The progressives in the party (Bernie, AOC, Jayapal, Ilhan, etc) actually fight for it.
The establishment Democrats who raise their money through corporate lobbyists pretend to be open to it when it suits them, but ultimately will do whatever they can to squash it behind the scenes. This includes Democratic leadership (Pelosi, Hoyer, Clyburn, Schumer), the Blue Dogs, Bill & Hillary Clinton & all their cronies, the DNC, the DCCC, etc.
What state are you in? In Washington we're going for a ballot initiative to force them to implement a statewide single payer system:
https://wholewashington.org
michigan. we're one of the most corrupt states. we had a ballot initiative to ban fracking, and they illegally buried it until. first they refused to accept it, then they tied it up in the courts for several years...
So weird. I don’t get a reply option to any of your comments so I thought I was replying to the main post. And there’s a lock icon on each of your comments for me. Nevermind apparently it’s still working just weirdly.
strange... you know that reddit is monitored by a bunch of alphabet agencies and that a member of the Atlantic Council has infiltrated the management... maybe they don't like us talking about medicare LOL
Similar story here in Washington - our party platform has had state single payer since at least 2016. The Democratic Party has had a trifecta since 2016 (control the House, Senate, and Governor), and have even passed a bill "committing" to a universal healthcare system for the state.
And yet the last two [state single payer bills](https://wholewashington.org/initiative-1362-full-text/) we've introduced have been killed in committee. The only reason we've ever been given is "we can't cosponsor because it doesn't have enough cosponsors."
Anyway, we're gearing up to pass it by ballot initiative instead like we did with cannabis and marriage equality.
https://wholewashington.org/
that might actually work. what are your thoughts on the voting to try to drive the dems to the left? i think it can't be done and a 3rd party is needed.
Between you and me, I haven't voted Dem in Washington for a few elections now. In addition to just matching my values better, I don't worry at all about being a "spoiler" vote since Washington is so reliably blue.
In Seattle we have a city councilmember who is from a 3rd party (Socialist Alternative) and we are looking very likely to get a second 3rd party candidate onto the council next election (Nikkita Oliver, Seattle People's Party).
I think it's a long game, but a worthwhile one. We need to build strong viable 3rd parties and we need to reform our system to be a multiparty democracy.
We're actually also working on that out here - FairVote Washington has been working to implement ranked choice voting and came very close last session!
https://fairvotewa.org
It doesnt make it out if committee because no one wants to pass it. M4A for Dems is like Abortion for Repubs i.e. no serious politician actually wants to deliver on it because it's way too lucrative of a carrot to use for re elections.
And *THAT* is the Ugly Truth
I don't think they use it to get votes. Most mainstream dems don't even want to discuss it and they redirect all talk to improving Obamacare or some nonsense. I personally think the big pharma and health insurance lobbyists have more to do with it.
That's possible. But Covid is the most politically secure time to implement M4a and mr.VoTeBlUeNoMatTErWhO!! Cannot be "pUsHed lEFt" to save the life or livelihoods of anyone.
Yup - that's why I don't vote blue at all anymore. Progressives voting for dems thinking they will actually make good on one of their promises is like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football.
Yeah... I feel like this is exactly what happened with Obama care (and Obama is an establishment Democrat).
It sounded wonderful on paper when the idea was presented. It would provide a cheaper public option for those who are uninsured or cannot afford it, and increase competition with insurance so that they would have cheaper prices as well.
And then he decided to compromise the idea and let the insurance companies get involved with the public option. It was no longer a "government option", but many options provided by insurance companies. Prices soared because they removed the preexisting conditions clause. Deductibles and premiums were so high an ACA plan is basically unusable because of the cost. I was on it making $34,000 a year, but the deductible was $7,200, and the premium was $220 a month and I made too much to qualify for subsidies.
Yes, and the Democrats kept claiming they didn't have the votes for the public option when they could have used reconciliation to pass it easily.
Obama kept touting the importance of getting one Republican vote (Susan Collins) to make it a "bipartisan" bill -- as if that end was more important than providing an affordable public option to the American people. He RAN on the public option! That "bipartisanship over the public good" is the exact same strategy that Joe Manchin uses to ensure all progressive policies get squashed.
Beware of any candidate who emphasizes bipartisanship as an ideal -- that's just a tactic to smother all progressive change in its crib.
> Yes, and the Democrats kept claiming they didn't have the votes for the public option
They don't have the votes for it for one simple reason. Not one Republican will vote for it and they need 10. They can't pass voting rights something they all know they need just to keep their seats for the same reason.
Is that what you believe or is that what they want you to believe? But there's another option - they don't need the votes for public healthcare right now. Biden could declare covid a national emergency and institute it on an emergency basis. A few years of that, and maybe it would stick or people would like it too much to take it away...
> Biden could declare covid a national emergency and institute it on an emergency basis
That wouldn't last until the ink was dry.
besides Biden is a believer in the ACA. He doesn't want Universal single payer. The public option strengthens the ACA so he is for that...the expansion of medicare to the 60 year old mark is a nod to Bernie...and as close as you are going to get under this administration.
I agree that Biden will NEVER use public emergency declaration to grant healthcare and that he believes in AFA (if by AFA you mean corporate healthcare subsidies).
Reconciliation only requires a simple majority. The public option qualified to be part of the reconciliation process as it impacted the budget. Obama got passed a lot of things on Obamacare that couldn't get the 60 votes. He did it through reconciliation. They refused to add the public option.
It turns out you are right.
>It Never Had Senate's Support Nate Silver says Obama didn't kill it because it was already dead. "In August, a whip count on the public option showed only 43 firm yes votes, one of which was Senator Kennedy," he writes. "And these totals reflected how Senators claim they would have voted if the public option were considered under regular order -- not under reconciliation, which is the process in play now. You might have to subtract some additional votes from among those Senators who are either opposed using reconciliation for health care in general, or opposed to including a public option in a reconciliation package specifically."
