General Politics Discussion [ARCHIVED] • Page 318

Goes without saying.

 

You can say that again.

 

The ACA certainly isn't free of blame. Instead of single payer healthcare for all the democrats passed a conservative, capitalist fix that is designed to pump public and private money into a broken, for-profit system. Anyone could have seen this coming. Many did. With the majority of Americans in support of single payer the ACA has to be seen as a failure. I hope that its replaced soon with the proper fix, but I think unfortunately the democrats elected a candidate who called single payer "pie in the sky."

I just had to take my friend who works two jobs to the emergency room and he was uninsured and just barely scrapes by so also can't afford insurance, and now he's got a huge medical bill he can't pay, eventhough they did the bare minimum for him, which left him still in need of care. And of course the hospital charity level is so laughably low that he's sol. But the democrats are applauding obamacare at the convention like its some kind of great success. Its shameful that millions of people can't go to the hospital or afford the medications they need.

 

There is literally zero chance congress passes single payer.

 

also I was really stung when Hillary called the problems with it "glitches" >_>

Obamacare glitches are back - CNNPolitics.com

 

Also, this isn't true. The most comprehensive study on this does not find that. And here's Politifact on the claim:

Polls have consistently shown that a majority of Americans want some form of universal health care coverage — they want uninsured people to have insurance. But there's wide disagreement about the means to achieve that. Some think we ought to keep the system as is, but offer tax credits so that uninsured people can afford to buy private insurance. Some think companies ought to be required to provide insurance to employees, or else pay into a government fund that will pay to cover those without insurance. In the poll that Moore's people cited to back up his claim, the single-payer plan has consistently polled the worst among seven other posed options.

And The Atlantic, when looking at the actual cross sections of the polls:

But when asked whether they’d be willing to either pay higher taxes for such a plan or give up their own, employer-sponsored plans for a government-run insurance plan, they were decidedly less bullish. Thirty-nine percent said they would oppose a plan that meant either of those steps. Support thinned further as the pollsters brought up the other potential pitfalls of single-payer systems.

 

Aren't we all just glitches in the system? Ghosts in the shell as it were?

 

Welp I guess it depends what you're googling:
Majority in U.S. Support Idea of Fed-Funded Healthcare System

Majority still supports single-payer option, poll finds

Kaiser Poll: 58% of Americans support Medicare for all - PNHP's Official Blog

I don't care to debate polls here either way. There's certainly enough support to attempt to pass it. Its been shown to work. Sentiments like yours stating Congress would never pass it have served no purpose except to be self perpetuating. You're actually going out of your way to be hyperbolic in cutting down the only feasible way for everyone in our country to get the healthcare they need. Congress can pass it. It would work. You're letting them off the hook.

 

That letter is so hilariously fake I can't believe it wasn't a bigger deal when he released it.

 

To be fair, there has been a cultivation of a culture among both parties that has lead to taxes being considered punitive. In reality, as taxes are continually cut, the offset is punitive measures in other realms. In Ferguson, for example, revenue was generated by targeting Black communities tickets, citations, and those sorts of things. But, I digress. No party is putting on the table that higher taxes actually offset costs in other arenas of life. I suspect it is due to the neoliberal economic turn, wherein wages and job security were driven down and thus, creating a common sense that one needs lower taxes, one needs all they can get in order to survive and government is standing in the way. In any event, I think any genuine left or progressive movement has to combat that mentality in order to actually usher in genuine changes in public opinion. Suffice to say, democrats have not been forthcoming in making those arguments.

 

Is the impossibility of something a reason not to fight for it? Democrats effectively took a republican plan. Most agree with it. They ceded ground to a right-wing, market oriented approach, neglecting the fact that the market and profits are the very things that make health care dysfunctional. In fact, it is the presence of the market in areas that should be publicly owned, or previously were non-profit sectors, that degrades efficiency and quality.

 

No, it depends on if you look at the cross section of the polls and what those being polled know about the system. As I pointed out in the articles I linked and the massive study done over 50 years on the topic.

No there's not. They didn't even have the Democratic votes for it, and not a single Republican would vote for ACA. They don't have the votes. It would be impossible to pass single-payer with this (and the next) congress, literally impossible to do.

Axelrod: I support single-payer health care, but having gone through health reform, we couldn’t even get a national consensus around the public option! It was Democratic votes that were ultimately missing on that issue.

No, they simply can not pass it. This is a reality of the elected congress and looking at the votes needed for this to happen. The votes aren't there for it. Even in the places the Democrats may be able to grab some extra seats doesn't lead to it happening, and there's still many democrats that are in mostly republican pockets that won't vote for it either.

