Tag Archives: M4A

Political Rants

First Day.

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The dust is settling on election 2020, at least for some of us. The Trump team is still in full-blown denial, and most of the rest of the Republican establishment is rolling right along with them. In the parking lot of a landscaping company in Pennsylvania, presidential lawyer and confidante Rudy Giuliani scoffed at the idea that the networks would project the winner of a presidential election … like they have for my entire life and probably longer. Rudy seems to think only the courts can decide elections, but to be fair, I think his mind might have been on the porn shop next door when he was saying that. Strange, strange man.

Unfortunately, Rudy isn’t the only one smoking crack these days. I found this in my daily briefing from the New York Times (The Morning, November 9):

Democrats are almost certainly fooling themselves if they conclude that America has turned into a left-leaning country that’s ready to get rid of private health insurance, defund the police, abolish immigration enforcement and vote out Republicans because they are filling the courts with anti-abortion judges. Many working-class voters — white, Hispanic, Black and Asian-American — disagree with progressive activists on several of those issues.

First off, the framing of some of these issues is straight out of the GOP election playbook, though I’ve heard conservative Democrats use some of the same language. “Get rid of private health insurance” is their way of saying “single payer” or “Medicare for all,” which in point of fact is a pretty popular policy proposal, and I believe none of the Democrats who supported M4A were defeated at the polls last Tuesday. Now, if the candidates tromped around their district saying only that they wanted to abolish private health insurance, the voters might have reacted differently – hard to say. (If they’ve had the same kind of experience I’ve had with private insurers, they might be tempted.) And “abolish immigration enforcement”? Seriously? That’s in the same category as Trump’s cries of how Democrats want “open borders.” No one on the Democratic debate stage said they want to abolish immigration enforcement.

Generally, though, the New York Times appears to be making the same mistake as these neoliberal Democrats in that they seem to think the electoral challenge they face is an ideological one. The fact is, many of the left’s core policies are pretty popular. The primary problem Democrats have is that they don’t know how to organize their base. Doug Jones, Democratic senator from Alabama and no liberal, complains that the party invests in candidates, not in voters, and that is in essence what AOC has been saying. The House leadership seems obsessed with preserving its own party-internal primacy; their entire electoral strategy is based on serving their big donors and not making a difference for their constituents. My guess is that they’re relieved that there likely will not be a Democratic senate, as that would put them on the spot to actually pass something that would have a good chance of becoming law.

Let’s face it, Democrats. If we keep making this same election post-mortem mistake, we will keep losing. Listen to the younger leaders in your party, for chrissake.

luv u,

jp

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Political Rants

First in the nation.

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What more can be said about the New Hampshire primary? Just this: Bernie won. I’m sure someone has said it, somewhere. It was a bit more than annoying that we had to sit through excruciatingly long third-place and second-place trophy acceptance speeches before hearing from the man himself, but it was worth waiting for. Like any other supporter of the Vermont senator, I would have liked to have seen a more decisive victory, but in a crowded field in a year when most voters are scared, exhausted, and looking for an answer, 26% is okay. That said, we have to do better.

I do mean we. The candidate can only do so much. His surrogates, excellent as they are, can only fight so hard. These primaries and caucuses are instructive in the sense that they demonstrate in stark terms what it would take to achieve the ambitious agenda that Sanders is putting forward. If we want Medicare for all, we’re going to have to do a lot better than we did in Iowa and New Hampshire. Policies like M4A, the Green New Deal, wealth tax, and so on will not come close to passage without massive mobilization. Let’s not kid ourselves: at best, these programs will take years to implement under the best of circumstances. But they won’t even get off the ground without an unprecedented groundswell of popular will, much as Bernie has described in virtually every stump speech. I think he understands what’s needed … but do the rest of us?

Say it loud: Bernie won.

The signs aren’t all bad. There appears to have been strong turnout in New Hampshire. Given how flaccid the 2016 primary participation rate was, it’s good to see things back up around 2008 level. The real test, though, of our strength as a governing coalition is in the level of support for Bernie and other progressive candidates. There’s no way that Sanders is going to get big things done if he just squeaks by in November without any fundamental changes in the complement of Congress. That’s why I would encourage my middle-of-the-road friends not to feel any reluctance about voting for Sanders or Warren. If you’re worried about M4A and the rest, there will be a million ways to put roadblocks in front of anything like that. I know that sounds pessimistic, but understand – I believe change is possible, but possible isn’t easy. Likely policy is going to be shaped by whoever ends up a part of the electorate. The more we vote, show up, etc., the stronger the case for good policy.

