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New Hey Rand, Is it okay for me to vote for Bernie again?
bcnu,
Mikem

It's mourning in America again.
New Why would you want to do that??
New His principles and policies more closely align with mine.
Or I am missing something? I know you only know me from my posts, but can you think of any of the other Democratic candidates whose positions more closely align with mine? I was impressed with Amy, until she said we couldn't afford single payer. Which is, btw, utter bullshit. What we can not afford is the system we have now.
bcnu,
Mikem

It's mourning in America again.
New Bernie has shown that he doesn't work well with others.
Senator Professor Warren is Lefty McLeftish and knows how to get things done.

Bernie isn't going anywhere this time.

Where are his tax returns, anyway...?

HTH.

Cheers,
Scott.
New And yet ...
Every single Democratic nominee (except for Amy) has come out in support of Single Payer - an idea laughed at by she whose name must never be spoken again - two years ago. You didn't listen to me about her in 2016, please, please, PLEASE listen this time: Warren has *no hope* in the general.

HTH.
bcnu,
Mikem

It's mourning in America again.
New What's the timeline? What are the details?
What does "Single Payer" mean?

What does "Medicare for All" mean?

Aspirational goals are one thing. Most/all of the Democrats are on-board with the goal of something like M4A. How's St. Bernard going to get it passed soon? He can't, because he doesn't know how things work in the real world of passing legislation.

His Medicare for All plan was a bunch of buzzwords that didn't add up.

Bernie’s plan would create a federally administered single-payer health care program. Universal single-payer health care means comprehensive coverage for all Americans. Bernie’s plan will cover the entire continuum of health care, from inpatient to outpatient care; preventive to emergency care; primary care to specialty care, including long-term and palliative care; vision, hearing and oral health care; mental health and substance abuse services; as well as prescription medications, medical equipment, supplies, diagnostics and treatments. Patients will be able to choose a health care provider without worrying about whether that provider is in-network and will be able to get the care they need without having to read any fine print or trying to figure out how they can afford the out-of-pocket costs.

[...]

As a patient, all you need to do is go to the doctor and show your insurance card. Bernie’s plan means no more copays, no more deductibles and no more fighting with insurance companies when they fail to pay for charges.

[...]

We outspend all other countries on the planet and our medical spending continues to grow faster than the rate of inflation. Creating a single, public insurance system will go a long way towards getting health care spending under control. The United States has thousands of different health insurance plans, all of which set different reimbursement rates across different networks for providers and procedures resulting in high administrative costs. Two patients with the same condition may get very different care depending on where they live, the health insurance they have and what their insurance covers. A patient may pay different amounts for the same prescription depending solely on where the prescription is filled. Health care providers and patients must navigate this complex and bewildering system wasting precious time and resources.


So Medicare parts A, B, D all get rolled together? What about Part C (Medicare Advantage)?

So, Bernie would do away with the VA and TriCare?

So, Bernie would cover braces?

So, Bernie would cover Lasik surgery? And eyeglasses and dental work? How about service dogs?

Medicare and the VA and TriCare don't cover everything. There are limits and co-pays and so forth. They say no to some treatments and some medications - that's one of the way they control costs, by telling companies "No". How is a system that covers everything going to control costs?

Bernie's plan doesn't add up.

Getting upset that the ACA didn't go far enough, or Medicare buy-in at 55 or 50 doesn't go far enough, while touting the purity of St. Bernard's "Single Payer Medicare for All" is the perfect recipe for getting nothing. We've seen this play before, and I don't think too many people are going to buy it this time.

YMMV.

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/march/hillary_clinton_on_s.php

The New York Times
March 27, 2008

Q: Let’s talk for a minute about the formulation of your plan. I’m interested in how seriously you considered proposing a single payer system and at what point in that discussion did you decide to propose an individual mandate?

