He is setting the Democrats up to keep losing. We need a strong message to win again.
It is the difference from having a bold proactive policy message or a timid, weak, and reactive policy message. “Lowers premiums, provides long-term stability to the markets and improves our health-care system” is the later.
Precisely. And that shitshow is making movement towards single-payer more and more possible, particularly if the Dems play it right. There’s is zero need to interrupt it by painting a target on our foreheads, and while we’ve seen a couple of opinion pieces about how this debacle is making single-payer more likely, that definitely shouldn’t be confused with “the door is now wide open and the public will be totally receptive to it.” The GOP has positioned itself to be able to take ZERO credit for what IS working about the ACA, but they’ve also spent all their time trying to make sure it doesn’t work. People need to see it work before they’re going to be willing to go further. They just want a break from the madness at this point. Maybe it’ll be just the calm at the eye of the storm, but that respite, coupled with the Dems coming out on top as those who provided it and who are looking to provide more of it, would pay dividends. People aren’t going to go along with single-payer just because it’s a good idea. They’ll go along with it because it’s a good idea AND being offered by people they’ve come to trust on the health care issue.
People understand Universal Healthcare and will vote for it. It is popular!
It’s so popular that only the peanut gallery on the internet has figured out how much the entire population loves it? If it’s so popular, why have no states in the US ever put a single-payer system into place? I’d think at least one clever and enterprising politician at the lower levels would have this brilliant insight, and then we’d have an example to point to to say that it would work on a national level. The states are the policy laboratories of our republic, after all.
Or, more briefly, [citation needed].
I’m pretty sure “GFYs…we’re standing by the ACA and you can eat shit” is about as bold as we need to be right now. The public is not going to be receptive to “we’re doubling down and want to completely overhaul the health care industry before the dust has even settled on the first overhaul”. That’s what is known as overreach.
This comment is astoundingly Trumpian in tone.
People have to understand yeah single payer would be the ideal solution but that will never happen until the dems have a supermajority. Cause we all know the gop will not all of a sudden care about the welfare of the American people and be in support of single payer
Well, we certainly won’t if nobody ever advocates for it.
The Democrats have a plan they support: the ACA.
An alternative such as you propose will not be considered by the GOP.
Try to think strategically. If the Democrats began calling for Single Payer Now, the Republicans will just respond, “See, even the Democrats admit that Obamacare is dead. And what is their solution to skyrocketing premiums, millions without coverage they need and can afford, and entire communities without an insurer? They want to impose even more government control of your health care.”
I’m actually in the middle on this fight. I hate Schumer’s messaging. I hate yours too.
You will never, ever, ever get majority support for single payer in this country unless and until there is a total collapse of the system, because most people can’t see the need for an abrupt transition to something that big unless and until the Invisible Hand of the Free Market is pushing their faces down into a big pile of shit sitting on top of a pile of sharp, abrasive, chunky gravel with thirty tons of force. And the human tragedy and economic catastrophe that kind of collapse would entail is a price that I, for one, don’t consider worth paying.
Most people just don’t have the command of the political and policy details to see the need, too many vested interests are deeply invested in keeping them misinformed, and most people in democracies just don’t like abrupt change and economic dislocation in the absence of something like years of Great Depression or a war with a nation that represents an existential threat. People suck like that and thus democracy sucks like that.
That’s how and why you end up with compromised frameworks for future evolution like the ACA or Social Security as it existed in 1935 or the Civil Rights Act of 1957. The art of getting people to accept great change is to lead them in a way that makes them think they’re leading you, add on to the change a bit at a time until one day, people wake up and say “man, I can’t believe things were that way only twenty years ago.” The best way to get them to elect reactionaries is to make them think a minority is forcing something on them for their own good.
That’s what democracy is. That’s how it works. That’s what “worst form of government except for all the others” means. And that’s the reality morally compromised corporatist neoliberal DLC selltouts such as myself are talking about when we lose our patience and our tempers and condescendingly tell those who think they’re to our left to grow up and face reality.
