To be fair, ‘made up news’ is a big part of the system which allows climate change to happen at all 
but yeah that’s not what they mean
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Some bills may be but the Sanders bill specifically is not. It would eliminate all private health insurance.
I understand that in some other countries, like Australia, you can opt out of the public system and buy public health insurance, or buy insurance to get certain services covered in private hospitals instead of the public system.
That would be illegal under the Sanders bill. Hence the NYTimes report that it would eliminate the entire insurance industry.
I’m not sure why this is so hard to stomach - it’s a stated feature of Sanders’ approach, not a fringe reading of it. Sanders - “damn right” bill would eliminate private health insurers:
Beckers Hospital Review on Sanders Bill
If Ted Cruz proposed a bill that stated it would be “unlawful to provide abortion services” and the NYTimes reported that the bill would eliminate all abortion providers, it would be reasonable to argue that Ted Cruz’s bill would make abortion illegal, right?
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The article seems to prove its own point by conflating the actual problems of weaponized bullshit with the specific stream of weaponized bullshit that is the republican reaction to any news outlet that isn’t 100% bullshit.
Gosh, so this is what despair feels like.
If you can’t beat 'em, join 'em… “Remember Moab!”
The full report can be downloaded here:
and the appendix sets out the methodology.
I think you’re right. The headline is misleading (it comes from the Pew Centre itself, so not BBs fault).
The article itself says that half of Americans think that fake news is a very big problem and that that is a higher percentage than climate change. It says nothing about whether any respondent thinks one problem is ‘bigger’ than another.
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You mean like how Social Security has made 401ks and Individual Retirement Accounts “illegal”?
A “government option” is an option.
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I understand that there are other approaches to providing a public option, but that’s not what Bernie Sanders Medicare for All bill does so those other approaches are completely irrelevant. It’s not a public option. It would explicitly outlaw private health insurance. The NYTimes reports that the private health insurance companies would disappear. Bernie Sanders himself has affirmed that this is his intent.
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But even that is fake news. In the end, he was the most persistent and liberal in using that specific turn of phrse, but that was him LOUDLY reclaiming a term that had been coined to describe all flood of propaganda “news” that flooded Facebook and helped him get elected.
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That doesn’t make private health insurance illegal; it specifies that it would be illegal to fraudulently charge a customer for services they’re already freely entitled to by the national health coverage.
In other words, fraud will still be considered illegal. How is that a bad thing? We’re a nation of laws, right?
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No that’s not what Bernie’s plan does. Did you read the NYTimes article or Bernie’s quotes stating his goal of putting the insurance companies out of business with his law? The point isn’t fraud prevention, its to prevent adverse selection against the government insurance scheme.
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The big problem to me is that the people in government who are defining what’s fake are spending, wasting, and stealing a lot of time and taxpayer money. They are the con artists running a huge game of Three Card Monte, using “fake news” to direct a lot of attention away from what’s important.
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…and Facebook and all the snarky clever but wrong meme’s. Also CNN doesn’t do us any favors, if you want to convince a Republican freind that he’s wrong about an issue but he sees all this spin from CNN, he won’t believe anything you say no matter where it comes from. I use CNN for headlines because it seems to have the quickest response to events but I get all my actual facts from NPR or Reuters.
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OK, I overstated, due to the whiplash of the goalposts being moved. But my point was:
The Republican mailer was making the claim that “the Democrats” were going to outlaw health insurance and make it impossible for Americans to get healthcare.
This is bullshit.
It’s not “The Democrats.” Sander’s proposal doesn’t remotely represent the mainstream Democratic position, first of all (where Medicare for All is viewed variously with hostility, tepid support or vastly different proposals). It’s not finished legislation, it doesn’t have, and won’t get, widespread Democratic support.
The assertion that private insurance will be made illegal under his proposal - as a blanket statement - isn’t even technically true, either. (It wouldn’t be the same as existing insurance, but that’s a more nuanced discussion, nor what was being claimed.)
Your statement that definitionally MFA means private insurance is illegal is also bullshit (as private insurance with medicare and other countries’ single payer systems attest).
If you’d like to support your false equivalency by arguing that the Republicans were correct in saying that Democrats want women to give birth to babies so they can murder them, are going to outlaw airplanes and force people to walk to work, please be my guest. But leave me out of it - I’m done with this shit.
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It’s plain as day:
(a) In General.—Beginning on the effective date described in section 106(a), it shall be unlawful for—
(1) a private health insurer to sell health insurance coverage that duplicates the benefits provided under this Act; or
(2) an employer to provide benefits for an employee, former employee, or the dependents of an employee or former employee that duplicate the benefits provided under this Act.
(b) Construction.—Nothing in this Act shall be construed as prohibiting the sale of health insurance coverage for any additional benefits not covered by this Act, including additional benefits that an employer may provide to employees or their dependents, or to former employees or their dependents.
The bill specifically leaves room for supplemental insurance. It makes it illegal to compete with Medicare. Anything that isn’t fully covered by Medicare is fair game.
ETA: As @chgoliz pointed out, any business that tries to get people to pay for something they already paid for or would get for free is committing fraud. There is a reasonable public interest in avoiding that.
It’s patently false. Sander’s bill is modeled after the Scandinavian system, which does not have duplicate health insurance.
It’s like he only read the bill for the parts that supported his argument…like a Republican.
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Well… it implies that at least the difference in top category percentages between the two thinks fake news is a bigger problem than climate change. But that’s hardly surprising
ETA: I’m wrong, see @L0ki’s reply below
I don’t see that.
All it says is that the proportion of those surveyed who think that fake news is a very big problem is larger than the proportion that thinks that climate change is.
As I see the BB headline now reflects.
Putting it in different terms - 50% of Americans think a blue whale is very big. 28% of Americans think the planet Jupiter is very big.
It might say something about how many Americans know what a blue whale is compared to know anything about our solar system but it doesn’t say anything about whether anyone thinks a blue whale is bigger than Jupiter.
I agree the results are hardly surprising.
The top “very big problem” candidates are all things that people of any political persuasion are likely to think are a big problem.
Those lower down are ones that are more likely to be politically differentiated.
Lots of people can think fake news is a problem. They clearly don’t agree on which news is fake or whose fault the fake news is. As this very thread nicely demonstrates.
That’s where the survey gets more interesting.
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Got it, you’re right, I’m mathing wrong today
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