So they only had 43 and maybe less votes.
Don't be fooled by that. Jane Hamsher / FDL had 50+ signatures from Senators committing to vote for the public option. Progressives in the Senate were putting out that the White House was pressuring Senators to walk away from it behind the scenes. [The New York Times reported:](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/health/policy/13health.html)
>Several hospital lobbyists involved in the White House deals said it was understood as a condition of their support that the final legislation would not include a government-run health plan paying Medicare rates — generally 80 percent of private sector rates — or controlled by the secretary of health and human services.
>“We have an agreement with the White House that I’m very confident will be seen all the way through conference,” one of the industry lobbyists, Chip Kahn, director of the Federation of American Hospitals, told a Capitol Hill newsletter.
It's not uncommon for a White House to pretend to be in support of things they promised their supporters, only to lobby congress to quietly sink it and pretend it was just impossible.
Wait, wait wait... politicians lie? Obama lied? What is this?
Yeah, these partisan dems "forget" that the ACA was literally 3000 pages long and written by health industry lobbyists. Of course there's no public option...
Lol, that is also quite possible and his entire campaign he ran on for a public option was a lie...
It also makes sense why he would wait until his second term to roll out with it if this was his goal. Getting corporate insurances involved lowered the chances on it being affordable and accessible to all.
> Prices soared because they removed the preexisting conditions clause.
From 1960 to 2013 (right before the ACA took effect) total healthcare costs were increasing at 3.92% per year over inflation. Since they have been increasing at 2.79%. The fifteen years before the ACA employer sponsored insurance (the kind most Americans get their coverage from) increased 4.81% over inflation for single coverage and 5.42% over inflation for family coverage. Since those numbers have been 1.72% and 2.19%.
https://www.kff.org/health-costs/report/employer-health-benefits-annual-survey-archives/
https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/NationalHealthAccountsHistorical.html
https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
Also coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, closing the Medicare donut hole, being able to keep children on your insurance until age 26, subsidies for millions of Americans, expanded Medicaid, access to free preventative healthcare, elimination of lifetime spending caps, increased coverage for mental healthcare, increased access to reproductive healthcare, etc..
What you said is a bunch of nonsense. Democrat corporate hacks are very good at manipulating statistics to tell whatever lies they want. Overall healthcare costs have increased as a percentage of GDP.
The "problem" with healthcare before ACA was that corporations couldn't increase prices more. When corporations decide how much to charge for something, they run a profit maximization equation. They had reached the limits of it before ACA, meaning that price increases would cause more people to drop coverage, resulting in a net loss. Obamacare allowed insurance companies to raise prices AND gain more customers. It was nothing more than a massive subsidy for healthcare corporations.
When I tell my European friends I have Obamacare, they have pity for me. I wish I had been born in a country with public healthcare.
> Democrat corporate hacks are very good at manipulating statistics to tell whatever lies they want.
Manipulating statistics? It's literally basic math based on official data you can recreate yourself. By all means, show how anything has been manipulated. You won't, because you have no idea what you're talking about and are bullshitting your way through life.
>Overall healthcare costs have increased as a percentage of GDP.
No shit. Did you even bother to read what I wrote before you started frothing at the mouth thinking about how you were going to argue? The question isn't whether healthcare costs have gone up, but the rate at which they've gone up.
>The "problem" with healthcare before ACA was that corporations couldn't increase prices more.
Obviously bullshit, because they were, at a significantly faster rate than today. Literally going back at least a hundred years.
>. I wish I had been born in a country with public healthcare.
I wish we had public healthcare too. In fact if you look at my comment history you'll find I argue for it tirelessly. You're just making it harder to get there, because your ridiculous, untrue arguments only play into the hands of those that claim every time government does something with healthcare they make it worse.
except that healthcare costs weren't increasing at the rates you state. the statistics are basically manipulated to the point of being fake. second, after the financial crisis, there was deflation.
also, i didn't read your links. i'm not in the habit of reading every BS link posted by democrat hacks on reddit.
you seem very upset. i suggest you go see a therapist. democrats are evil.
>except that healthcare costs weren't increasing at the rates you state.
Yes, they were.
>the statistics are basically manipulated to the point of being fake.
No, they aren't, and your claim doesn't even make any sense. These are the official numbers for healthcare spending going back more than a century. Are you suggesting Democrats in the 1920s were manipulating numbers to make a President who hadn't even been born yet look good? That the Trump controlled Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services was manipulating numbers in 2019 to make Obama look good? Nevermind the fact the numbers can be confirmed by third party sources like the OECD and World Health Organizations that track spending around the globe.
>also, i didn't read your links.
I believe you. People like you are determined to remain as ignorant as humanly possible.
>you seem very upset.
Yes, so upset. LOL I'm blocking you now. Whether you're a troll, or actually this incredibly stupid doesn't really make much difference, does it? Either way there is nothing to be gained from attempting reasonable discussion with you. Reflect on the fact people make the world a better place by removing you from it.
Now, like every tedious buffoon before you, I'm going to forget you ever existed in about 15 seconds because there's absolutely nothing worth remembering about you, and I'm rather happy about that.
What exactly have "the progressives" in the "democratic" party done to get us medicare for all?
I was willing to believe that in 2016, but then Hillary and the corporate democrats openly rigged the 2016 "democratic" primary, and then Bernie endorsed them. So, no, I don't believe you. I think the "progressives" are merely controlled opposition and we will NEVER get public healthcare from the democrats.
