Kamala Harris Officially Announces 2020 Presidential Bid - Kamala Bear... GRRRR!!!
- Thread starter mc_brew
- Start date
My point is we're 2 years out, he hasn't announced and we have no idea what his platform would be. In the last election Sanders polled better against Trump than Clinton at a time closer to the election but no one was calling him the safe choice. The numbers change constantly throughout an election season and it's easy to stay popular as a myth. Once you get into the spotlight of a campaign with people digging up your dirt and checking your policy ideas for consistency with your record, poll numbers can drop considerably.
Berniewood Hogan
IT'S BERNIE SANDERS WITH A STEEL CHAIR!
JoogJoint
In my own league.
Harris' stans and her team are turning more people off by the day. This is violation of freedom of the press by her people.
Deplorable.
Deplorable.
Kamala Harris Admits “Medicare for All” Would Kill Private Health Insurance — but So Would a “Public Option”
By Michael F. Cannon
Kamala Harris Admits “Medicare for All” Would Kill Private Health Insurance — but So Would a “Public Option”
Michael Kinsley memorably quipped, “A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth — some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.” Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) recently committed a gaffe when she admitted that Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) Medicare for All proposal would oust close to 200 million Americans from their existing health insurance arrangements, a prospect that causes public support for Medicare for All to plummet from 56 percent to 37 percent. Harris thus helpfully illustrated why Sanders’ proposal is, to be kind, so pie-in-the-sky bonkers that it would never pass Congress.
Indeed, the only way Medicare for All could happen is if free-market advocates focus all their fire on that proposal rather than the incremental and thus more politically feasible steps toward a single-payer system that Medicare for All supporters are offering. I am speaking in particular about the various proposals they are offering to create a so-called “public option,” usually by expanding eligibility for Medicare or Medicaid.
In 2009 and 2010, the Left used a public option as a stalking horse for ObamaCare. The Left demanded a public option and lured free-market advocates into focusing their fire on that proposal, only to have congressional Democrats drop the idea and pass ObamaCare as some sort of moderate or compromise measure.
That went so well—or let’s just say, the bill passed—the Left is now using Medicare for All as a new stalking horse for the old stalking horse. Savvy Democrats are hoping that if Sanders whips up the base over Medicare for All, congressional Democrats will be able to pass a public option (e.g., a Medicare/Medicaid “buy-in,” or “Medicare X”) again as some sort of moderate or compromise measure.
A public option is merely a slower and more politically feasible way to achieve the destruction of private health insurance than what Sen. Harris proposes. Supporters say they merely seek a level playing field where a public option may compete with private insurance. Of course, a level playing field between government and private insurers is impossible. It has never happened. It will never happen. It cannot happen.
If you want to know how serious Democrats are about letting private insurance compete with a public option on a level playing field, look at how they are treating a free-market alternative to ObamaCare: short-term, limited duration health insurance. The Obama administration prohibited short-term plans from offering crucial consumer protections; it crippled them by unilaterally decreeing that enrollees in such plans must face medical underwriting more often than federal law requires. Democrats have decried the Trump administration’s decision to allow short-term plans to shield sick enrollees from medical underwriting, and are trying to *rescind* those consumer protections because they are not provided by the government. Senate Democrats voted to kick patients with preexisting conditions out of their short-term plans, leaving those patients to face up to 12 months of expensive medical bills with no insurance coverage whatsoever. Illinois Democrats passed a similar law over Gov. Bruce Rauner’s (R) veto. California Democrats completely banned short-term plans — and thereby gave real teeth to ObamaCare’s 10-month rationing period.
How is any of that a “level playing field”?
Supporters of a public option don’t want open competition. They don’t want to give you just one more choice. They want to destroy private insurance. They want a public option to be your only option. They want you to have no choice.
In the end, a public option is even more dangerous than the Sanders bill. Unlike Sanders’ frontal assault, a public option could actually deliver Medicare for All.
By Michael F. Cannon
Kamala Harris Admits “Medicare for All” Would Kill Private Health Insurance — but So Would a “Public Option”
Michael Kinsley memorably quipped, “A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth — some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.” Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) recently committed a gaffe when she admitted that Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) Medicare for All proposal would oust close to 200 million Americans from their existing health insurance arrangements, a prospect that causes public support for Medicare for All to plummet from 56 percent to 37 percent. Harris thus helpfully illustrated why Sanders’ proposal is, to be kind, so pie-in-the-sky bonkers that it would never pass Congress.
Indeed, the only way Medicare for All could happen is if free-market advocates focus all their fire on that proposal rather than the incremental and thus more politically feasible steps toward a single-payer system that Medicare for All supporters are offering. I am speaking in particular about the various proposals they are offering to create a so-called “public option,” usually by expanding eligibility for Medicare or Medicaid.
