Vox has a new piece out today where Jeff Stein interviews U.S. Senate candidate, Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D. TX) about his upcoming campaign. The big issue they discuss is single-payer health care, particularly U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders’ (I. VT) single-payer bill. Here’s what Beto had to day:
Jeff Stein
You’ve supported the idea of single-payer in the past but haven’t co-sponsored [Rep. John Conyers’s] HR676 in the past because of concerns that the bill eliminates for-profit hospitals.
It seems like Sanders’s new health care bill does meet your criteria.
Beto O’Rourke
It does, yeah.
Jeff Stein
So would Sen. Beto O’Rourke support Sanders’s proposal? I know you’re working on your own plan.
Beto O’Rourke
The answer is yes, I would.
And to address the premise of your question — I could care less about for-profit hospitals. I just think that if the whole idea is that Medicare works pretty well and therefore if we were to expand it to everyone, I don’t think you want to screw with how it works right now — which is to provide universal care in both for-profit and nonprofit capacities.
Maybe someone could successfully argue the other side and maybe change my mind on this. But why you would change some fundamental part of how care is reimbursed is beyond me — other than when I talk to some folks who argue for this, and this is a legitimate point of view, they say nobody should make a profit off of health care. Maybe that’s as it should be. It’s just not the way it works today, and it’s not the way I could see feasibly making the transition into a universal health care model.
So here’s what I like about Sanders’s proposal. It gets us to universal health care. There are many paths to get there, and there are as many proven paths as there are wealthy democracies in the world; everyone has their own path to get there.
I like that Sanders, as I understand it, essentially expands how Medicare works today and doesn’t have the provision to prevent private and for-profit providers from participating in the system. I think he’s done the best job of anyone up here ever in articulating the goal through legislation, and so I want to support it. There are probably some things with which I could quibble, but that is as good as I’ve seen it get — and so I want to get behind it and say I support it.
I’ve also tried to be clear that while [Sanders’s plan] is pretty close to ideal, there’s so much we can do to make what we have today better. I want to be working on that as well. Some of the ideas that are obvious to anyone looking at this include expanding Medicaid — and I have to think, in Texas as a state that didn’t expand Medicaid, now that Graham-Cassidy has failed and we think there’s no other likely successful attempt before the end of the fiscal year, the conversation in those states has to turn to, “How do you make this work?”
Expanding Medicaid is one of those ways; perhaps there’s some other formulation for it — including President Obama not being in the White House — that allows [Texas Gov.] Greg Abbott or our US senators to say, “This is different enough that we’re going to get behind it and expand Medicaid.”
The other step beyond that would be to allow people to buy Medicare or Medicaid on the exchanges. We just had a conversation the other day of, “How do we get to where we want to get to?” We talked about the idea of getting Medicaid on the exchanges, which would force the private insurers to compete a little more aggressively.
The whole interview is worth the read. Also, I’m loving Beto’s fighting words when it comes to Trump and Senator Shit Kicker:
El Paso Rep. Beto O'Rourke isn't betting his bid for toppling Sen. Ted Cruz entirely on backlash against President Donald Trump, or probes of Russian ties to his campaign, or his efforts to ban Muslim visitors, or deport young immigrants, or wall off the southern border.
But he isn't shy about raising those topics and using them to tar the polarizing senator for his coziness with an even more polarizing figure in the White House.
This being Texas, where Democrats haven't won a statewide contest since 1994, stoking misgivings about Trump may be O'Rourke's best shot at stopping Cruz from winning a second term next year.
"He represents the most dangerous threat that our democracy has faced in my lifetime. I don't think he's fit to be our president," he said over coffee at a cafe near the Capitol, warning that history will scrutinize this era. "Will this be the chapter that describes where America after 230 years lost her democracy? We are all accountable for what we do or fail to do."
Democrats nationwide will try to use Trump as an albatross in the 2018 elections. For O'Rourke, it's an irresistible line of attack, since both the president and Cruz are, to a rare degree, love-him-or-hate-him politicians.
His indictment of Cruz centers on several points: the senator's naked ambition, his crusade against Obamacare, and an abrasive style that keeps him from delivering for Texans.
"He has been unable to form relationships that will allow him to be productive and act on our state's priorities and agenda. And Texas deserves better than that," said O'Rourke, a former El Paso councilman who's giving up a safe House seat in his bid to oust Cruz.
Let’s give Bernie another ally in the U.S. Senate and show Senator Shit Kicker the door. Click here to donate and get involved with Beto’s campaign.