My statement wasn’t about single payer systems - it was about for profit motivations.
For some reason I find the idea that someone looking at the company bonus spreadsheet won’t have the best intentions when deciding if I need that organ transplant. It’s much like the difference between going to a place where the salesmen work on commission vs. where they work on straight pay. One may seem less interested in the sale - but they aren’t trying to fuck you over to pad their own check at the end of the day.
I had exactly this experience at a restaurant in Norfolk VA recently. Everyone in the group was from overseas, and clearly none of us had been to this particular restaurant. The waitress was polite and funny and attentive and completely fucked us over by not mentioning that the pizzas are absurdly large. Between the 8 of us, 2 pizzas would have been ample, but instead we ordered a pizza each.
Good for the restaurant because they sold a lot of pizza.
Good for her and her %age-based-tip.
Shitty for us, the customers.
The right’s always banging on about how the U.S. is all about us temporarily embarrassed millionaires moving upwardly. I say use logic jiu jitsu to get the less brainless, er, more reasonable ones to come over to our side.
Imagine a likable spokesperson on the left (if we have one) explaining how universal healthcare will free people up to think about and pursue other things, like improving their lot in life.
Yeah, I’ve yet to hear the term profiteering. But if there were ever a fight worthy of the “War On…” moniker, it’s the war on suffering and untimely death.
Once again, the GOP proves that it’s the party of Bad Government - they constantly claim that Government is Bad, and whenever they’re in power, they prove it by Governing Badly.
Off the Shallowford Road exit, Mindysan, just inside the Perimeter. Shallowford Exchange Shopping Center. The place is Hair Dreams. Very reasonable. Open 7 days a week.
After (or maybe before) your haircut, snack on some fried dumplings at the nearby Hop Shing, or enjoy the Indian lunch buffet at Raduni. Thank me later.
That’s the genius of calling it “Medicare for all.” Everyone knows someone who is on Medicare, most likely their parents or grandparents. Those who have it are grateful for it, and won’t mind telling you.
Agreed. First time I heard the term used, several years ago, I said, “Yeah! That’s the answer!” It made perfect sense to me. I spent a summer on a work exchange program in England back in college, and had to use the NHS one time for a badly infected throat. That experience was amazeballs before there even were amazeballs.
But most people need teaching, almost inculcation, sad to say. It stuns me that a lot of the people griping about Obamacare now don’t remember how bad things were for many before Obamacare. (Admittedly, it hasn’t been great for everyone, particularly small businesses, but it probably would have gotten worse anyway without the ACA.) I literally could not afford health insurance for my family before, so we had none. Nothing. Luckily, we’re all healthy and got by without insurance. Thank God and Jesus and genetics and luck.
Now, with the subsidies, I can afford it. But I’d much rather pay into a national system, like we pay into Social Security and Medicare now, deducted from my paycheck, than to have to deal with an insurance company.
That was a “problem” back in the 90s, so the Hastert Rule was invented (used by Gingrich, but formalized as a “rule” by Hastert) to ensure that when the GOP had power, only bills with a Republican majority would be voted on and coalitions between Dems and moderate GOP reps were blocked. It’s a big part of the gridlock in the Congress since it’s designed to ensure partisan conflict and divisiveness in the House.
The primary argument against national healthcare is that government can’t do a good job, and there will be waste and bureaucrats that increase cost. No doubt there can be more overhead if government runs the insurance market, but that increased overhead will come with greater oversight. And it will pale by comparison to the scale of profit in the healthcare “industry”.
In general I find it duplicitous to condemn government on the one hand when its convenient to your philosophy and/or benefactors, and then claim you are patriotic while discounting or ignoring the many great things America has achieved by way of our government. I think the USA is good at government when there is not a faction trying to cripple it. I am confident we will do a great job with national health care.
Mindysan, rank and file Democrat politicians have never supported universal single payer health care and they do not now. The Clintons never did and Hillary certainly does not now nor did she her campaign. That is one of the reasons Bernie is not a Dem.
If you have a Dem. Senator or Congress member, email them and tell them it is time to say the words: “Medicare for All”. My guess is you will get a doublespeak reply that says something along the lines of, “While the Senator/Congressman/Corporate Lacky wants all Americans to have health insurance, he/she gets way too much money from lobbyists to support a healthcare system that deprives Corporations of the money they deserve…”
Yet, somehow, there seems to be a majority of Americans who DO support some sort of universal single payer system. They need to listen to the public rather than demand the public come into line with their corporate worldview.
With Obamacare the foot in the door for the universal plan was the Public Option. Lieberman was a critical vote to pass a filibuster-proof Obamacare, and he was the one who demanded it spiked. He also wasn’t a Democrat, but an Independent who caucused with the Dems.
Truman proposed a universal plan (that died), and there’ve been various abortive attempts since then, mostly from Dems. Bill Clinton proposed Medicare expansion as another foot in the door towards moving to universal coverage, but also was blocked by a Congress that couldn’t make a bill that could pass. Since 2003 Conyers has proposed a single-payer system every year, and Medicare expansion is something that many Dems talk about and back.
You’re making one mistake in your model, which is imagining there’s an archetypal Democrat. Among the Senate Dems there’s a really mixed bag depending on both constituency and corruption. Dean managed to pull together a majority in 2008 that could pass Obamacare by getting Blue Dogs elected in generally red states, which amounted to having a dozen conservative Dems who weren’t going to back a progressive agenda. There are progressive Dems who want universal healthcare, but the party is not an ideological party, but a big tent with a broad coalition, and have little in common other than not being Republicans.