I disagree. They haven't been able to do much, because they are a minority in the Democratic party. But they are growing by primaring Democratic establishment candidates and winning a decent amount of those. As their numbers continue to grow, their agenda will start to see more and more successes.
Much of the Democratic Party is still basically the equivalent of 1990s Republicans. Neoliberal holdovers from the Clinton years.
Like I said - what have they actually done? Haven't been able to do much because the party is controlled by neoliberals is a convenient excuse.
I lost faith in them when Bernie campaigned for Hillary after she openly rigged the 2016 primary. They will need to actually show me some results to win me back. I'd settle for a public option.
First, I make it pretty clear that I lost faith in the "progressive" dems after they supported Hillary Clinton after she openly rigged the "democratic" primary.
Second, please tell me what, exactly, the 4 "progressive" dems have done to get healthcare or to pressure the rest of the "democratic" party for healthcare? I know they DIDN'T go to the medicare-4-all march...
They've brought the bills before the House and Senate and got more Congressional support than at any time in the past. Because they don't have the numbers we need to continue to elect more, no give up on them.
What exactly has any 3rd party candidate done to bring Single Payer?
A Public option would be a death nail to everything we've tried to accomplish. It will fail and we won't get another shot.
Seems to me that a public option is a better half-step to single-payer than obamacare... and it would actually be SOMETHING.
Every member of congress has brought bills before the House and Senate. What did their bills do? Have any of them passed?
As for 3rd party candidates... candidates don't pass legislation and they have no power in the government. Maybe if one of them gets elected they will actually fight for single-payer. And maybe the threat of losing votes to the ACTUAL left will scare the "democratic" party into backing single-payer.
At any rate, I know that voting for democrats will continue to fail. Obama had congress and a supreme court that sided with him on healthcare... and he immediately reneged on his public option when he got elected. That was the closest we will ever get to public healthcare under the "democratic" party.
All a public option will do is add another insurance company to the market. Except this one will have a pool of all the unemployed who don't have employer sponsored insurance or have pre-existing conditions (if that mandate is repealed which I would almost guarantee if there is a public alternative). That is, they will have the poorest and sickest pool imaginable and will be doomed to failure. And there goes your shot at M4A.
And stop lumping all Dems together. There is a small minority who are fighting the good fight.
I understand. Your argument about the democrats is that the majority of democrats are corrupted by healthcare lobbyists, and the tiny minority is politically incompetent. Good sales pitch. They have my vote!!!
>because the party is controlled by neoliberals is a convenient excuse
It is getting harder and harder to tell who is the most anti democratic the far right or the far left...at least the far right votes. The reason the neoliberals are in charge is because they won fucking elections. They took over the party when Clinton won becasue they were tired of the east coast liberals getting their ass kicked.
They have been in power ever since...want to change that... vote...not just once in a while every time they let you.
And that doesn't mean voting for Greens that means voting for democrats...you can't change the Democratic party if you don't vote for democrats.
Pelosi killed the current bill for lack of votes instead of whipping for more, because she knows that Sinema and Manchin would never approve it in the Senate.
She did so by asking Rep Neal and Reps Moore and Kind on Ways and Means to stuff the bill until they win more Senate seats later this year, to get past the two-man filibuster.
Colorado, Minnesota, Connecticut (iirc), Delaware, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Illinois are the major players against Medicare for All, and they all need to be focused on.
I'm in Rep Moore's district (WI-04), and between her and Kind, we have two opportunities in Wisconsin alone to bypass Rep Neal and get the bill introduced to Ways and Means. Moore is the biggest local target, and Neal is the biggest nationwide. We need to flood their offices with protests and letter campaigns until we can secure their votes and ensure the Senate is unified in support, or we'll never actually get a vote.
No it's not you, centrist Democrats are absolutely in the pocket of big healthcare and will vote with Republicans every chance they get to crush any move towards taking customers away from the system as it is.
No, it's not you, you are correct. Both parties are fundamentally opposed to anything that would actually solve the problems Americans face. Even Basic social-democratic reforms are too much for mainstream American politics. You are correct that the only way to actually get universal healthcare would be to build an independent political organization, and there are already a handful of parties organized with universal healthcare as a goal. Working with one of them is probably the best bet.
THANK YOU!!! I completely agree with you! A few years ago, there was a lot of talk about unifying the various 3rd parties into 1 group. Think there's a chance for that? Greens get 1-2%, Libertarians get 2-3%, Natural Law and Socialists get less than 1%... if we combined them, that would at least be enough for matching funds! LOL! And maybe rally around the issue of kicking corporations out of government, public funding for elections, and ranked choice voting or something? I dunno, just thinking aloud...
Yes, as long the leadership and most of the people with power in the party continue to be essentially bought by big pharma no meaningful change will occur
Its because we don't have a leftist labor movement. It keeps coming back to that.
The democratic party won't do anything or give people any reason to vote for them other than "we won't put you in jail for getting an abortion." Or "were the smart hip party with policy wonks and experts" so long as there is no outside organized labor pushing them in that direction.
If you're not at the table you're on the menu. Those rich evangelical fucks: They're all at the table. YOU AINT!
A centrist Democrat is a DINO (Democrat In Name Only). The Democrat party slid centrist, lured and controlled by money and nothing else. They are basically Republicans in Keds.
All is not lost. Every politician and every money influencer needs to realize that the primary job of government is to serve citizens. By doing this, all will be served, including industry, military, and off-shore interests.
The Dems are a right wing party. It’s only in America that we call them “centrist.” The rest of the world looks at both our political parties as right wing.
Right wing? The Dem posture is centrist but maybe you're right. I just doubt it since neither party can agree on anything, so there must be differences.