I could go on, but probably shouldn’t. Suffice to say that we will get the president we ask for, good or bad. It’s up to us. Latest polls have Bernie ahead in Nevada, ahead in Texas, ahead nationally. Let’s build on this, folks … it’s our last, best chance.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Stalking horses.

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The Democratic race for president is one candidate smaller today than it was a couple of days ago. Kamala Harris dropped out this week, and it took about five minutes for the talking heads in the corporate media to attribute the failure of her campaign to the push for Medicare for All. By Wednesday morning, Claire McCaskill, failed candidate for senate, was on Morning Joe taking shots at M4A as a far-left government takeover of insurance, amounting to some kind of expropriation from hardworking Americans. They’re taking our corporate insurance away! People from the heartland won’t like this!

Let’s think for a moment of what would be taken away. I have one of those insurance policies people like McCaskill and Scarborough think so highly of. (I’m sure they have nothing like it, by the way.) My plan is what used to be termed a “Cadillac plan”, not because the benefits are so generous but because my employer pays 80% of my premiums. Even so, the plan costs me thousands of dollars a year even when things don’t go wrong. What M4A would take away from me are co-pays, which are considerable, and a $3,600 deductible, plus additional costs associated with out-of-network providers. Would I pay more in taxes than I do currently? Possibly, but when we’re sick, we can go to the doctor, to the hospital, to urgent care, and not even think about cost. That’s a level of liberation I have never experienced.

It’s not hard to work out why shows like Morning Joe make such a determined effort to scuttle any attempt at bringing about M4A. Just look at their advertisers. No, not the military contractor ads – they’re mainly shooting at a more specific target (i.e. lawmakers and congressional staffers). The drug companies, the hospital groups, the medical device manufacturers, and of course, the big insurance firms. They are dropping a lot of coin on advertising and lobbying, as always, but if either Bernie or Warren gets anywhere near the White House, you can bet they will be directing their ample coffers to a concerted comm strategy to kill M4A before it is even drafted. That strategy will include targeted ads, but it will also involve appearances on talk shows, columns, video news releases and inserts on local TV news broadcasts – you name it. We saw some of this during the Obamacare fight. This will be much, much more determined.

I don’t say this to discourage anyone on the left from fighting for M4A. Quite the opposite – with the forces arrayed against us, we are going to need a sustained effort like nothing any of us has experienced before. It’s a fight worth having, so please … be ready both before and after election day.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

The utility of experts.

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I haven’t been following the Democratic primary contest very much on this blog, as it receives so much coverage elsewhere it seems massively redundant for me to comment on it as well. When it becomes a substantive policy discussion, however, it certainly warrants comment. When Elizabeth Warren released the explanatory document on her version of Medicare for All (M4A), it was greeted with derision by supporters of the more “moderate” candidates. Morning Joe, of course, rolled out their resident fiscal policy expert Steve Rattner, who deployed a series of charts and graphs that demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt the very thing that the recent George Mason University study made clear: health care in America is expensive.

Be afraid. Be VERY afraid.

Rattner used a pie chart to show what portions of total health care cost would be picked up by M4A, then a line graph to illustrate how much higher federal spending would be if such a plan were implemented. He was attempting to make the point that the federal government would have to spend a third again as much as it currently does, and that …. shudder …. that’s a lot! What of course neither he nor his Morning Joe colleagues mentioned was that this money is being spent by us anyway … and that the current result is more than 80 million people uninsured or under-insured, half a million medical bankruptcies a year, and assorted other disasters. In other words, the current system is a massively costly failure.

M4A, on the other hand, would cover everyone. It would eliminate much of the cost to families and individuals, and decouple health care from employment. There would be no more medical bankruptcies, and (icing on the cake) it would cost less than what we’re currently collectively spending. With the right funding plan, it would cost individuals below a certain income level less than what they’re paying now. We can disagree over how that will play out, but M4A is the only way to ensure that health care is a right, not a privilege. When I hear the middling candidates so beloved of Morning Joe complain about single payer, it reminds me that none of them ever had to deal with inadequate health coverage. I have, and it’s a massive pain in the ass. Even the so-called good plans that people supposedly love so much are massively complicated and involve all kinds of hidden expenses.

This fight for M4A won’t be easy. We need to be ready for it.

luv u,

jp