Majority of Americans support Medicare for All. But both parties are against it. Marijuana legalization is easier to pass than healthcare because there are no entrenched corporate interests against it:
When we poll with what Medicare for All will do, support is massive.
Health care in the US is an increasingly brutal, over the top expensive mess.
Frankly, a quick look at why they want a public option is exactly why they would easily support Medicare for All.
Nobody loves their health care insurance company. And where they may be stoic to positive, it is only because they are insulated from the mess, or just have not actually had to receive significant care of any kind.
Tons of people, myself included, have seen serious financial ruin, and in my case it boiled down to basically trading my home and financial future for my spouse.
We got past it, but will never see the future I worked very hard for.
Health insurance companies do not actually add any value. Most of the developed world understands this, and how a market approach for primary care conflicts with fixing sick people.
Right now the priority is making money, not fixing people, and it shows.
More people experience it, or know someone who has every day. I make damn sure to educate others any time, any day, any place.
Once people actually experience Medicare, they love it. I have watched even the most staunch advocates for our current system age in and then change their tune.
There are exceptions, and those people buy Medicare Advantage plans and often seek help getting back to plain old Medicare, which is very difficult, by design. Ever wonder why that is?
> they want a public option, which differs from Medicare.
Medicare is a system by which (currently, a subset) of Americans may select[0] either publicly subsidized private health plans or a purely-public[1] option.
The difference between this and the ACA plus a public option is...not that much.
[0] well, except for many Medicare/Medicaid dual-eligibles, for which a single plan (often fully-publicly-subsized private) covering both programs is selected for them by their state.
[1] actually administered by regional private contractors under federal rules.
The federal government is horrible at competing in the free market when it comes to pretty much any good/service. For medicare to have a chance, they would need to eliminate the private market for healthcare. No one that can afford private healthcare would opt for government healthcare. Those who truly rely on government healthcare I assume wouldn't pay the monthly premium. We could defund the war machine but neither party wants that. There is the option to just printing the money but there's no free lunch and that inflation will show up in healthcare prices and the broader economy. Lastly, This type of top-bottom control of the healthcare market is not pragmatic and will lead to a whole host of inefficiencies and other problems that would create a worst situation then what we have right now.
False. America’s healthcare quality is the best in the world despite current issues with affordability. Most developed countries with socialized medical care are far smaller then the US. Most are smaller then just LA or NYC alone. Every market the government enters by subsidizing cost creates market distortions that have contributed to multiple financial crises in this country(mortgage and higher education).
My comprise would be let the states implement socialized medicine. My hunch is that with within a few years every economically productive person in those states would move states within 2-3 years. The tax burden and lack of choice in health care would be a no brainer to leave. Most people think socialized medicine will fix everything overnight put don’t think about what rights they are takin away from individuals to achieve their goals.
People don't know what they want, or rather, they know what they don't want, and it is what we currently have. "most" Americans would like a reasonably priced open market for healthcare, not the currently entrenched healthcare monopolies. Going any control over healthcare to this government is foolish, has already resulted in what we have today.
Imho, a significant part of the problem is gerrymandering [1]. A certain party has outsized influence because of gerrymandering (but this shouldn’t absolve moderate/corporate Dems of their failings either, especially with Biden opposing legalization; read the room my dude).
1.8 million voters over the age of 55 age out every year, and election cycles are every two years. We’ll get there eventually (on Medicare for All and marijuana legalization), it’s just a matter of time. Until then, keep knocking it out at the state level. [2]
It’s part of the problem but both parties have had total control in the last 5 years and yet nothing has been passed on the federal level. The problem is that all the representatives are in the over 75 yo group
Yes because of the supremacy clause. That’s not really new? Many states have acted on it but the federal laws still fuck things up for individuals and businesses
Sorry, what's wrong with California regulating emissions?
People have rights. And the most straightforward way to cater for these rights is to split people into groups. If 90% of people in Alabama don't want weed legalized, don't force it upon them. Save the vigor for what's really important.
> Sorry, what's wrong with California regulating emissions?
Nothing. Ideally it would be at the federal level so California wouldn't have to do it though.
> If 90% of people in Alabama don't want weed legalized, don't force it upon them.
No. The hypothetical ninety percent of people in Alabama have no right to restrict the rights of the other ten percent. It doesn't affect them. They should stay out of it.
> both parties have had total control in the last 5 years
Neither party had total control. Now everything gets fillibustered. You only get around it with 2/3 majority or if you can turn it into a budget-related bill and get it through budget reconciliation.
That’s a bit myopic to claim that the nation’s struggles are due to one party’s inability to achieve a majority, isn’t it? Evil sits on both sides of the aisle.
The Democrats have a majority now and did in 2010. They haven’t even attempted to pass marijuana legalization. I have my theories as to why but they certainly have nothing to do with gerrymandering.