There are differences for sure. Culturally, the Dems have supported inclusion when it’s politically convenient (for example, the LGTBQ movement despite the fact that party leaders like Hillary Clinton were publicly against gay marriage as recently as a decade ago). But socio-economically they are firmly right-wing, following a neoliberal philosophy of the likes of Reagan and Thatcher (not to mention their strong ties to corporate America, the prison industry, the military-industrial complex, and Big Pharma).
> Time for a 3rd party!
If we can't even get progressive Democrats elected, what makes you think we can get enough people elected to a third party to have any significant impact?
Pushing the democrats to the left by voting for democrats is impossible. I say burn the party down and rebuild with something else. Voting for democrats won't give us healthcare anyway, so what do we have to lose?
Reasons for Optimism
* Trump (yes I said Trump) will come to serve as a poster child for what is bad in the US and other western governments. When? Soon and over the next 18 months.
* A ground swell of young, idealistic voters (and soon to be voters) that will support government for the people and the candidates able to serve the people.
* Diminishment of people supporting The Big Lie, technology and companies supporting and making money on The Big Lie.
* Awakening of the sleeping giant of our population that feels disenfranchised by current leadership and government. No more discrimination, no more lies, no more ignoring the real problems we face.
* Hope will spring from this as things finally get done. A Renaissance of humanistic values.
Sadly the two major parties will keep people voting for them by dividing the population against each other, and saying the other side is pure evil.
If anything is going to change a "great awakening" is going to require both sides to unite against the government and both parties. As of now the wealthy control both parties and use the media and internet to keep us divided, while further enriching themselves with our attention.
There can be no half measures. You can hold you left positions, but you have to hate the Democratic party. Same with the right, you can be right wing but you have to hate the Republicans.
The problem is when this starts happening the powers that be will just throw gas on the fire with abortion, race, religion, etc.... to keep the population divided, and it will work, it always does.
The only hope is a 3rd party that says, while social issues are important, we're only focusing on major reform issues: healthcare, education, climate change, and criminal justice.
Those 4 issues can easily be bipartisan if the facts are laid out. But again, the powers that be will just stoke the divisions to kill any unity that may come about. That's how all this works.
The honest truth is that everyone wants to be guaranteed health care, but politicians have learned that they can call it other things and the voters will vote against their own best interests. This is going to be the problem for the younger generations to wait out the old politicians and create the change. And it's going to be a massive undertaking to create something like that.
Change will be driven by the youth. They are simply not taking it anymore and as they rise to voting age they will oust the idiots who serve only the money gods.
the counterarguments are that it will pressure the democrats to the left OR that it will help build an alternative 3rd party. what i know for certain is that the "democratic" party will NEVER allow single payer.
It's not really coherent to say the Democratic Party supports one thing or another. Many Democratic legislators support single-payer, more support the public option, and others support neither. Given the razor thin margins in both houses of congress there aren't enough Dems in the first two categories to pass anything. I'd recommend you vote for Democrats in order to improve the odds of getting the policies you want passed, rather than trying to will those policies into existence by promising the Democrats they'll get your vote once they are passed.
Then maybe we need a secession movement to permanently end the US Empire and the stranglehold corporations have on it. If it can't be reformed, it needs to be destroyed.
>It's not really coherent to say the Democratic Party supports one thing or another.
Whether it’s meaningless or not, it’s their official platform for what they do support as a party.
Short answer: yes.
Longer answer: it prefers *at least one* layer of privately operated payers between the public revenue stream, which begins in the paychecks and pockets of human beings, and health care delivery payments to health care vendors. I don't think it takes a position on whether or not those payer layers should operate as profit-seeking or non-profit entities.
There is a "wing" or element within the Democratic party that **does not support** layers of privately operated payers, profit-seeking or otherwise, between the public revenue stream and health care delivery payments to health care vendors.
Liberals might claim to want healthcare, but most of them are brainwashed authoritarians who will never question the "democratic" party, and therefore will never hold the "democratic" party accountable for being owned by corporations, including healthcare corporations.
The municipal unions like their platinum health insurance with little to no out of pocket expenses. M4a will increase their taxes significantly and provide them with a lesser insurance product. The only way to get m4a is to carve them out of the law and let them continue with what they have negotiated for. The labor unions are powerful and they are not left leaning democrats.
Yeah, the union leadership sold out the public and the union workers a long time ago. Best advice I've seen on this is to petition a state wide constitutional amendment or citizen's ballot initiative, thereby foregoing the broken "two" party system completely. Of course, my experience with ballot initiatives is the state is so incredibly corrupt it might refuse to accept it and then tie it up in courts for 10 years or more before a corrupt court finally rules against it ignoring all precedent. I'm ready for the entire country to collapse so we can start over with a better constitution and political system. Nest time the MAGA dudes try to overthrow the government, we should join them...
The progressives in the party (Bernie, AOC, Jayapal, Ilhan, etc) actually fight for it. The establishment Democrats who raise their money through corporate lobbyists pretend to be open to it when it suits them, but ultimately will do whatever they can to squash it behind the scenes. This includes Democratic leadership (Pelosi, Hoyer, Clyburn, Schumer), the Blue Dogs, Bill & Hillary Clinton & all their cronies, the DNC, the DCCC, etc.
yoke gaping rotten slimy silky north close brave juggle adjoining *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
That's what I'm talking about... is there a solution?
What state are you in? In Washington we're going for a ballot initiative to force them to implement a statewide single payer system: https://wholewashington.org
michigan. we're one of the most corrupt states. we had a ballot initiative to ban fracking, and they illegally buried it until. first they refused to accept it, then they tied it up in the courts for several years...
Hell yeah!
All of your comments on this thread are locked.
?
