[tptacek]

I didn't say Medicare For All was bad. I said a large cohort of existing insured people would be worse off under it. Those are different claims. Whether or not I think it's good has nothing to do with whether or not what I said was correct.

What I think is funny about this is, if I had left a one-line comment saying "this CEO's story about his health insurance costs tells me we all need M4A", nobody would have blinked. Instead, I made a somewhat skeptical observation about it, and got messages demanding I "show my work", or like this one, about how you "reject my thinking".

If people understand and strongly support the policy, they should probably make a point of not being totally bumfuzzled by arguments about it!

[hellotomyrars]

Well you can’t prove a negative so I’m not sure how useful a theoretical one line comment about a CEO saying his insurances means we need M4A would be received.

Regardless if you’re not willing to support your argument that’s fine, but at the same time if you’re going to put something out there and and then be upset if other people being skeptical of your skepticism then I don’t know what to tell you.

I still don’t really see how anything you’ve offered necessarily means people who currently have employer provided private insurance plans will be worse off. I especially don’t see it because people with incomes like you proposed the median income for households with employer provided insurance plans often have employer provided private insurance plans in countries that also have a public health system.

I guess maybe here is the meat of it and what matters. How are you defining worse off? Are you defining it based on quality of care/outcomes or in a financial sense? Either way seems pretty speculative to me but I’d be interested to know which (or both) of those you think makes them worse off.

[tptacek]

What argument did I not support? The one you assumed I was making, but did not actually make? You still haven't responded to the actual argument I did make.

[hellotomyrars]

I agree by the way that a one line comment of “show your work” is not useful or constructive, much like your original one line comment. (I don’t mean that as a slam against you either, I appreciate that you actually followed up with additional information)

I disagree that I’m not responding to your actual argument and am specifically asking you to clarify the terms of what “worse off” means so that I can address it with more specificity or at least understand what you’re saying.

I still think citing an opinion poll to argue that people are happy with their employer insurance while also making an argument about how opinion polling is deeply flawed is a very strange way to back up your own argument.

I have yet to actually hear anything that supports the idea that people with employer provided insurance will be worse off because of M4A other than you saying they the way the costs would be less obscured means people would be more upset. This wasn’t even an argument about the real cost of M4A vs Prost insurance, it was just a statement saying that the money looks different.

[tptacek]

Sorry, I can't follow any of this. It sounds like you want to have an argument about whether M4A is better than our current system. I'm not a good debate partner for that.

[hellotomyrars]

I literally asked you what worse off means so that I can specifically respond to the claim you made, but okay.

Have a nice day.