Sure, Trump is a bad man, a very bad man. Yeah, women’s rights! Gay Rights! Black Lives Matter!
How’s that working out for us?
How about actually attacking the Republicans, taking control of the lexicon, and taking a BOLD stand?
Democrats need to start calling us “citizens”, not “consumers”. Referring to us as consumers is capitulation to the Republican ideals of markets as the ubiquitous panacea. A five year old child with asthma is not a consumer. A 75 year old Vietnam veteran with pneumonia is not a consumer. These individuals are ill citizens and these citizens demand their right to health care along with every other citizen.
Democrats need to attack markets. Markets are the same as governments, good in some cases, horrible in others. Democrats need to scream from the rooftops that the reason the ACA is in trouble, the reason that Obamacare is not meeting expectations, is that markets are failing to meet the needs of the citizens. Democrats need to say, every time they are on Morning Joe or Maddow or CNN that, “The ACA is failing because the Markets are Failing and the Republican’s remedy is More markets!”
Democrats need to call government intervention in business and commerce “protections”, not “regulations”. The Glass Steagall Act protected American citizens from abuses of business. Glass Steagal was a protection and Republicans (along with Bill Clinton, sadly) removed those protections.
I could go on, and I will, but I just want to see if I can get this ball rolling.
I definitely agree with the title.
The first couple of paragraphs are a bit distracting. I think we have to demonstrate that we’re with our allies. An issue like Black Lives Matter is sort of our Article 5 — injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
But yes, we can be the party of regulation, ok making government work for the people, and still be fighting these battles. In fact they might animate our larger fight.
Hmm… working against the powers that be in the name of the powerless…
How do you expect that to work out for us?
Did you perhaps think that the racist, homophobic and sexist elements were just going to say “Oops. My bad.”… and move on to be more productive citizens?
To the extent that the ACA is in trouble, that trouble is SOLELY the result of nearly a decade of relentless attack from the GOP. For example, insurers are reluctant to offer policies in some states because the GOP has expressly threatened to dismantle the constraints that allow those policies to work.
There is ALWAYS going to be a health-care “market”, even with single-payer government-sponsored health care. Even in that model, health care providers will offer services, citizens will consume those services, and those providers will be paid for those services (through a combination of public funds and private co-pays).
The people and institutions who save the lives of your five year old child with asthma and your 75 year old Vietnam veteran with pneumonia MUST be paid. An implicit or explicit negotiation will take place between them and wherever the money comes from, a negotiation that will set minimum and maximum limits on how much the providers will receive and that will enumerate the specific goods and services those providers will deliver. Like is or not, that is called a “market”.
We live in a consumer economy. We know of NO alternatives to a consumer economy that perform as well. Neither the former USSR nor China have ever come close to providing as much prosperity for as many people as our consumer economy.
What we currently fail to do is use government to effectively regulate that consumer economy, so that the wealthiest of our wealthy do not plunder the bulk of the wealth generated by that consumer economy from the rest of us. We must redistribute that wealth — we should NOT destroy the consumer economy.
Lazlo Baribasi and his colleagues have shown, compellingly, that the wealth distribution network is a “scale-free network”. This means that for every ten thousand households with a household wealth of $10,000, there is one household with a household wealth of $100,000,000 (that’s one hundred million — ten thousand times ten thousand). Government regulations are REQUIRED in order to change this natural behavior of an unregulated wealth distribution network. The GOP dogma that an unregulated free market will bring the greatest wealth to the greatest number of people is pure superstitious nonsense. It has approximately as much validity as a claim that the world is six thousand years old because the bible says so.
If you have an alternative to the consumer economy to offer, please do so. If it is remotely plausible, you can expect to receive a Nobel Prize for Economics.
I’m not holding my breath.
It’s not really clear to me that you are actually disagreeing with what johntmay was saying — and I have reread what he wrote several times just to be sure I wasn’t missing something.
I think the point about “citizens” versus “consumers” is an important one.
When I was still teaching, I at one point testified before the legislature’s joint education committee. One point that seemed to come up again and again from our legislators was that we needed to have education respond to the needs of business. I remember saying something like this:
“It’s true that there are overlaps, and certainly one of the things that we have to do as teachers is to prepare our students as well as we can to have those skills they will need to become productive members of society and to support themselves and their families. But the goals of education and those of business are not entirely the same. Businesses want us to turn out employees. We are trying to turn out citizens.”
I think that’s another take on what is at bottom the same issue.
I agree with using “citizens” instead of “consumers”.
I take issue with this paragraph:
Democrats might as well attack gravity or the speed of light. Attacking “markets” is just foolishness.
The ACA is in trouble because the GOP has spent the better part of a decade trying to destroy it. Yes, it can be improved. Yes, single-payer government-sponsored healthcare will be better. It will still be a market.
