I will most likely regret wading into the primary wars but here goes. I am listening to MSNBC this afternoon and heard a clip of Hillary on the stump talking about Bernie’s single payer plan. She believes that it is not possible to pass a single payer health care plan (and right now I agree) and therefore a president or Democrats in congress should not attempt to do so.
If not now, when? I get my health insurance through the ACA. Many of the provisions like covering your children til they’re 26, cannot be kicked off or denied coverage due to a pre existing condition, etc. are a big improvement. The supplements for lower incomes are great too. But even with a supplement, for my family of three, we’re paying over 12K/year and our deductible wasn’t reachable even with out patient procedures and our copays are very large. We are fortunate that we can make do but many are not that lucky. We’re talking a gold PPO here.
We have to wait a few more years for medicare. But if we had single payer, everyone would be better off. Isn’t that what Democrats are supposed to stand for — regular people being better off? We aren’t that stupid that we can’t understand that a tax would be used to pay for medicare for all. We pay a tax for medicare now. If it covered all of us it sure would be cheaper than the insurance policy I have now. We’d cut out the middle man, no costs for profit or administration.
It make take another 10 years to pass medicare for all but if we don’t start a movement now, it will never get done. I am tired of being told I’m Cinderella — just shut up, do your work and let the privileged few benefit. We Cinderellas do the work and deserve some of the benefits.
I cannot see how this is a winning strategy for her. Bernie’s policies are popular because he’s trying to bring us into the modern world like the rest of the industrialized countries. He’s trying to even the playing field as far as income and he’d like to protect people for the predatory nature of the 0.1%. That seems to be a much more winning platform than you can’t have nice things so forget it.