MRS. CLINTON: You know, I have thought about this, as you might guess, for 15 years and I never seriously considered a single payer system. Obviously, I listened to arguments about its advantages and disadvantages, and many people who I have a great deal of respect for certainly think that it is the only way to go. But I said, as you quoted me, that we had to do what would appeal to and actually coincide with what the body politic will and political coalition building was. So I think if you look at most public opinion surveys, even from groups of people who you would think would be pretty positive towards single payer, Americans have a very skeptical attitude. They don’t really know that Medicare is a single payer system. They don’t really think about that. They think about these foreign countries that they hear all these stories about, whether they’re true or not, which they’re often not. And so talking about single payer really is a conversation ender for most Americans, because then they become very nervous about socialized medicine and all the rest of this. So I never really seriously considered it.

Q: Last question. You talked earlier in the interview about how your plan maintains the private insurance system. But in October, at the forum of the Kaiser Family Foundation, you were asked whether your plan to make government insurance, a Medicare-type plan, available to all was a backdoor route to a single payer system, and you said, “What are we afraid of? Let’s see where the competition leads us.” So is it okay with you if the market ultimately dictates that the U.S. system sort of morphs into a single-payer system? And if so, doesn’t that arm the Republicans with exactly what you were talking about, this claim that it’s socialized medicine?

MRS. CLINTON: No, because I think what we would be offering would be a Medicare-like system, which is something people are familiar with, and you know whether we would call it Medicare 2.0 or whatever we would call it. And we’d see whether people want that or not. And where it morphs to, I think this whole system will morph. I mean, look at where Medicare started and where it is today. In large measure, some of the problems we have are because of the way it evolved. But I think from my perspective, having this Medicare-like alternative really does answer the desires of people. And there’s a significant minority who want quote a single-payer system. It at least gives them the feeling it’s not for profit, they’re not paying somebody a billion dollars for raising their premiums 200 percent and all the rest of the problems that we face with the for-profit system. You get the costs of overhead and administration down as much as possible. I believe in choice. Let Americans choose and what better way to determine that than letting the market have some competition and you know see where it does lead to.

Q: And if the choice is a single-payer system, that’s fine by you?

MRS. CLINTON: You know, I think that would be highly unlikely. I think that, you know, there’s too many bells and whistles that Americans want that would not be available in kind of a bare-bones Medicare-like system but I think it’s important to have that competition.


Yeah, she is just horrible and wanted people to be crushed under the gears of the big insurance companies.

Hillary got ~ 3M votes more than Donnie.

Indiana =/= the USA.

HTH.

Cheers,
Scott.
New FWIW this election is not going to be about the details.
Unless it's about details that are made up by Drumpf. Any kind of policy discussion is going to involve him inventing shit whole cloth as his whims dictate.
Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
New True, but I thought we were talking (mostly) about the primaries.
Bernie can't save us if he can't win the primaries!! ;-)

Cheers,
Scott.
New I don't think he'll win the primary
The problem with Bernie is that he loses, and then is a very shit loser.

If he contests and loses again, as is most likely, then he needs to act like a fucking adult and throw the full force of his political clout and influence behind whoever gets the nomination, without equivocation or qualification.

His participation in the primary could be a valuable influence, ensuring that the Democratic Party isn't just an echo chamber, and putting some varied policy items into the debate. But if he loses? Time to nut up and get in line.

Or he could be a massive whiny arsehole with massive whiny arsehole followers, and y'all can have another four years of Cadet Bone Spurs.
New What are you on about?
One of the many things that makes Donald Trump angry is that Bernie Sanders does not seem to hold grudges. In recent speeches, Trump has pointed to the information that has come out, through WikiLeaks’ disclosures of John Podesta’s e-mails, about the Clinton team’s attitude toward Sanders during the primaries: the slights (“doofus”), the schemes (“where would you stick the knife?”), and the eye-rolling (“socialist math”). Perhaps worst of all—at least from Trump’s point of view—was Donna Brazile’s passing along of debate questions. "Now, Bernie Sanders should be angry right? Shouldn’t he be angry?” Trump asked a crowd in Florida. He sounded a little bit puzzled—he would be so mad.

