And this crap is why I continue to say that we need new, more progressive, younger people in Democratic leadership. The current leadership has been in the pockets of major corporations of all kinds for decades.
3 Likes
Yes, that’s why the private insurance companies fought tooth and nail against ACA passing.
4 Likes
Single payer can’t pass with a Republican POTUS and Senate.
It can’t pass with Democrat House, Senate and POTUS because we’re not the kind of nation that will ever, for a long time to come, do anything to cost any major business or industry even a fucking penny, let alone what Medicare for all or even a single payer would cost the carriers. Democratic control won’t and can’t make it happen. It’ll only be possible with true progressive control which is to say socialism.
I don’t see that happening soon. So what Pelosi said is reality, not so much a position.
That said, while we work and wait for shift towards the left (and away from an extractive economy of the type where ~25% of workers don’t make a living wage), strengthening the ACA is an imperative.
Full disclosure: I find Pelosi’s positions underwhelming for the most part (to say the least) but when she’s right, she’s right. And props to her for dissing the psychedelic painted turd at the SOTU.
6 Likes
But they didn’t. They embraced it, as it meant profit. That’s the only reason we have it: Mitt Romney wanted to suck up to the medical industry, and Obama thought that was the best thing to do.
3 Likes
The status quo isn’t exactly popular either. Obviously there will be people who hate any system the U.S. could implement, but single payer has considerably more support from the American public than any other proposal put forward thus far.
8 Likes
Yes, if you ask if they support “Medicare for All,” then it’s popular, but what exactly that means is not clear. When you mention that they’ll lose the insurance that they currently get through their employer, insurance that they like, then support drops drastically. The same if you mention the need to raise taxes or that it might delay getting treatment. It’s easy to say “Medicare for All,” but try implementing that in an actual bill, and it will be political suicide. The devil is in the details. The Republicans will relentlessly attack and spread fear if there is any attempt to implement it now. That fear-mongering about the ACA allowed them to take control of Congress and keep it for years. There’s certainly not enough support in Congress, nor do we have a President that would support such an effort. Pushing Medicare for all now is not a good idea. Even in 2020, it’s unlikely that there will be sufficient support to get it enacted. To get it passed, we’ll need solid support in Congress. I doubt there will be that kind of support for many, many years. I concur with Pelosi that we need to strengthen and protect the ACA and try to expand the coverage. Pelosi knows what’s she doing, and I trust her political skills.
And when you further explain that losing their insurance company is not the same as losing their health care provider then support skyrockets again.
A lot of people like their doctors. Virtually no one likes their insurance company.
15 Likes
How often do those mentions explain that you’ll no longer be paying your monthly insurance premiums? I actually did the math last month when I got my W-2, and it turns out that you would have to literally triple my taxes (as in, raise my taxes by 300%) for me to be paying more for a universal public M4A system than I’m currently paying (pre-deductible!) for my current insurance – and that’s with my employer picking up the tab for 75% of my coverage (I pay the remaining 25%, plus 100% of my wife’s premium). Given that any universal system that’s run with even the barest modicum of competence couldn’t possibly require me to pay that much money in taxes, that’s a net gain in personal income by eliminating the need for my employer to pay for my health insurance to the tune of several hundred dollars per month (now they can give that money directly to me), and letting me keep at least some of the additional several hundred dollars that currently get deducted from my pre-tax income.
There are already waiting lines, pre-approval requirements, and almost-entirely-unaccountable bean counters involved. The current insurance system is negatively impacting hospitals and other care centers, especially in rural areas, and is ultimately going to become completely unsustainable. (Notably, states that have enacted the Medicaid expansion created by the ACA have had better outcomes in this regard than states that haven’t.)
10 Likes
Unfortunately , those elderly members
too, started out as young idealists
wanting to “change Washington”,
But as too often happens,
Washington changes them.
Very few remain true to their
original promises.
The Lobbyists jump on their
naivety and soon we start looking
for “our” Congress member
Where oh where did s/he go??
…
There they are!
HIDING IN THE LOBBYISTS POCKETS!
1 Like
Yup.
Oz gets universal free-at-point-of-use coverage for less than half of what the US spends for not-universal not-free lack of coverage.
10 Likes
In other modern countries,
which score high on the
Happiness scale…
the citizens pay much higher taxes
without whining and moaning
WTH? How can that be!!??
Because IN RETURN, they have
Health care, childcare, free
College and. . and…and…
If folks were asked,
“would you be willing to pay more in taxes
IF you received HI, childcare, college,etc…
in return?”
I’d love to hear the answer
Of course, since the ultra-selfish/greedy
Already have easy access to those benefits,
we know their answer
A Big Fat No Fkn Way! Get your grubby
working hands out of my
silk-lined deep pockets!
6 Likes
It appears to also be one of the topics of this slide deck too:
Because the establishment position has been “public option” for a while now, which is imperfect but at least gives full coverage to people while Insurers get their enterprise money. It shouldn’t stop there, and it requires the States not purposely taking a dump on it, but completing the expansion to fully cover anyone without private insurance is a good thing.
