalism-based ‘insurance.’

Private health care is also bad for science – it turns scientific health data into a private resource; the NHS in Britain has GENERATIONS of health data for science we don’t due to for-profit healthcare.

Nancy Pelosi has never, never met a lobbyist she didn’t like, and loooooves money; she is not, and will not, be on the side of actual progressive issues like military spending reform, single-payer healthcare or reducing the number of nuclear weapons we have. Pelosi’s continued existence is solely to let people feel less guilty about essentially voting for a nice-nice Republican, and it sickens me to live in California where her coronation by neoliberal software tycoons is confirmed.

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We don’t have the same separation between private and public hospitals and providers as you guys do. Nor do we have as many purely public ones as we’d need.

One of proposals that’s been floating around since the ACA started kicking around is to expand the VA to fill that void, but there are concerns about feasibility and what it could do to veterans specialized care. And the VA has traditionally had some issues with regards to quality of care.

So there isn’t as much headway for insurance companies to offer coverage above what a public option would. Any national healthcare plan here would have to cover those private venues as well.

Some of the proposals specifically involve barring private insurance companies from the healthcare market. Others like the bill Bernie has been flogging “all but preclude” their involvement as I heard it described. Both from the standpoint that if too many people opt to stay private, and too much of the existing apparatus remains from all those private companies. That costs will continue to balloon.

That’s created an easy criticism point. But even given that there’s all sorts of supplemental coverage that’s routine in other countries, that insurance companies could shift too. And probably make higher margins on. And that opt in plan I mentioned before is designed to resolve this slowly over time. Basically like when the ACA launched, once people are on it they don’t want to switch. Over time an increasingly large number of people will be covered by a public option. The more people covered the more impervious to political assault it will be. And the lower costs will go. Private insurance gets time to adapt. There’s time to expand public hospitals and clinics. And people get that choice their so concerned about.