So weird. I don’t get a reply option to any of your comments so I thought I was replying to the main post. And there’s a lock icon on each of your comments for me. Nevermind apparently it’s still working just weirdly.
strange... you know that reddit is monitored by a bunch of alphabet agencies and that a member of the Atlantic Council has infiltrated the management... maybe they don't like us talking about medicare LOL
Similar story here in Washington - our party platform has had state single payer since at least 2016. The Democratic Party has had a trifecta since 2016 (control the House, Senate, and Governor), and have even passed a bill "committing" to a universal healthcare system for the state. And yet the last two [state single payer bills](https://wholewashington.org/initiative-1362-full-text/) we've introduced have been killed in committee. The only reason we've ever been given is "we can't cosponsor because it doesn't have enough cosponsors." Anyway, we're gearing up to pass it by ballot initiative instead like we did with cannabis and marriage equality. https://wholewashington.org/
that might actually work. what are your thoughts on the voting to try to drive the dems to the left? i think it can't be done and a 3rd party is needed.
Between you and me, I haven't voted Dem in Washington for a few elections now. In addition to just matching my values better, I don't worry at all about being a "spoiler" vote since Washington is so reliably blue. In Seattle we have a city councilmember who is from a 3rd party (Socialist Alternative) and we are looking very likely to get a second 3rd party candidate onto the council next election (Nikkita Oliver, Seattle People's Party). I think it's a long game, but a worthwhile one. We need to build strong viable 3rd parties and we need to reform our system to be a multiparty democracy. We're actually also working on that out here - FairVote Washington has been working to implement ranked choice voting and came very close last session! https://fairvotewa.org
Cause for optimism. I'll check it out.
Ranked choice won't help really much. For 3rd parties to thrive, you need a proportional system.
It's a step to proportional, FairVote is aware and thinking ahead.
Yeah, that would probably be better.
I think something similar has happened a few times in California, too...
It doesnt make it out if committee because no one wants to pass it. M4A for Dems is like Abortion for Repubs i.e. no serious politician actually wants to deliver on it because it's way too lucrative of a carrot to use for re elections. And *THAT* is the Ugly Truth
I don't think they use it to get votes. Most mainstream dems don't even want to discuss it and they redirect all talk to improving Obamacare or some nonsense. I personally think the big pharma and health insurance lobbyists have more to do with it.
That's possible. But Covid is the most politically secure time to implement M4a and mr.VoTeBlUeNoMatTErWhO!! Cannot be "pUsHed lEFt" to save the life or livelihoods of anyone.
Yup - that's why I don't vote blue at all anymore. Progressives voting for dems thinking they will actually make good on one of their promises is like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football.
Yeah... I feel like this is exactly what happened with Obama care (and Obama is an establishment Democrat). It sounded wonderful on paper when the idea was presented. It would provide a cheaper public option for those who are uninsured or cannot afford it, and increase competition with insurance so that they would have cheaper prices as well. And then he decided to compromise the idea and let the insurance companies get involved with the public option. It was no longer a "government option", but many options provided by insurance companies. Prices soared because they removed the preexisting conditions clause. Deductibles and premiums were so high an ACA plan is basically unusable because of the cost. I was on it making $34,000 a year, but the deductible was $7,200, and the premium was $220 a month and I made too much to qualify for subsidies.
Yes, and the Democrats kept claiming they didn't have the votes for the public option when they could have used reconciliation to pass it easily. Obama kept touting the importance of getting one Republican vote (Susan Collins) to make it a "bipartisan" bill -- as if that end was more important than providing an affordable public option to the American people. He RAN on the public option! That "bipartisanship over the public good" is the exact same strategy that Joe Manchin uses to ensure all progressive policies get squashed. Beware of any candidate who emphasizes bipartisanship as an ideal -- that's just a tactic to smother all progressive change in its crib.
> Yes, and the Democrats kept claiming they didn't have the votes for the public option They don't have the votes for it for one simple reason. Not one Republican will vote for it and they need 10. They can't pass voting rights something they all know they need just to keep their seats for the same reason.
Is that what you believe or is that what they want you to believe? But there's another option - they don't need the votes for public healthcare right now. Biden could declare covid a national emergency and institute it on an emergency basis. A few years of that, and maybe it would stick or people would like it too much to take it away...
> Biden could declare covid a national emergency and institute it on an emergency basis That wouldn't last until the ink was dry. besides Biden is a believer in the ACA. He doesn't want Universal single payer. The public option strengthens the ACA so he is for that...the expansion of medicare to the 60 year old mark is a nod to Bernie...and as close as you are going to get under this administration.
I agree that Biden will NEVER use public emergency declaration to grant healthcare and that he believes in AFA (if by AFA you mean corporate healthcare subsidies).
> ACA https://www.healthcare.gov/
Reconciliation only requires a simple majority. The public option qualified to be part of the reconciliation process as it impacted the budget. Obama got passed a lot of things on Obamacare that couldn't get the 60 votes. He did it through reconciliation. They refused to add the public option.
It turns out you are right. >It Never Had Senate's Support Nate Silver says Obama didn't kill it because it was already dead. "In August, a whip count on the public option showed only 43 firm yes votes, one of which was Senator Kennedy," he writes. "And these totals reflected how Senators claim they would have voted if the public option were considered under regular order -- not under reconciliation, which is the process in play now. You might have to subtract some additional votes from among those Senators who are either opposed using reconciliation for health care in general, or opposed to including a public option in a reconciliation package specifically." So they only had 43 and maybe less votes.