I think the problem we need to solve is that we are getting terrible healthcare. I think that attacking “markets” is a red herring that only distracts from our shared goal of providing the best healthcare in the world to every citizen.
Oh sure we know of alternatives to a consumer economy and there are examples anywhere you look. Our fire and police protections are not part of the consumer economy nor are our K-12 schools, military, NIH, and countless other examples. I don’t think one needs to be a Noble Prize winner to see this.
Or, look at Canada, where health care is not a “consumer economy”.
Or Australia.
Or France.
Or
Our fire and police are constantly under siege from those who claim we pay too much. Our fire, police, and public schools are one of the few remaining places where strong and effective unions are present, vital, and active. Those providers and the government are a “market”, by any reasonable meaning of the word.
America spends far too large a share of its GDP on health care — especially health care administration (insurance and the costs associated with it) — and we get terribly inadequate outcomes from that spending. That’s the problem we need to solve.
Canada, Australia, and France are all consumer economies. Each uses market mechanisms to manage health care allocation and spending. Providers in each of those countries are paid in exchange for services.
I agree with you that we need single-payer government-sponsored healthcare. I disagree that this has anything to do with markets. That’s why I disagree, strongly, that “Democrats should attack markets”.
That attack is a pointless exercise in futility. As I said above, it’s like attacking gravity or the inconvenience that mass/energy must be conserved. The world might be a much happier place if perpetual motion machines were possible.
They are not.
Really? I have not noticed.
Well, yes, but not with health care and that’s the point.
Perhaps I need to clarify. Democrats need to attack markets when markets fail and/or when they are not where they belong.
Name a market where one individual is responsible for each and every customer’s purchase.
You didn’t notice, for example, the attack by Wisconsin governor Scott Walker on public sector employees? Really?
The point is that you cannot carve out “health care” from the rest of an economy. The taxes that fund health care in the many nations that provide single-payer government-sponsored health care are levied on the consumer economy. In many of those nations, citizens DO in fact have to pay a share. The recipients of those government payments hire people, buy goods and services, and in general participate in the consumer economy.
I agree that Democrats should attack those situations where government action is needed. In my view, the definition of government (in a republic) is to do those things that the people cannot do for themselves. Regulation of commerce and national defense are two classic examples. Passenger rail transportation is another. Environmental protection is another. Health care is one, as is education.
I don’t understand your last response at all.
That’s your straw man, not mine.
I want health care, in general, to be provided to citizens in the same way we provide police, fire/emergency, K-12 education, roads, military, and the rest of things and services that are paid for by the government and funded by taxes. I want “markets” out of this. Markets are the world of “supply and demand” but health care has an inelastic demand. Health care is not well suited to be served by markets and the ACA is proof of that.
I want the acceleration due to gravity to be reduced by a factor of 10, because so many things would be so much easier.
What you or I want doesn’t matter.
I fear we’re talking past each other again. I agree with you that that the various state-by-state “markets” contained in the ACA are not working. I agree that attempting to rely on market mechanisms set the price of health care goods and services doesn’t work.
I agree with you that something much closer to how government did the things you mention during the 1950s through 1970s is needed.
If that’s what you mean, then we agree.
Here’s a compromise. John is attacking a free market ideology that puts profits before people. I largely think you agree with this. Especially when it come so to health care when a single payer or nationalized system is by definition not a truly free market where providers compete with one another but one where providers are salaried or reimbursed by the state.
I have no qualms about embracing socialized medicine and we should just call it what it is and fight for it. We shouldn’t pretend it was possible eight years ago during the last health care debate, but we shouldn’t pretend ACA is the end game either. I see nothing but upsides to going on the offensive on this issue, especially when so many of Trumps own voters want it and desperately need it.
I have an alternative to the American consumer health care economy and it’s called national or single payer healthcare and it’s working just fine in the rest of the developed world. I think clear majorities of Americans along with a growing number of economists recognize that health care is a geffen good and not one that can be viably treated as a market economy. We should absolutely have a “fix and expand” to counter their “repeal and replace”.
. There are two questions to ask. about health care
1) If the ACA isn’t the best system in the the world, where in the world do they have a better system.
2) what can we do to be more like those countries that do it better?
One thing to remember when we go on the offensive is that they fight on many fronts.
Campus Rape Policies Get a New Look as the Accused Get DeVos’s Ear
I’m willing to grant the premise, to an extent. (The Duke case proved the danger of assumptions.) But for this to command the Secretary of Education’s attention, so early in her tenure, suggests a warped perspective.
The priority is still to win more seats, but lest we forget, Republicans (#notallRepublicans) do real damage when they get in power.
Please continue! This is what we need to hear and ponder right now!