Majority doesn't matter if you don't have 60 votes in the Senate, unless you think "attempting to pass"/performative legislation matters, which I do not.
Schumer has legislation in the Senate teed up. Needs enough support to get past Republican holdouts and Biden.
> Key Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), said Tuesday they would work to repeal federal prohibitions on marijuana cultivation and use, vowing to make progress on an issue that has growing public support but still faces sharp objections from most Republicans.
The Senate is split 50-50. It's fair to say one half of that is more strongly opposed to it than the other since their states even rejected the Medicaid expansion accompanying Obamacare.
So it sounds like the Senate is doing a poor job of representing the people. Which leads to the obvious question: why have a Senate at all?
Doesn't answer my question. Why is it important to represent a "state"?
Hypothetically if you had only two states, one with 20 people and the other with 20 million (entirely feasible with the Constitution), would it be useful to given them both 2 Senators each? Would the federal government's laws and actions faithfully represent how the people in the nation actually feel?
This isn't a hypothetical concern. See the laws on marijuana for why "representation for states" isn't ideal. For further evidence, see action on climate change.
Because that was the condition on which the states joined the union and it's what many states, and the people in them, still want. They want local control, not to be forced to follow what the majority in bigger states decide. That's because local control gives each person more power over their own life.
> Because that was the condition on which the states joined the union
That's true for maybe the first 13 colonies. The subsequent states were largely formed by settlers from the first 13 and they just wanted their land to be a state in their country. For them, the constitution was kind of a take-it-or-leave-it deal.
I know you just brought it up as an example, but I'm much more interested in a Direct Primary Care healthcare strategy over Medicare for All. https://www.dpcare.org/
Could not figure out what DPC is, besides that it's a new innovative way of patients and doctors working together for their mutual benefit with no obvious drawbacks.
The Primary Care (the PC in DPC) part refers to normal day-to-day health needs typically offered by general practitioners. Things like regular checkups, cuts and scrapes, lab work, typical vaccinations, etc etc. You already think about PC healthcare as a 'service', but you pay your insurance company (with your employer watching in for some reason) to pay the doctor for you. That adds a lot of overhead, more than one might think.
So DPC is where you pay for primary care by subscribing Directly (that's the D) to the doctor by paying a regular, fixed-price subscription to them. Typically $50-$100/mo, the doctor mentioned above charges $75/mo. Receive care as frequently as needed, with no copays, by any means, with reasonable prices for more specialized services like x-rays ($25), and an affordable in-house pharmacy for generic medications. Their office negotiates direct rates for lab work and can get a 95% discount (!) in some cases according to the doctor in the video.
Now there are some caveats, as per usual.
The biggest is that this strategy is specifically for Primary Care, not hospitalizations and other specialized or emergency health services. For those perhaps health insurance can still provide value. But that's the original purpose of insurance in the first place: covering unexpected large expenses. And that's the key: Primary Care is neither an unexpected nor large expense -- it's regular maintenance, more like an oil change; are you paying your insurance company to pay your mechanic to perform oil changes on your car? Unlikely, and it sounds like a bureaucratic nightmare on the face. Yet somehow this is business as usual for healthcare in the US.
That's not a reasonable comparison -- medical care is a much more complicated question, and people are much less likely to underatand what yes/no really mean.
Pew Research has another survey where those polled about their satisfaction with healthcare programs rated Medicare the highest. The link escapes me, but it is there, I have linked to it previously.
I've experienced the Canadian healthcare system (similar to Medicare for All) as a patient, and I've experienced the American healthcare industry as a "customer" (Note: I've always had private insurance through great jobs).
I can easily say, "having private insurance in American, frankly, its not that good."
Proposals I've previously heard: Medicare for All, Medicare for Children, Medicare reduced age, a public-private option, improved transparency in costs (i.e. a menu), pin costs to Medicare + X%, allow insurance companies to operate across state lines, better subsidize preventative medicine, force clinicians to be able to speak to costs (similar to dentists/chiropractic/optometrists/dermatologist), reduce patent length or add a maximum return on investment to patents (e.g. 10x or 100x R&D costs?), etc.
Literally any of these would be an improvement. Please tell all of your representatives (regardless of politics) to fucking execute on any of them so things improve at least a bit from where it is now.
I would have more respect for the Canadian health care system if the Grand Forks ND Hospital parking lot wasn't full of Manitoba license plates. If the US isn't available as a quick out for people with money than how well does the system work?
Frankly, I wish Congress had to live under Indian Health Service for a couple of years. If the US is incapable of getting decent health care for 2% of the population its obligated to provide for, then I don't see how it gets better adding the other 98%.
I've been through a couple of countries with government-run medicine. The very first thing that happens in these systems is people are assigned to a specific medical center, usually using either home or office location.
Rest assured: hospitals in Washington, DC will never be short of personnel, out of supplies or, god forbid, overcrowded.