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Election 2020 The 2020 Candidates: Right, Left and Center!

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It's totally rational to be suspicious of the state. Especially over the last decade or so, when there's been a drift towards authoritarianism in both the political right and political left (at least that's how it seems to me)

But, on the other hand, some problems are so large that they necessitate collective action and mobilization, and that state seems like the only entity out there that could organize a sufficient response...two that come immediately to mind here in the USA are healthcare and the environment, IMO. The private sector sure as hell isn't going to solve the problems...just look no further than insurance companies, prescription drug companies, and the fossil fuel/petrochemical industry for proof of that

M4A seems like a good proposal to me...I think of it as a middle-ground proposal, between the public option (or even some kind of reformed ACA lol) and a completely nationalized NHS-style system like they have in Britain
 
bernie.substack.com

BERN NOTICE: Pelosi & Senate Dems Boost Bernie's Electability Argument

Bern Notice is a production of the Bernie 2020 campaign. Please forward this on to your friends and tell them to subscribe. The views expressed here are solely of the bylined author. Polls show Bernie is the strongest general election candidate against Donald Trump, and show him winning key...
bernie.substack.com bernie.substack.com
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I early voted in the primary yesterday... Bernie got my vote.

LOL @ "Bern Notice". I wonder if it's a nod to the USA channel show, Burn Notice? I loved that show.
 
cduggles said:
I remember how Obamacare was going to ruin the world.
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It ruined the world for a lot of people who were forced to buy healthcare and were lied to about the premiums. Obamacare was terrible. Just open up the free market and allow competition.
 
JGrimez said:
It ruined the world for a lot of people who were forced to buy healthcare and were lied to about the premiums. Obamacare was terrible. Just open up the free market and allow competition.
Click to expand...

the reason it's terrible is because Republicans wouldn't agree to a public option.
 
White_Rose said:
Nancy Pelosi said we had to vote on ACA before we could read it, so how could one possibly blame Republicans?
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well I blame Obama too, to be fair. He gave up on it too easily.

the House passed the bill that included a public option and it was taken out in the senate.
 
JGrimez said:
It ruined the world for a lot of people who were forced to buy healthcare and were lied to about the premiums. Obamacare was terrible. Just open up the free market and allow competition.
Click to expand...

The mandate made sense in theory but it did screw some people. However a few friends of mine below the poverty level ended up getting nearly free health care from it. My girlfriend works but has some adrenal issues and very low energy coupled with depression, and works a fairly low number of hours at a random low-stress coffee shop job, and doesn't make a lot of money (she supplements with under the table bud trimming in the fall but they don't know about that obviously). The first year I knew her, when Obama was still in office before they started trying to take it apart, she paid $8 a month for healthcare with a low deductible. These days she's paying about $80/month but it's still really cheap. In contrast, my work pays 80% of my health care costs, but I still pay about $140 a month. For slightly better health care, in that I get out of network and some extra things covered (like mental health care 100% covered for example, which ironically she needs and I don't), but her co-pay for specialists is lower than mine. Another friend was getting $60/month until he started making a lot of money. I'm not sure but it's possible it's dependent on your state. In any case my friends in my state with low incomes who get insurance through Obamacare are really happy about it and it has allowed them to get health coverage for the first time in their adult lives after they were off their parents' (if they ever had it through their parents). For a lot of people. it did the opposite of "ruining the world".

I wish health care companies would let you cover domestic partners who aren't married as spouses, it's about time they did that as a lot of people don't care to get married.
 
it's about time they did that as a lot of people don't care to get married.
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The reason people don't get married is basically that it makes breaking up expensive. But this would also make breaking up expensive. Maybe slightly less.

The premium issue with PPACA can largely be fixed by lowering the Medicare age, which would reduce the price floor on insurance for young people, because the price floor is 1/3 the price of insuring a 65-year-old. Additionally changing the 3:1 to 4 or 5 to 1 would lower premiums further. See:

Is lowering Medicare eligibility to age 55 a wise incremental step? - PNHP

A New Plan To Rescue The ACA: Medicare-At-55By Thomas BodenheimerHealth Affairs Blog, October 16, 2017On October 12, 2017, the Trump Administration announced that it would end subsidies that reduce out-of-pocket payments for low-income individuals. This action might drive insurers out of the...
pnhp.org pnhp.org

The second original sin of healthcare regulation

johnhcochrane.blogspot.com johnhcochrane.blogspot.com

But the other problem with PPACA is the coverage gap, a problem created entirely by Republican state lawmakers being grandiosely obstructive. In a bid to "stop Obama" they've refused to expand Medicaid, which means that people in those states who should have been offered Medicaid coverage instead get nothing. Nobody actually supports this outcome; Republicans are basically holding innocent people hostage to try to force a rewrite on their terms. Thankfully the dominoes are beginning to fall in favor of sanity: 36 states have now implemented the expansion.

www.kff.org

How Many Uninsured Are in the Coverage Gap and How Many Could be Eligible if All States Adopted the Medicaid Expansion?

In states that do not implement the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), many adults will fall into a “coverage gap” of earning too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to…
www.kff.org www.kff.org
 
Even if Bernie does somehow win, does anyone actually expect him to implement his plans? He's just another lying, swamp politician. Even Trump who was a wild outsider eventually came to heel before the deep state. And we know for a fact that Bernie tows the line far more than Trump.
 
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