In 2009 and 2010, the Left used a public option as a stalking horse for ObamaCare. The Left demanded a public option and lured free-market advocates into focusing their fire on that proposal, only to have congressional Democrats drop the idea and pass ObamaCare as some sort of moderate or compromise measure.
That went so well—or let’s just say, the bill passed—the Left is now using Medicare for All as a new stalking horse for the old stalking horse. Savvy Democrats are hoping that if Sanders whips up the base over Medicare for All, congressional Democrats will be able to pass a public option (e.g., a Medicare/Medicaid “buy-in,” or “Medicare X”) again as some sort of moderate or compromise measure.
A public option is merely a slower and more politically feasible way to achieve the destruction of private health insurance than what Sen. Harris proposes. Supporters say they merely seek a level playing field where a public option may compete with private insurance. Of course, a level playing field between government and private insurers is impossible. It has never happened. It will never happen. It cannot happen.
If you want to know how serious Democrats are about letting private insurance compete with a public option on a level playing field, look at how they are treating a free-market alternative to ObamaCare: short-term, limited duration health insurance. The Obama administration prohibited short-term plans from offering crucial consumer protections; it crippled them by unilaterally decreeing that enrollees in such plans must face medical underwriting more often than federal law requires. Democrats have decried the Trump administration’s decision to allow short-term plans to shield sick enrollees from medical underwriting, and are trying to *rescind* those consumer protections because they are not provided by the government. Senate Democrats voted to kick patients with preexisting conditions out of their short-term plans, leaving those patients to face up to 12 months of expensive medical bills with no insurance coverage whatsoever. Illinois Democrats passed a similar law over Gov. Bruce Rauner’s (R) veto. California Democrats completely banned short-term plans — and thereby gave real teeth to ObamaCare’s 10-month rationing period.
How is any of that a “level playing field”?
Supporters of a public option don’t want open competition. They don’t want to give you just one more choice. They want to destroy private insurance. They want a public option to be your only option. They want you to have no choice.
In the end, a public option is even more dangerous than the Sanders bill. Unlike Sanders’ frontal assault, a public option could actually deliver Medicare for All.
CATO 
We're already spending a lot of government money on healthcare. Nearly 65% of healthcare spending in the USA is by the federal government ($2.2 trillion)! The other 35% is private sector and that's $1.1 trillion on premiums and $350 billion on out of pocket expenses.
Last year we spent about $3.5 trillion on health care, and under current projections, if we keep the system as it is now, we’ll spend $50 trillion over the next decade.
Mercatus Study has a Medicare For All system spending $32 trillion over 10 years. Which is less than what we spent last year by $200 billion which gives us trillions in savings as a country over 10 years.
Medicare For All should be about consolidating existing federal healthcare spending into one MEDICARE. Then, using rate setting to lower prices by providers and drug companies. Actually the feds can do that RIGHT NOW with regards to prices but no one has the balls or guts.
Jon Walker below said you can get the money that employers are paying for premiums right now through an employer mandate which would be like how Japan and Germany fund much of their health care system. Other countries began this way and then went to more straight payroll taxing later on. You'd have to repeal the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 because that's what's making talk of such mandates null and why people keep putting up a bigger payroll tax.
Here he outlines this: Best Option For Funding Medicare For All May Be Employer Mandate
Also:
Medicare-for-all is cheaper
The Koch-funded Mercatus Center provided accidental support for Sanders' Medicare-for-all plan recently when it published a paper demonstrating that America as a whole would save over $2 trillion in spending over 10 years by passing such a program. Yes, there would be a gigantic increase in federal spending, but it would be more than compensated by lower prices and administrative costs. For individuals, as a RAND study of a proposed New York state single-payer plan shows, taxes would go up dramatically, but premiums, deductibles, and co-pays would be zeroed out, leaving most people with more money on net.
This is because the American health-care system is staggeringly wasteful. One shocking way of visualizing this is by noting we already spend more tax money on it per person than most peer nations — and then on top of that, a whole bunch more private money. If we transplanted Canada's single-payer system into America, for example, the required tax revenue would actually go down.
When I made this observation on Twitter, conservatives (including several prominent commentators) spent the next several days scoffing at the idea, trying to disprove it with wildly inaccurate statistics or just straight-up refusing to understand the point being made. It's a good demonstration of the utter uselessness of conservative ideology when it comes to health care
In 2016, Canada's single-payer system cost about $4,500 per person. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services say that same year, just directly tax-supported health-care programs — Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Affairs health programs, and the Children's Health Care Program — cost together $1.929 trillion, or $5,972 per person. Add in the cost of the employer-based insurance tax exclusion ($268 billion) and ObamaCare tax subsidies ($48 billion), both figures courtesy of the Congressional Budget Office, and total government spending on health care rises to $2.245 trillion, or $6,950 per person.
