e.g., Kaiser poll suggests support Medicare-for-all is more than two-thirds
Why the hell is DC arguing about whether to keep health insurance in its current awful state, or to make it even worse? Seems to me that any political party that cannot get Medicare-For-All passed either doesn’t want it, or is staggeringly bad at politics.
And any political party that passed it would be heroes of the 99% (but not to certain rich special interests, of course).
Please share widely!
I think 24 million more uninsured is a difference in kind, not degree.
Some Dems would be great with Medicare for All. Some not. And that’s probably a true reflection of the feelings of their constituents.
Particularly if some version of Trumpcare gets passed, it’s a good time to talk principles of cradle-to-grave health care for every last person.
The biggest reason VT single payer failed is not because of political will but economics-current health care costs are just too damn high for the government to nationalize it. I say bring the costs down via incremental steps that are even more popular-midlife Medicare for example-and ending hospital and pharma consolidations. Really dust off the old anti trust laws and break that industry up into smaller pieces. Once the cartels are broken it then becomes easier for the government to become the sole provider.
So long as the insurance and pharma lobby’s have massive amounts of money and power they will be able to bribe their way to stopping single payer. They even killed the public option in it’s tracks and infamously turned Medicare Part D into a guaranteed income program for big business by actually making it illegal to negotiate prices down.
Midlife Medicare will extend the constituency from seniors to boomers/older x’ers and strengthen citizen lobbies like AARP. It’ll also drastically reduce the cost of private insurance on the exchange making an eventual transition to Medicare for All that much easier.
Id sell it as replacing fines with health care you don’t have to pay for. Who wouldn’t make that trade?
The savings to be had on administrative expenses, medical labor, devices, and drugs with a single payer system has been pretty well established. I’m not sure that there is a better cost-control mechanism out there.
Also, if your going to phase in medicare for all, kids might be the better first step. Over 40% of children already receive some form of government health insurance*, and they use less health care than the rest of the population**, so it would be the cheapest option.
*https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2015/demo/p60-253.pdf
**https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/statistics-trends-and-reports/nationalhealthexpenddata/nhe-fact-sheet.html
Because they are driven by companies that need to increase profit and market share. We push tests and drugs because one buys drugs and pays for tests. A doctor recommending a life style change with followup, like a gym membership, a dietitian, is not a big ticket item. Preventative care does not bill as much as catastrophic care and as long as we allow Republicans and some Democrats to define health care as part of our economy, we’ll never turn this ship around.
Public or private, it’s a part of the economy. And if you think parochial business interests aren’t a defining factor in this issue, imagine if MA went single payer and imposed price controls on Partners et al. The fur. Would. Fly.
It’s part of the economy, but so is police protection, the Mass Pike, and the NIH. As far as I can understand them, when people argue against single payer because “it gives government control over 16% of the economy!” (or whatever), it assumes that the government has no right to do so or would be inept at doing so because “the private sector” needs to be the lion of the economy.
Of course Partners is afraid of this, and ought to be. Last time I checked, their CEO raked in $3.1 Million Dollars in one year. (That’s just shy of $1,500 an hour for you working class people).
We have public police departments but they patrol in vehicles made by private companies and run on fuel from other private companies. All of the aforementioned, including the police officer’s pay, are part of the economy.
So allow me to edit: We need to push for the financing and delivery (the Economy) of health care to citizens into the public sector and away from the private sector.
…we can’t get some reasonable gun controls despite that polling even higher:(
Were we to set about to eliminate an entire industry (health insurance), you can bet that the health insurance industry would mount a significant, lavishly funded campaign to prevent it. Whatever the polls show today, they won’t be nearly as rosy after the insurance industry gets through pushing their side.
After all, a certain politician enjoyed rather robust popularity for quite a while — and at a few points reached 2/3, but that didn’t turn out so well.
As some have said, the USA does not qualify as a democracy or even a representative republic, in reality. For me, that is a close call. I am pessimistic but not 100% sure this is true.