The truth is that Bernie Sanders is very, very angry—at Donald Trump. He is angry enough to have spent weeks travelling on behalf of Hillary Clinton, speaking for her in union halls and arenas, to students and activists. When he talks, he is entirely Bernie—“We are going to fight for that democracy; we are not going to become an oligarchy”—and he hints strongly that he has done some negotiating with her before getting on the stage, and will continue to do so after, as he hopes, she is elected. When praising her positions, he often says “Secretary Clinton has told me” or “Secretary Clinton has promised,” as though he knows that it might not work, with the sort of swing audiences he is dispatched to persuade (students, working-class voters), simply to declare that taking these stands is in her nature. But he knows what he wants: for her to win. “This campaign is not a personality contest,” Sanders said near the beginning of a speech in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Thursday night. “We’re not voting for high-school president. We’re voting for the most powerful leader in the entire world.” He had been introduced by Pharrell Williams, the musician, who was now sitting on the stage with Clinton herself, as if it were an actual high-school election. Statements like that serve to remind Sanders’s supporters that they don’t need to be charmed by Hillary Clinton—he is over it, and they ought to be, too. But, if personality doesn’t matter, the person does.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/bernie-sanderss-hard-fight-for-hillary-clinton

Maybe don't just believe whatever Scott says about Bernie all the time. ;0)
bcnu,
Mikem

It's mourning in America again.
New That's like reading about how Corbyn campaigned for "Remain" in the Brexit referendum
Technically correct.
New The second-best kind of correct
I used to think it was the most-best kind, until I realized "He's not wrong" is more best.
--

Drew
New Well.. there's this re The Source, all along of the New(est) Demo Slate:
CNN mini-flic.

I mean, whatever Bernie's 'losses'-to-date, His Was the kernel-platform which has become: today's Big Slate driving inevitably-warring ∑-candidates. Whether or not his personal charisma/or not amidst the vox populi: his apparent prescience (not only re What-actually-Matters to many of those) but his (thus) 'masterful framing' of the listicle: COUNTS in much jelloware {I wot..}



Carrion; someties it gets into the neurons ..as it makes your fact orange.
New Aspirations are wonderful, and important.
Twitter:

Taniel Verified account @Taniel

More Taniel Retweeted Gideon Resnick

so, to be clear, Sanders wants to tackle Medicare-for-All and climate change in his first 100 days but is also hesitant to touch the filibuster?

as I said when Gillibrand & Booker made similar comments, it matters whether substantive parts of platform match the procedural ones.

Taniel added,
Gideon Resnick Verified account @GideonResnick

"I don't see it as one piece of legislation," @BernieSanders tells @chrislhayes when asked what his first legislative priority would be. Says it'll be about minimum wage, M4A, climate change in the first 100 days


7:05 PM - 21 Feb 2019


Bernie doesn't know how to actually make it happen, and he doesn't care that he doesn't know.

Cheers,
Scott.
New History Prof offers some +/-'s re Bernie-chances
"What 2020 Dems can't afford to ignore about Bernie". Of course so much can go Rong in the proximate-next
... no one's guesstimate is worth a PhD at Trump U.

Hey! a slow-drip of ketamine could let us sleep through.. ... Nah, we're all suckers for watching train-wrecks; why not planet-wrecks too?
New Heh. I love that.
MRS. CLINTON: You know, I have thought about this, as you might guess, for 15 years and I never seriously considered a single payer system. Obviously, I listened to arguments about its advantages and disadvantages, and many people who I have a great deal of respect for certainly think that it is the only way to go. But I said, as you quoted me, that we had to do what would appeal to and actually coincide with what the body politic will and political coalition building was.

Yes, by all means. We simply must consider what the billionaires who are bilking the current system making themselves obscenely wealthy by restricting access to care want.
bcnu,
Mikem

It's mourning in America again.
New ms clinton has a carefully filtered memory
When she was First Lady working on health care the plan was single payer. My brother in law worked with the white house and was enthusiastic describing it. I explained to him that one aspect of the plan would have evangelicals hunting him down in the streets.
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman
New I remember that well.
And who killed it? The bloated health insurance industry with their infamous "Harry and Louise" propaganda advertisements (which were not dissimilar in content from the arguments against Universal Care popular in some circles *still* today).