 

No, but the impossibility of something means countless smaller and medium changes are a better place to fight to then lead to the bigger change. Just from a pure mathematical standpoint — medium sized elections to put the support in place to pass Single Payer is far more beneficial (which, if started now is still probably almost a decade away from being in place and the timing working) than saying we can or should pass single payer and have it replace anything. The fight for single payer is like saying you're going to go climb a mountain when you haven't even packed your bag yet. Cart way ahead of the horse and the wrong place to fight because the debate simply doesn't matter right now. It can't be passed. So, my argument is, and continues to be, that you need to pack the bag first. Fighting for single payer is the wrong tactic. Fight for the votes that lead to being able to fight for the platforms.

 

Because they make candidates very unelectable. Heh. Which yes, sucks. Which is why I don't think aiming for large politicians to make these arguments right away is the correct approach. It's why I advocate for picking up house seats, voter turnout to change %s in far more liberal pockets, and so forth. I think the progressive tax rates should be far higher than they are, and have long advocated for just that, because the evidence is very clear on how beneficial that can be. The issue of money in politics/Citizens United/etc. makes me very afraid we'll be unable to put the right people in place to do just that.

 

Well, that is the point. I don't even think Obamacare was a step in that direction, because market fundamentals still trump everything else. Expanding Medicare would have been a greater step forward. Alternatively, federal support for local single payer experiments, like Vermont, would have gone a long way towards establishing a basis on which to build wider support.

 

I agree. I voted for single payer in Oregon in 2002. It was beaten soundly, in Oregon, heh. (80% voted no.) I definitely think pilot programs should be explored, but I'm not convinced they can get funding either — because there is a "no, no matter what" stamp put on it by enough Republicans that even getting that sort of stuff passed is virtually impossible.

Vermont's 2014 failure makes it even harder to get people on board to even try it. States see that, see the results, and it scares them. No Governor wants to do what Shumlin did.

 

And the worst part about this is that Republicans, to this day, want to destroy and repeal that plan. Still, right now. We can barely, barely, barely get an overall shitty very Republican looking health care act passed and held for more than 6 years. And the same jackasses are endorsing Trump because they care about defunding Medicare, ruining PP, and rabblerabbleSCOTUS, rabble rabble repeal. That's how far they'll go to prevent us from having nice things.

 

So you're saying it (single payer) is possible, and we should fight for it, just incrementally? But as has been pointed out, if you think big pharma and big insurance and certain doctor's and patient advocacy groups are going to be fooled by this tactic you're also being a little naive. It gets crushed at the state level. They'll easily crush the increments. It will have be fought loudly and consistently, at all levels, in my opinion. Saying its impossible isn't going to help. Saying private, corporate interests are buying our politicians and directing our tax dollars away from expanded medicare on both sides of the aisle and feeding us misinformation to block the only feasible system that would allow all people to get health care so come on you bunch of christian hypocrits start demanding more might be useful though.

 

I don't think the Atlantic piece is a fair look at the numbers. A plurality supported it originally, saying support drops when cautioning respondents of possible negatives of the system should be a "no shit" to any political scientist, just as support would certainly increase if you stated all the positives of the system before posing the question to the respondent. The title of the article isn't really accurate, it is far less about ignorance than it is about salience. And the massive study looks like it was published in 2001, I think it's fair to say attitudes have shifted since that time.

 

Plus I'm pretty sure the large majority of the democratic base supports single payer. I wouldn't expect much support from the republicans. If we always did, we might as well lay down to the energy industry and say goodbye to clean air and clean water and hello to extreme weather disasters.

 

We haven't already done that?

 

haha fair enough

 

Yes, when educated about a topic opinions change. And when people know more about single payer, they are less likely to support it. And that's before it gets explained to them by the Republican death-panel machine that it's "socialist healthcare."

You should read the study. It backs up current polling, which is my entire point. Looking at the study, looking at the polls, you can see where Americans feel about single payer. The majority of them, right now, don't support it when they know what it is.

 

On an infinite timescale it's "possible." It is not possible in the remote near future.

I never said anyone would be fooled.

Admitting it's impossible right now is reality. If you don't admit the truth there's no place to start from. Starting from the very fact that in the next 8-12 years single payer is virtually mathematically impossible to enact is a fact. And, if you think insulting one of the largest voting bases in the country is useful, then, well, I don't think you're going to ever get the votes you need.