How is Medicare broke and why is it in need of ‘reform’? This is classic Republican’s talking points.
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Yeah…the one’s too ignorant to understand that Trump was NEVER going to be able to deliver it, or even meant to deliver it. And now he derides it every time democrats start talking about it. The consummate con-man. I’m sure “some” poorer republicans would welcome it, but then they aren’t the ones pouring money into the republican party. The donor class and the affluent are.
Single payer is THE LAST reason why Trump won.
Jimmy Carter is a wonderful man, and the most successful and influential ex-President of all time. But – just no.
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[Quote] In some states and districts, that means nominating full-throated advocates of single-payer health care, a $15 minimum wage and abolishing or at least overhauling the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. In other races, it means nominees who back more cautious moves to the left, such as background checks before certain gun purchases, a “public option” health insurance plan to compete alongside private insurance policies, step raises for the minimum wage and an immigration overhaul that offers legal status to some immigrants in the country illegally.[/Quote] So Democrats are already tailoring their message for different regions and populations while still making a sustained effort of pushing core Democratic values on how the government can be a tool for good in peoples lives. So of course we need an article warning about how they need to be afraid of overreaching all as their opposition is openly flirting with entering a more commited relationship with out right fascism.
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I’m well aware of that. I was just pointing out it didn’t hurt him any to claim he wanted universal healthcare.
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Spoken by the Dem president, who had a Dem Congress, and couldn’t get a goddamned thing done.
Nice going Jimmy. Throw a nice grenade into the party 8 weeks before an election.
Nice way to bring us all together…
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I work in healthcare and I am no Republican. A Simple internet search will show you that Medicare dishes out more than it takes in and the R’s have constantly cut or blocked funding to the program for decades in order to sabotage it just like they are doing with the ACA. That, on top of rising costs of medical supplies, medication and equipment sold to hospitals and medical providers is bankrupting the program. Medicare is dying because the R’s and big corporations are killing it. It’s appalling. Universal healthcare needs to be prioritized sooner, rather than later.
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I’m really tired of all the calls to be cautious, we can’t talk about impeachment (when that is what a large majority of Americans are desperate to see happen,) we can’t do this we can’t do that.
Yeah we can too. We stand up and say clearly: this is who we are, this is what we stand for and we are prepared to fight for iit until we get it and that means universal health care, getting rid of Trump and a bunch of other stuff that DC insiders are tiptoeing around saying Shhhh - you can’t ask for that
This is what causes us to look ambivalent and wishy washy and we need to stop that. We’re too fucking cautious.
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So what you’re really saying is that control of Congress – not Medicare – is in desperate need of reform.
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Back to 1936? Ain’t…gonna…happen. Moreover, they can’t even get back to Lyndon Johnson’s sixties. You know who has controlled the House of Rep for 19 of the last 23 years? Republicans, which makes any thought of a New Deal risible at best, deluded at worst. Since Reagan, this country has become markedly more anti-tax and pro-deregulation. A huge part of that has been sustained, relentless demagoguery by the GOP and their more caustic conservative adjuncts, who never miss the chance to label welfare pushing, anti-business liberals tax and spend socialists. There is some overlap between republicans and democrats on matters of healthcare but that’s it. But once the demagoguery machine cranks up, republicans will be fear-mongered into stepping back from single-payer, not that it has a chance in hell of passing anyway…even if democrats should somehow claim majorities in both chambers of congress.
Regardless of what Tory or Labour have done, taxes will continually have to be raised to fund the NHS. It is inescapable. It will be worse for a nation that is 5 times larger…where at least 50% of the population has at least one chronic illness…many more than one. Moreover, doctor reimbursements are going to crash headlong into increasingly onerous amounts of student loan debt for american doctors. Somebody has to pay for it all at the end of the day. Want to know what’s worse? Single-payer will increase demand for healthcare services and thus the price of healthcare going forward…and you will not be able to cap the program. It will get larger and larger, thus requiring more funding. It will also require some “strict”, fundamental changes in the nation’s budget priorities.
Finally, support for single-payer amongst republicans is only 51%. This figure will fall once the demagoguery, hysteria, conspiracy theories and disinformation starts. Count on it. The donor and affluent wing of the GOP (the ones with the money) are going to attack it relentlessly as anti-business, an onerous tax hike, socialism and anything else they conjure up to poison it in Congress.
We all know the Republicans screamed about and demonized the ACA, a Heritage Foundation idea. They will call “extreme” and “radical” every single health care idea the Democrats propose. It is a fool’s game to try to placate them and thereby woo the “independents” (who when asked say by large majorities they want some form of single payer).
On top of that, in the end it’s not the policies that matter to the “swing voters” but the candidate. I am liking Kamala Harris a lot right now.
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Independents are not independent. Independence is mostly a pose, at best – like centrism and the still very popular “both sides” idiocy. Invariably around 45% of Independents “lean Repiublican”. The remainder necessarily are somewhat Republican. And as is well known by those who have eyes to see, the Republican Party is an outlier insurgency, contemptuous of facts and evidence and the well-being of most Americans, and profoundly deceitful. It requires a considerable amount of stupidity and/or ideological twistedness to not see them for what they are.
It is a pretty sad and damning situation if Independents need to be appealed to, because the only way to do that is by pandering to their stupidity and codling to their half-blind ideological bent (as distinct from the fully blind ideological bent of those who identify as Republican).
Carter is out of it. “Appealing to Independents” is a shade shy of “Appealing to Republicans”: pathetic and hopeless. Good luck with that.
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Yeah, that sort of mentality always burns me. Republicans can be as bugf**k insane as they want to be and say the wackiest, fringe things and still get (re-)elected, but Democrats are always repeatedly cautioned to bend over backwards to appear as “moderate” as possible and be careful of appearing “too left”. Why the double standard? There is some kookiness on the left to be sure, as well as some positions no sane Democrat would be caught saying out loud (no Democrat would ever advocate straight-out Communism), but even most of Alexandra Orcasio-Cortez’s policy positions are pretty much mainstream Democratic Party.
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Just because the funding has been “with-held” doesn’t mean that the costs are not increasing year on year.
I think she walks on water - she is so damn awesome. She’s also extremely attractive and is loaded with charisma and fire.
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We can talk about it, hell we can talk about anything, even absurdities like impeachment. Getting a 2/3 vote in the Senate is required to impeach, and that is never, repeat never going to happen. How about we talk about the doable, not the fantastical. Get a majority on the Senate, get a majority in the House, and in 2020, elect a Democratic president–without submitting our candidate to a purity test. That’ll be a herculean task, but doable.
That’s just a given any time R’s have control on either side of the House. No, Medicare really needs some tweeks. Part D (prescription drug coverage) should be included in Medicare A & B. The administrative approval procedure for reimbursement to medical practitioners is overly complicated and takes over a year in most cases. Basically, there is much stream-lining to be done within the program itself. Congress could help out a bunch by giving Medicare the power to negotiate drug prices directly with drug manufacturers, but nope. That would take too much profit out of the pockets of their corporate donors. I’m depressed now. 
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you know, people who have a smidgen of wisdom don’t use that word - never. You don’t know that - nobody thought Nixon would ever leave either and he did.
You don’t know that so why keep saying it? Nobody knows what would happen because nobody knows what Congress is going to look like after November.
Sheesh
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Agree on all counts. She has the capacity to inspire people and get them excited. Unless something comes up that I don’t know about, I am all in for her in 2020. (And of course she is in favor of single payer.)
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The broadest consensus on taxes and spending is left of most elected Democrats. Excessively leftist Democrats are the reason we have primaries.
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