But, Obama's plan placated those very health insurance and big pharma company execs and shareholders (like Klobachar says we should do again now) and there were no "Harry and Louise" follow-up ads against the ACA.

Like he promised in his campaign, it was the sort of incremental change you can believe in. If you're dead from the neck up, that is.
bcnu,
Mikem

It's mourning in America again.
New Yeah, all the millions who have health care now are "dead from the neck up". Yeah... :-/
New and all of those who had decent healthcare dont with extremely high deductables at 3 times the cost
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman
New Thou sayest ... truly (!)
Depending on age, life experience ... it's as big as a Corporate scan can be: look who's running it: Bizness/all etics free as usual.

BASIS: "Health care" as a fucking FOR-PROFIT-bizness Bizness ... really does say it All. And Muricans have been under *that* thrall for so long: most think it's inevitable.
Start with paying Medicos-at-the top of the $$-pyramid a bloody Salary; 'fee-for-service' is the mint via which they get their 3 yo Porsches traded-in ... every 3 years (or is it 2 now?)

Pshaw: everyone is their Mark cf. the $60 aspirin..
New Yeah, those 28 million who didn't get healthcare coverage don't count anyway. Right?
28.1 million uninsured was an historic low for this cesspool of a nation.

https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2017/demo/p60-260.html

But, wait! Let me anticipate your response: "Yabut that's better than it had been and that's the best we can do." Right?

You know what really bothers me about the kind of crap that, most recently, Klobachar spews? Crap like, "If I could wave a magic wand and make college free I'd love to do that, but we can't afford it" and "How is Bernie going to pay for Universal Healthcare? We simply can't afford it"? With respect to tuition free college - WE HAVE ALREADY DONE THAT FFS! In 1977 if you were a California resident you paid *no tuition* at all. I know because I was a freshman in the Fall of 1977. We must have been doing exceedingly well at the time then, right? Ever heard of the OPEC oil embargo? Care to guess what that did to the economy? And somehow, we were still able to "afford" tuition-free college.

If you read the article I posted about the fight to get Medicare, you'll recognize the arguments the private health insurance corporations made back then as it was considered. You'll also recognize those same arguments from the 1990's. If we, as Americans, are decent enough people to be firm in our conviction that no one should lose their home if a family member falls ill (and whether we, on the whole, are those sorts of people is an argument in and of itself), a successful effort for MFA will have to at least begin from the ground up. And please don't let's forget that Medicare was already a compromise with private health insurers.

This will be even harder than past battles, though, because here we're talking about replacing private, for-profit insurance with public, non-profit insurance instead of covering the folks that private, for-profit corporations won't.

Americans' antipathy for the common good and reverence for greed, I will grant, may make such an effort impossible here. But don't expect me to laud that or call any half-assed attempt to pretend to be decent (read: PPACA) "good."

One last thing. I don't recall anyone saying, "BUT! BUT! BUT! HOW ARE WE GOING TO PAY FOR IT?!!?!!ONE" when JFK made this speech. But, we were different people then. No three people in the US owned more wealth than the bottom 50 per cent. In other words, our true values were not as blatantly on display then.
bcnu,
Mikem

It's mourning in America again.
New That purity pony has been rode hard and put up wet
But, wait! Let me anticipate your response: "Yabut that's better than it had been and that's the best we can do." Right?

Can I take a different guess at his response?

"Yabut that's better than it had been." Full stop.
--

Drew
New Sure. Quit. That's better. Aspiration is overrated.
bcnu,
Mikem

It's mourning in America again.
New Who said quit?
I just figured it out. People always assume other people think the same way they do. Whenever someone suggests taking a partial victory you accuse them of giving up, that they don't want any more. It's you who wants to give up.

You want one perfect solution for every problem. Just do the Right ThingTM once and for all then live in harmony forever. That's not how the world works. There's always the next step. Sometimes things just fall apart, sometimes people break them on purpose. But you keep fixing it anyway.

