Dems 2019: Dem Hard With A Vengeance

Ahahahahahah, that’s pretty good.

Very sorry to see this. John has been a stalwart and a rock for many many years.

TPM has a pretty good article on Medicare for All

One of Dingell’s final tweets, if he is indeed in grave condition:

Detroit Free Press with the news that Dingell has entered hospice care.

Excellent piece, thanks for linking.

That’s a great piece, and I agree that many progressives vastly underestimate the political challenge of Medicare for All. Here’s the part I can’t get past: How do we convince maybe a hundred million people that they’re losing their current insurance, but the government version will be better? I think that’s absolutely impossible.

The only way I see this working is allowing a robust public option. Give people a choice to buy into Medicare, and let Medicare offer more attractive options (better, cheaper) than most people can get via private insurance. That puts us on the path to single-payer, but slowly. (And there are problems with this, too, of course, but they pale in comparison to the challenges of the One Fell Swoop approach).

That is a pretty good piece. I’d add at least 1/2 dozen objections to his analysis.

I completely agree with your caution. Fundamentally the question that Medicare for all folks have to convince the American public is that; the government is the right organization to be running the health care in the country. While I completely agree our current system is the worst of all worlds and something needs to done The leap to let the government do it is huge one for me.

As I’ve said before the US government runs a health care system that is bigger than any European country and I think this is a fairly accurate description of the perception of the public. For messaging purposes, perception is the reality

“Medicare is good, but it is running out of money”
“Veteran Administration is a disaster which kills vets by forcing them to wait”
“Medicaid provides lousy care”, many liberals
“Medicaid is filled with corruption”, many conservatives.

For psuedo- policy wonks like myself I want to see specific on how a single-payer will drive down cost, show me the savings.

I differentiate between health care and health insurance. Medicare for all is the later (the VA is an example of running health care since the hospitals are run by the government and the doctors are government employees.)

This isn’t actually true.

Most people hate their health insurers or find constant reasons for complaint with them.

This is one of those weird polling things: people bash health insurance but are often OK with their own insurer; people bash public schools but are often OK with their own district; people bash Congress but are often OK with their own Rep.

I don’t dismiss these issues, but it does mean things are more complicated than it may first appear.

Yeah, you’re right.

That wording though: most people hate… that’s pretty specific and there is no attempt to even back it up with data.

Yep, poor wording. Most people hate the cost of their health insurance, not necessarily hate the provider. There are also people who hate how complex and difficult to navigate health insurance can be, but I doubt that can be “most” since you only really deal with that when seriously sick.

I like the concept of single payer myself, but I’d be fine with anything that puts cost low enough that everyone can afford it and is reasonably easy to use. If that’s private sector, fine. But I really don’t see how that can be easily put into a political speech. Saying Medicare for all is understandable and easy to fit in a soundbite, so we’ll hear a lot of it.

I didn’t think this story could get any crazier.

I’m still waiting for the societal shift where we all reveal our skeletons and get on with our lives. Or maybe that would be total societal breakdown. One of those two.

Virginia: the new Florida.

People who had shitty insurance prior to Obamacare think it was horrible that they got better coverage from Obamacare, simply because they had to change something.

This.

If a Republican was next in line why wouldn’t one of the Democrats simply refuse to resign? Why would the people calling for their resignation want to replace them with someone who would probably enact racist legislation now, in the present, a point in time more important than decades ago?

There is zero chance that the Republican speaker will become governor of Virginia.

Yep. I don’t see any of the three moving to a step down at this point.

That being said, Democrats might be scrambling a little in 2021 to run candidates for the statewides. Hard to imagine that Herring or Fairfax is electable again.

Honestly, since the restriction on term limits here applies only to consecutive terms, I could see Terry McAuliffe running for governor again. He actually surprised me by doing a good job during his term that ended in 2017.

Actually, here is a question for political historians: When was the last time someone voluntarily resigned due to scandal knowing that the appointed replacement would come from the opposite party? (I’m excluding those who were facing imminent electoral defeat)

I don’t know the answer, but my offhand guess is never.