2 Likes
People pay through the nose for even their employer-provided insurance. Insurance companies get paid. Even not-for-profit insurers have executives making 7 figures. That money comes from somewhere (hint: it’s our pockets!).
The same 70% of people who support MfA would pay less of an increase in taxes than they pay out-of-pocket for insurance/pay-as-you-go healthcare.
Please stop promulgating this debunked GOP talking point. Wait times for treatment in modern socialized-medicine countries are comparable or shorter than in the US’s for-profit system.
8 Likes
When they had a veto-proof majority they still made sure that even the anemic suck-ass “public option” was killed. Obama cut his deal with the insurance companies in advance.
2 Likes
They did not. He cut his deal with them in advance. They stepped put of the way, gave him chump change, and were guaranteed that everyone would have to buy their products.
Employees only pay a fraction of the cost of their insurance when it’s provided by their employer. Paying through the nose is nonsense.
There’s insufficient taxes to even support those already on Medicare, let alone adding 300 million more without increasing taxes.
Not everything the GOP says in wrong, granted most of it is, but not all. Non-emergency care can lead to longer waits. Canadians wait longer than the international norm to see their doctors as well as other treatments.
The Democrats never had a veto-proof majority to get a “public option.”, Liebermann was very opposed to that option. Besides, the Democrats never had that veto-proof majority for very long, they had a combined total of about 3 months, and it wasn’t even contiguous. When Obama first became President there were 57 Democrats and 2 independents. One of those independents campaigned for McCain, spoke at the GOP convention and was very opposed to the public option, I.e. Liebermann. They didn’t get to 58 Democrats until July of 2009 when the GOP’s lawsuits against Franken finally ended. What happened 6 weeks later? Kennedy died, leaving them short of the veto-proof majority. The Democrats just never had the votes for the public option. There was no “deal” made.
2 Likes
Yeah, hi, the $370 that comes out of my paycheck every month, as well as the $2,000/year personal and $4,000/year family deductibles and the $250/year prescription drug deductible on my better-than-what-most-people-get-for-the-money plan would beg to differ with you on that. I’m still paying for a kidney ultrasound I got two years ago because it cost me over $1,000 and I don’t have a whole lot of wiggle room for that kind of nonsense. Hell, I had a mole frozen off last year, a procedure which required two spritzes of liquid nitrogen and about 2 minutes of my doctor’s time, and it cost me $150. Paying through the nose is not nonsense, it’s everyday life.
And even if employers at other companies are more generous when it comes to what percentage they’ll pay for employees and their families, that’s still hundreds upon hundreds of dollars every month that those employees are not getting as income because it’s being funneled as a “benefit” into our craptastic private insurance system.
Further, if you remove the burden on employers to provide quality health care for their employees, you eliminate a huge source of financial strain on businesses (especially small businesses). While the Republican magical trickle-down thinking that all of that “benefit” money would be converted into increased take-home pay for employees is probably nonsense based on, well… all of recorded history, I don’t think many companies would be able to reasonably claim that they have to claw back all of that suddenly-freed-up cash for the business or its executives.
And I would like to reiterate my point that unless you raised my taxes by three hundred percent, I would be paying less with new taxes and universal access to care than I am currently paying for private insurance. Not even counting the bills for services rendered, my current access to the health care market through my insurer will cost me a minimum of $4,400 this year (and that excludes the money my employer spends on me). Every doctor’s visit is another $20 (or $40, because my insurer is being a complete dickwaffle about treating my primary care provider as a primary care provider right now). Every prescription, of which there are many, is at least another $10. CPAP supplies cost me almost $300 for two months of supplies if I stretch them out.
Under absolutely no sane universal coverage program would any of this cost even remotely this much, and indeed, many countries around the world manage to provide free at point of service care to their entire citizenry for less than what we spend on Medicare. We’re the richest most prosperous most productive country on the god damned planet (or so our politicians keep telling me), so why can we not have the same things that everyone else takes for granted, like not being bankrupted by going to the hospital?
As for keeping Medicare solvent in its current form, I have one extremely simple solution, and Rich People Hate Me For It: eliminate the $127,200 cap on the FICA tax. Done.
Canada is a massively popular bogeyman on the right for the dangers of socialized medicine, and even Canadians will concede that their system has its problems. But the thing is, Canadians are also by and large more satisfied with their care, and they have better health care outcomes than the US while spending dramatically less money per capita (47% less, to be precise). They look at us with our $2,000 ambulance bills and our hospital-supplied $40 tylenols and our revolutionary GoFundMe-powered system for paying for insulin like we’ve got three damn heads, and for good fucking reason. And if you want to point out that Canada has wait times that are above the international norm, it’s disingenuous to do so without bringing up how the US fairs, especially for care from primary care providers, and even more especially in comparison to basically every other country with universal health care access.
Spoiler alert: we’re not doing that great either.
(You want to be on the left of each of those charts. The US is nowhere close, and the only country we’re better than on same-day/next-day care is Canada.)
7 Likes