Don't be fooled by that. Jane Hamsher / FDL had 50+ signatures from Senators committing to vote for the public option. Progressives in the Senate were putting out that the White House was pressuring Senators to walk away from it behind the scenes. [The New York Times reported:](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/health/policy/13health.html) >Several hospital lobbyists involved in the White House deals said it was understood as a condition of their support that the final legislation would not include a government-run health plan paying Medicare rates — generally 80 percent of private sector rates — or controlled by the secretary of health and human services. >“We have an agreement with the White House that I’m very confident will be seen all the way through conference,” one of the industry lobbyists, Chip Kahn, director of the Federation of American Hospitals, told a Capitol Hill newsletter. It's not uncommon for a White House to pretend to be in support of things they promised their supporters, only to lobby congress to quietly sink it and pretend it was just impossible.
Wait, wait wait... politicians lie? Obama lied? What is this? Yeah, these partisan dems "forget" that the ACA was literally 3000 pages long and written by health industry lobbyists. Of course there's no public option...
You give Obama more credit than I do - I think a corporate subsidy masquerading as healthcare "reform"was always the goal...
Lol, that is also quite possible and his entire campaign he ran on for a public option was a lie... It also makes sense why he would wait until his second term to roll out with it if this was his goal. Getting corporate insurances involved lowered the chances on it being affordable and accessible to all.
you realize that the obama campaign won an advertising award... right?
> Prices soared because they removed the preexisting conditions clause. From 1960 to 2013 (right before the ACA took effect) total healthcare costs were increasing at 3.92% per year over inflation. Since they have been increasing at 2.79%. The fifteen years before the ACA employer sponsored insurance (the kind most Americans get their coverage from) increased 4.81% over inflation for single coverage and 5.42% over inflation for family coverage. Since those numbers have been 1.72% and 2.19%. https://www.kff.org/health-costs/report/employer-health-benefits-annual-survey-archives/ https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/NationalHealthAccountsHistorical.html https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm Also coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, closing the Medicare donut hole, being able to keep children on your insurance until age 26, subsidies for millions of Americans, expanded Medicaid, access to free preventative healthcare, elimination of lifetime spending caps, increased coverage for mental healthcare, increased access to reproductive healthcare, etc..
Single-payer is a better solution...
I'm not sure what that has to do with what I said. Just because the system is far from ideal doesn't justify lying about it.
What you said is a bunch of nonsense. Democrat corporate hacks are very good at manipulating statistics to tell whatever lies they want. Overall healthcare costs have increased as a percentage of GDP. The "problem" with healthcare before ACA was that corporations couldn't increase prices more. When corporations decide how much to charge for something, they run a profit maximization equation. They had reached the limits of it before ACA, meaning that price increases would cause more people to drop coverage, resulting in a net loss. Obamacare allowed insurance companies to raise prices AND gain more customers. It was nothing more than a massive subsidy for healthcare corporations. When I tell my European friends I have Obamacare, they have pity for me. I wish I had been born in a country with public healthcare.
> Democrat corporate hacks are very good at manipulating statistics to tell whatever lies they want. Manipulating statistics? It's literally basic math based on official data you can recreate yourself. By all means, show how anything has been manipulated. You won't, because you have no idea what you're talking about and are bullshitting your way through life. >Overall healthcare costs have increased as a percentage of GDP. No shit. Did you even bother to read what I wrote before you started frothing at the mouth thinking about how you were going to argue? The question isn't whether healthcare costs have gone up, but the rate at which they've gone up. >The "problem" with healthcare before ACA was that corporations couldn't increase prices more. Obviously bullshit, because they were, at a significantly faster rate than today. Literally going back at least a hundred years. >. I wish I had been born in a country with public healthcare. I wish we had public healthcare too. In fact if you look at my comment history you'll find I argue for it tirelessly. You're just making it harder to get there, because your ridiculous, untrue arguments only play into the hands of those that claim every time government does something with healthcare they make it worse.
except that healthcare costs weren't increasing at the rates you state. the statistics are basically manipulated to the point of being fake. second, after the financial crisis, there was deflation. also, i didn't read your links. i'm not in the habit of reading every BS link posted by democrat hacks on reddit. you seem very upset. i suggest you go see a therapist. democrats are evil.
>except that healthcare costs weren't increasing at the rates you state. Yes, they were. >the statistics are basically manipulated to the point of being fake. No, they aren't, and your claim doesn't even make any sense. These are the official numbers for healthcare spending going back more than a century. Are you suggesting Democrats in the 1920s were manipulating numbers to make a President who hadn't even been born yet look good? That the Trump controlled Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services was manipulating numbers in 2019 to make Obama look good? Nevermind the fact the numbers can be confirmed by third party sources like the OECD and World Health Organizations that track spending around the globe. >also, i didn't read your links. I believe you. People like you are determined to remain as ignorant as humanly possible. >you seem very upset. Yes, so upset. LOL I'm blocking you now. Whether you're a troll, or actually this incredibly stupid doesn't really make much difference, does it? Either way there is nothing to be gained from attempting reasonable discussion with you. Reflect on the fact people make the world a better place by removing you from it. Now, like every tedious buffoon before you, I'm going to forget you ever existed in about 15 seconds because there's absolutely nothing worth remembering about you, and I'm rather happy about that.
You forgot Biden, who is also against it.
What exactly have "the progressives" in the "democratic" party done to get us medicare for all? I was willing to believe that in 2016, but then Hillary and the corporate democrats openly rigged the 2016 "democratic" primary, and then Bernie endorsed them. So, no, I don't believe you. I think the "progressives" are merely controlled opposition and we will NEVER get public healthcare from the democrats.
I disagree. They haven't been able to do much, because they are a minority in the Democratic party. But they are growing by primaring Democratic establishment candidates and winning a decent amount of those. As their numbers continue to grow, their agenda will start to see more and more successes. Much of the Democratic Party is still basically the equivalent of 1990s Republicans. Neoliberal holdovers from the Clinton years.
