Bill Moyers has always been one of my favorite journalists. I watched him religiously on PBS when he was there. Today in the Huffington Pose Moyers and Michael Winship totally nail the whole problem with Chelsea’s lies about Bernie’s Medicare for All plan. In the piece, they also call out Howard Dean who now works at a law firm that lobbies on behalf of healthcare businesses. Hillary and Howard (who is supporting Hillary) both used to advocate for universal healthcare, but now, after taking shitloads of money from the healthcare industry, are not so sure.
But there was something else in the article that was really important. Hillary has been touting her experience from 1993’s effort at healthcare reform, and her scars from it, as proof that she is the one to fix the on-going problems with healthcare in this country. A diary from earlier this week argued the same thing. In a comment, I noted that the 1993 effort was a clusterfuck and that Hillary deserved the scars she got from her endeavors. If that effort had been done properly we would have had universal healthcare for 20 some years now. But it wasn’t.
Well, it appears the Moyers and Winship agree with me. Here is how they described it:
This was Sanders' position as far back as 1993 when newly-elected President Bill Clinton put First Lady Hillary Clinton in charge of reforming our disheveled and unjust health care system. Her task force huffed and puffed in secret for months, calling in legions of experts and academics, ultimately producing a plan so complicated and impenetrable - not to mention unexplainable - that it would have collapsed of its own ponderous weight even if the Republicans had not propagandized it into a laughing stock of pretensions and inefficiencies that could only make matters worse.
What Moyers and Winship didn’t also add was that the clusterfuck that happened in 1993 also lead to the GOP taking over the House and Senate for 12 years.
It is clear that Hillary cannot learn the right lessons from eight years ago, and is using slurs and disingenuous arguments against her opponents, so what in the name of the universe would make us feel confident she would learn from 23 years ago?
I also have an issue with Hillary’s “tinker” strategy as opposed to Bernie’s “overhaul” strategy of our healthcare system. There is a huge chasm where millions of people have fallen. The ACA tried to expand Medicaid to cover the gap between traditional Medicaid and where people qualified for subsidies. The SCOTUS, said states cannot be forced to expand Medicaid, and almost half have refused to expand the program.
There is only one way to overcome this problem, and that is to bring those people, along with everyone else under the umbrella of Medicare. Bernie would have only one hurdle, and that is to get his plan through Congress. Precedent from the SCOTUS is clear, Medicare is constitutional and so Bernie can bypass all the GOP controlled states and would.
Hillary has said nothing, nothing, as to how she would resolve this problem! Other than putting everyone under Medicare, she would have three hurdles to overcome; Congress, the SCOTUS, AND GOP dominated state governments. If she is such a clear eyed pragmatist, how does she get that done? She won’t and thus those people will languish where they are, while she tinkers with other issues that mostly benefit middle-class people, not the working poor.
BTW, if you think Hillary can solve this issue, please point it out in the comments. I am sincere, I want to know. It isn’t on her website, and I haven’t found it in searching the Google machine. If there is an answer, maybe I will be a bit, a bit, more open to her as our nominee.