So not only does our government health spending easily exceed that of Canada, it's not even close. And that's still leaving some stuff out!
We're already spending a lot of government money on healthcare. Nearly 65% of healthcare spending in the USA is by the federal government ($2.2 trillion)! The other 35% is private sector and that's $1.1 trillion on premiums and $350 billion on out of pocket expenses.
Last year we spent about $3.5 trillion on health care, and under current projections, if we keep the system as it is now, we’ll spend $50 trillion over the next decade.
Mercatus Study has a Medicare For All system spending $32 trillion over 10 years. Which is less than what we spent last year by $200 billion which gives us trillions in savings as a country over 10 years.
Medicare For All should be about consolidating existing federal healthcare spending into one MEDICARE. Then, using rate setting to lower prices by providers and drug companies. Actually the feds can do that RIGHT NOW with regards to prices but no one has the balls or guts.
Jon Walker below said you can get the money that employers are paying for premiums right now through an employer mandate which would be like how Japan and Germany fund much of their health care system. Other countries began this way and then went to more straight payroll taxing later on. You'd have to repeal the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 because that's what's making talk of such mandates null and why people keep putting up a bigger payroll tax.
Here he outlines this: Best Option For Funding Medicare For All May Be Employer Mandate
Also:
Medicare-for-all is cheaper
The Koch-funded Mercatus Center provided accidental support for Sanders' Medicare-for-all plan recently when it published a paper demonstrating that America as a whole would save over $2 trillion in spending over 10 years by passing such a program. Yes, there would be a gigantic increase in federal spending, but it would be more than compensated by lower prices and administrative costs. For individuals, as a RAND study of a proposed New York state single-payer plan shows, taxes would go up dramatically, but premiums, deductibles, and co-pays would be zeroed out, leaving most people with more money on net.
This is because the American health-care system is staggeringly wasteful. One shocking way of visualizing this is by noting we already spend more tax money on it per person than most peer nations — and then on top of that, a whole bunch more private money. If we transplanted Canada's single-payer system into America, for example, the required tax revenue would actually go down.
When I made this observation on Twitter, conservatives (including several prominent commentators) spent the next several days scoffing at the idea, trying to disprove it with wildly inaccurate statistics or just straight-up refusing to understand the point being made. It's a good demonstration of the utter uselessness of conservative ideology when it comes to health care
In 2016, Canada's single-payer system cost about $4,500 per person. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services say that same year, just directly tax-supported health-care programs — Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Affairs health programs, and the Children's Health Care Program — cost together $1.929 trillion, or $5,972 per person. Add in the cost of the employer-based insurance tax exclusion ($268 billion) and ObamaCare tax subsidies ($48 billion), both figures courtesy of the Congressional Budget Office, and total government spending on health care rises to $2.245 trillion, or $6,950 per person.
So not only does our government health spending easily exceed that of Canada, it's not even close. And that's still leaving some stuff out!
Stating how much we spend or that we spend too much on healthcare is too often used as an argument (often for M4A specifically) when its not... we need to address healthcare, but M4A isn't the sole solution, a sis often suggested on this board.CATO
We're already spending a lot of government money on healthcare. Nearly 65% of healthcare spending in the USA is by the federal government ($2.2 trillion)! The other 35% is private sector and that's $1.1 trillion on premiums and $350 billion on out of pocket expenses.
Last year we spent about $3.5 trillion on health care, and under current projections, if we keep the system as it is now, we’ll spend $50 trillion over the next decade.
Competitive markets, and Canadian style block grants are also options...
Stating how much we spend or that we spend too much on healthcare is too often used as an argument (often for M4A specifically) when its not... we need to address healthcare, but M4A isn't the sole solution, a sis often suggested on this board.
Competitive markets, and Canadian style block grants are also options...
Anti-trust vs. hospital monopolies is needed badly.
The price gouging has to end.
A Republican in Congress got a bill for hospitals to accept Medicare rates
Holy shyt... we agree on something.
We probably disagree on the cause, and the solution though.
intra vires
Glory to Michigan
storyteller
Superstar
New Jeruzalem Journalist
Superstar
So for those who defend her record as a prosecutor by saying "she was just doing her job", this is evidence that there was a better way of doing the job. She made choices to do the things she did and she is accountable for those choices.