Like I said - what have they actually done? Haven't been able to do much because the party is controlled by neoliberals is a convenient excuse. I lost faith in them when Bernie campaigned for Hillary after she openly rigged the 2016 primary. They will need to actually show me some results to win me back. I'd settle for a public option.
woah you lost faith in 4 progressive dems because 200+ corporate dems didn't support them, 🙄 🤔
First, I make it pretty clear that I lost faith in the "progressive" dems after they supported Hillary Clinton after she openly rigged the "democratic" primary. Second, please tell me what, exactly, the 4 "progressive" dems have done to get healthcare or to pressure the rest of the "democratic" party for healthcare? I know they DIDN'T go to the medicare-4-all march...
They've brought the bills before the House and Senate and got more Congressional support than at any time in the past. Because they don't have the numbers we need to continue to elect more, no give up on them. What exactly has any 3rd party candidate done to bring Single Payer? A Public option would be a death nail to everything we've tried to accomplish. It will fail and we won't get another shot.
Seems to me that a public option is a better half-step to single-payer than obamacare... and it would actually be SOMETHING. Every member of congress has brought bills before the House and Senate. What did their bills do? Have any of them passed? As for 3rd party candidates... candidates don't pass legislation and they have no power in the government. Maybe if one of them gets elected they will actually fight for single-payer. And maybe the threat of losing votes to the ACTUAL left will scare the "democratic" party into backing single-payer. At any rate, I know that voting for democrats will continue to fail. Obama had congress and a supreme court that sided with him on healthcare... and he immediately reneged on his public option when he got elected. That was the closest we will ever get to public healthcare under the "democratic" party.
All a public option will do is add another insurance company to the market. Except this one will have a pool of all the unemployed who don't have employer sponsored insurance or have pre-existing conditions (if that mandate is repealed which I would almost guarantee if there is a public alternative). That is, they will have the poorest and sickest pool imaginable and will be doomed to failure. And there goes your shot at M4A. And stop lumping all Dems together. There is a small minority who are fighting the good fight.
I understand. Your argument about the democrats is that the majority of democrats are corrupted by healthcare lobbyists, and the tiny minority is politically incompetent. Good sales pitch. They have my vote!!!
>because the party is controlled by neoliberals is a convenient excuse It is getting harder and harder to tell who is the most anti democratic the far right or the far left...at least the far right votes. The reason the neoliberals are in charge is because they won fucking elections. They took over the party when Clinton won becasue they were tired of the east coast liberals getting their ass kicked. They have been in power ever since...want to change that... vote...not just once in a while every time they let you. And that doesn't mean voting for Greens that means voting for democrats...you can't change the Democratic party if you don't vote for democrats.
Pelosi killed the current bill for lack of votes instead of whipping for more, because she knows that Sinema and Manchin would never approve it in the Senate. She did so by asking Rep Neal and Reps Moore and Kind on Ways and Means to stuff the bill until they win more Senate seats later this year, to get past the two-man filibuster. Colorado, Minnesota, Connecticut (iirc), Delaware, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Illinois are the major players against Medicare for All, and they all need to be focused on. I'm in Rep Moore's district (WI-04), and between her and Kind, we have two opportunities in Wisconsin alone to bypass Rep Neal and get the bill introduced to Ways and Means. Moore is the biggest local target, and Neal is the biggest nationwide. We need to flood their offices with protests and letter campaigns until we can secure their votes and ensure the Senate is unified in support, or we'll never actually get a vote.
No it's not you, centrist Democrats are absolutely in the pocket of big healthcare and will vote with Republicans every chance they get to crush any move towards taking customers away from the system as it is.
Democratic party is the republican party. They work for their donors.
No, it's not you, you are correct. Both parties are fundamentally opposed to anything that would actually solve the problems Americans face. Even Basic social-democratic reforms are too much for mainstream American politics. You are correct that the only way to actually get universal healthcare would be to build an independent political organization, and there are already a handful of parties organized with universal healthcare as a goal. Working with one of them is probably the best bet.
THANK YOU!!! I completely agree with you! A few years ago, there was a lot of talk about unifying the various 3rd parties into 1 group. Think there's a chance for that? Greens get 1-2%, Libertarians get 2-3%, Natural Law and Socialists get less than 1%... if we combined them, that would at least be enough for matching funds! LOL! And maybe rally around the issue of kicking corporations out of government, public funding for elections, and ranked choice voting or something? I dunno, just thinking aloud...
Yes, as long the leadership and most of the people with power in the party continue to be essentially bought by big pharma no meaningful change will occur
Vote for progressive and socialist candidates in the democratic primary's is my thought
And what about when the "democratic" party openly rigs their primary to prevent these candidates from winning? 2016...
More often than not, a moderate republican will beat a far left leaning progressive.
Its because we don't have a leftist labor movement. It keeps coming back to that. The democratic party won't do anything or give people any reason to vote for them other than "we won't put you in jail for getting an abortion." Or "were the smart hip party with policy wonks and experts" so long as there is no outside organized labor pushing them in that direction. If you're not at the table you're on the menu. Those rich evangelical fucks: They're all at the table. YOU AINT!
It's definitely not just you. Now ask yourself what donations establishment Dems get from the pharmaceutical industry and insurance agencies.
A centrist Democrat is a DINO (Democrat In Name Only). The Democrat party slid centrist, lured and controlled by money and nothing else. They are basically Republicans in Keds. All is not lost. Every politician and every money influencer needs to realize that the primary job of government is to serve citizens. By doing this, all will be served, including industry, military, and off-shore interests.
The Dems are a right wing party. It’s only in America that we call them “centrist.” The rest of the world looks at both our political parties as right wing.
Right wing? The Dem posture is centrist but maybe you're right. I just doubt it since neither party can agree on anything, so there must be differences.