Civilization isn't like solving a puzzle, it's like doing the dishes. You can do them the best way possible, and tomorrow you have to do them again.
--

Drew
New +1. Thanks.
New I don't assume people think the way I do.
I even have a word for people who don't. Wrong. :0)
bcnu,
Mikem

It's mourning in America again.
New LRPD has a wrinkle on this..
No matter what I accomplish in this life, nobody's going to sculpt my head in thermoplastic resin and make it spit water into the bedrooms of sick children.

See, every time I come to a conclusion about kerfluffle-A, then Time-X later it appears that I got it right, I figure that 'they'
..should rename The Socratic Method with ..The Brownian-motions Method. {{sigh}}
New It's not going to be easy.
Paradigm-shifting reforms have been delivered by broad coalitions confronting a common enemy. It’s up to advocates to compel people living under the US health-care system to see themselves and one another as part of a single constituency, from the poorest uninsured to those saddled with punishing paperwork, office staff chained to bad jobs for benefits, providers-turned-pawns of corporate conglomerates, and expectant mothers bracing themselves for exorbitant out-of-pocket costs atop weeks of unpaid maternity leave. And it must be done in solidarity with struggles on behalf of all oppressed Americans—people of color, the unhoused, the disabled, and others—whose subjugation benefits the very moneyed interests who’d prefer to keep things as they are.

https://www.thenation.com/article/how-medicare-was-won/

But it can be done. How'd all the specifics Hillary posted on her web site work out for her? She in the White House is she?

I honestly don't know for whom I'll vote in the primary. I've only really ruled out three: Amy, Kirsten and Warren. Each for different reasons. That does not mean that I wouldn't vote for any of them in the general though.
bcnu,
Mikem

It's mourning in America again.
     Hey Rand, Is it okay for me to vote for Bernie again? -NT - (mmoffitt) - (28)
         Why would you want to do that?? -NT - (Another Scott) - (27)
             His principles and policies more closely align with mine. - (mmoffitt) - (26)
                 Bernie has shown that he doesn't work well with others. - (Another Scott) - (25)
                     And yet ... - (mmoffitt) - (24)
                         What's the timeline? What are the details? - (Another Scott) - (23)
                             FWIW this election is not going to be about the details. - (malraux) - (8)
                                 True, but I thought we were talking (mostly) about the primaries. - (Another Scott) - (7)
                                     I don't think he'll win the primary - (pwhysall) - (3)
                                         What are you on about? - (mmoffitt) - (2)
                                             That's like reading about how Corbyn campaigned for "Remain" in the Brexit referendum - (pwhysall) - (1)
                                                 The second-best kind of correct - (drook)
                                     Well.. there's this re The Source, all along of the New(est) Demo Slate: - (Ashton) - (2)
                                         Aspirations are wonderful, and important. - (Another Scott) - (1)
                                             History Prof offers some +/-'s re Bernie-chances - (Ashton)
                             Heh. I love that. - (mmoffitt) - (12)
                                 ms clinton has a carefully filtered memory - (boxley) - (11)
                                     I remember that well. - (mmoffitt) - (10)
                                         Yeah, all the millions who have health care now are "dead from the neck up". Yeah... :-/ -NT - (Another Scott) - (9)
                                             and all of those who had decent healthcare dont with extremely high deductables at 3 times the cost -NT - (boxley) - (1)
                                                 Thou sayest ... truly (!) - (Ashton)
                                             Yeah, those 28 million who didn't get healthcare coverage don't count anyway. Right? - (mmoffitt) - (6)
                                                 That purity pony has been rode hard and put up wet - (drook) - (5)
                                                     Sure. Quit. That's better. Aspiration is overrated. -NT - (mmoffitt) - (4)
                                                         Who said quit? - (drook) - (3)
                                                             +1. Thanks. -NT - (Another Scott)
                                                             I don't assume people think the way I do. - (mmoffitt) - (1)
                                                                 LRPD has a wrinkle on this.. - (Ashton)
                             It's not going to be easy. - (mmoffitt)

Sentinels and abdominal tracking shrimp.
118 ms