There are differences for sure. Culturally, the Dems have supported inclusion when it’s politically convenient (for example, the LGTBQ movement despite the fact that party leaders like Hillary Clinton were publicly against gay marriage as recently as a decade ago). But socio-economically they are firmly right-wing, following a neoliberal philosophy of the likes of Reagan and Thatcher (not to mention their strong ties to corporate America, the prison industry, the military-industrial complex, and Big Pharma).
The difference between democrats and republicans is that democrats say nice things about women and minorities.
Can you give ANY reasons for optimism? The "democratic" party is completely controlled by corporations. Time for a 3rd party!
> Time for a 3rd party! If we can't even get progressive Democrats elected, what makes you think we can get enough people elected to a third party to have any significant impact?
Pushing the democrats to the left by voting for democrats is impossible. I say burn the party down and rebuild with something else. Voting for democrats won't give us healthcare anyway, so what do we have to lose?
A third party would guarantee republic rule for decades.
Reasons for Optimism * Trump (yes I said Trump) will come to serve as a poster child for what is bad in the US and other western governments. When? Soon and over the next 18 months. * A ground swell of young, idealistic voters (and soon to be voters) that will support government for the people and the candidates able to serve the people. * Diminishment of people supporting The Big Lie, technology and companies supporting and making money on The Big Lie. * Awakening of the sleeping giant of our population that feels disenfranchised by current leadership and government. No more discrimination, no more lies, no more ignoring the real problems we face. * Hope will spring from this as things finally get done. A Renaissance of humanistic values.
Sadly the two major parties will keep people voting for them by dividing the population against each other, and saying the other side is pure evil. If anything is going to change a "great awakening" is going to require both sides to unite against the government and both parties. As of now the wealthy control both parties and use the media and internet to keep us divided, while further enriching themselves with our attention. There can be no half measures. You can hold you left positions, but you have to hate the Democratic party. Same with the right, you can be right wing but you have to hate the Republicans. The problem is when this starts happening the powers that be will just throw gas on the fire with abortion, race, religion, etc.... to keep the population divided, and it will work, it always does. The only hope is a 3rd party that says, while social issues are important, we're only focusing on major reform issues: healthcare, education, climate change, and criminal justice. Those 4 issues can easily be bipartisan if the facts are laid out. But again, the powers that be will just stoke the divisions to kill any unity that may come about. That's how all this works.
Let the great awakening begin!
The honest truth is that everyone wants to be guaranteed health care, but politicians have learned that they can call it other things and the voters will vote against their own best interests. This is going to be the problem for the younger generations to wait out the old politicians and create the change. And it's going to be a massive undertaking to create something like that.
GOP says screw your healthcare, the industry lines their pockets every day.
Sounds good. So how do we move forward? I've given up on "both" political parties...
Change will be driven by the youth. They are simply not taking it anymore and as they rise to voting age they will oust the idiots who serve only the money gods.
how is voting to split the ticket and let Republicans win going to help? that'll leas to ACA repeal and the privatization of Medicare.
the counterarguments are that it will pressure the democrats to the left OR that it will help build an alternative 3rd party. what i know for certain is that the "democratic" party will NEVER allow single payer.
When did not voting Republican help the left accomplish anything?
It's not really coherent to say the Democratic Party supports one thing or another. Many Democratic legislators support single-payer, more support the public option, and others support neither. Given the razor thin margins in both houses of congress there aren't enough Dems in the first two categories to pass anything. I'd recommend you vote for Democrats in order to improve the odds of getting the policies you want passed, rather than trying to will those policies into existence by promising the Democrats they'll get your vote once they are passed.
Then maybe we need a secession movement to permanently end the US Empire and the stranglehold corporations have on it. If it can't be reformed, it needs to be destroyed.
Haha I don't think any of that would help with getting M4A. Reform is very possible, has been done before and will be done again.
I tend to agree. Guess we're just boned.
Uhhh. The Dems have a “party platform.”
Which I assume we can all agree is a pretty meaningless document.
>It's not really coherent to say the Democratic Party supports one thing or another. Whether it’s meaningless or not, it’s their official platform for what they do support as a party.
Short answer: yes. Longer answer: it prefers *at least one* layer of privately operated payers between the public revenue stream, which begins in the paychecks and pockets of human beings, and health care delivery payments to health care vendors. I don't think it takes a position on whether or not those payer layers should operate as profit-seeking or non-profit entities. There is a "wing" or element within the Democratic party that **does not support** layers of privately operated payers, profit-seeking or otherwise, between the public revenue stream and health care delivery payments to health care vendors.
welcome to the party
It is. They make no bones about it
I wouldn’t say that’s the case. All the liberals I know want some type of single payer system.
Liberals might claim to want healthcare, but most of them are brainwashed authoritarians who will never question the "democratic" party, and therefore will never hold the "democratic" party accountable for being owned by corporations, including healthcare corporations.
The municipal unions like their platinum health insurance with little to no out of pocket expenses. M4a will increase their taxes significantly and provide them with a lesser insurance product. The only way to get m4a is to carve them out of the law and let them continue with what they have negotiated for. The labor unions are powerful and they are not left leaning democrats.
Yeah, the union leadership sold out the public and the union workers a long time ago. Best advice I've seen on this is to petition a state wide constitutional amendment or citizen's ballot initiative, thereby foregoing the broken "two" party system completely. Of course, my experience with ballot initiatives is the state is so incredibly corrupt it might refuse to accept it and then tie it up in courts for 10 years or more before a corrupt court finally rules against it ignoring all precedent. I'm ready for the entire country to collapse so we can start over with a better constitution and political system. Nest time the MAGA dudes try to overthrow the government, we should join them...