But at the same time, yeah, Chuck’s messaging sucks. What he ought to be saying is “the ACA isn’t broken, it was sabotaged by Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell [and yeah, I know Little Marco was one of the biggest saboeurs, but we’re talking about symbols here and he’s a nobody right now]. It can work, but first they have to stop trying to blow it up and start fixing. We’d help with the fixing, but they’re still determined to hurt people, even if it means hurting themselves.”
There’s a thin line between “Never interrupt your enemy when he is in the process of destroying himself” (that’s how I heard it–Napoleon, I think), and “Don’t just do something; stand there.”
It’s just great the Republicans are screwing this all up, but what the hell do the Democrats have to offer? Ask your man/woman on the street, and I don’t think they’ll have a good answer.
Schumer’s statement is SOS. Some of you may think this is brilliant politics, but it’s SOS, and we’re in a NEW WORLD.
Maybe proposing single-payer would be politically foolish right now. However, some Dems have proposed changes to the ACA. Why not take the best of those, and promote them? Besides possibly being politically advantageous, THEY MIGHT ACTUALLY F***ING IMPROVE AMERICAN HEALTH CARE.
Answer: Paid-off politicians.
Why are we the only Western Country without some form of Universal Coverage?
The support for the Universal Coverage is already here and growing:
“Currently, 60% of Americans say the government should be responsible for ensuring health care coverage for all Americans, compared with 38% who say this should not be the government’s responsibility. The share saying it is the government’s responsibility has increased from 51% last year and now stands at its highest point in nearly a decade.”
It is a winning position.
Because Chucky’s offer comes with one giant caveat: the baseline is the ACA. That’s a giant difference and everyone knows it.
Schumer is offering to work with the GOP to make the ACA better. The ACA is anathema to them. He may as well be offering them a king-sized abortion sandwich. They’re not going to come to Jesus. To do so would be to admit outright defeat AND would be an admission that the ACA is, at least in some sense and in some ways, WORKING.
Also, the ACA does not cause any deaths. It prevents them. PERIOD. Unless and until you can see your way to getting on board with THAT message, liberals/Dems absolutely don’t need your help messaging. YOUR message is an impediment and self-defeating. The ACA “causes” deaths no more than riding a real horse causes the death of the rainbows your unicorns might otherwise be farting.
And let’s also be clear here for a second: there’s an element of logical fallacy to your complaints and this argument in general. Schumer said something. Does that mean he’s not going to come out and say something else as well? Does saying X preclude Y when X and Y are not themselves mutually exclusive? I tend to believe that it would be a mistake to misinterpret all this mess as our giant opportunity to ram single-payer down the throat of everyone who opposes it or even sits on the fence…but does that mean Chucky won’t be blabbering that tomorrow? Who fucking knows? If there’s one thing liberals/Dems do poorly, it’s messaging.
Which is exactly what I have been saying.
Universal Healthcare is a popular position. It is easy to understand. It will give people something to get out and vote for.
ACA leaves 27 million uninsured and that means 32,000 preventable deaths per year due to lack of insurance. Perhaps you’re not one of the uninsured or going to be facing death due to lack of healthcare, but those numbers should still be unacceptable to you.
We can’t wait any longer for Universal Healthcare.
Senator Warren’s message is right. Senator Schumer’s is wrong.
Indeed. And that’s a problem, but it’s not a problem inherent in what I’m arguing. I think Schumer is right to play the card of offering to work together on making the ACA better. I also think that the unfortunate choice of using the same kind of language the GOP has been using still conveys a different message coming from a liberal/Dem. What I don’t like is that he’s not standing there also offering concrete solutions and proposals that force the GOP/Teatrolls to take a position. Positioning is everything. Concrete proposals are something people can latch onto to feel like there’s more stability, or at least more stability on offer. Non-substantive political blather, on the other hand, is just empty rhetoric, and you’re 100% right on that score.
For anybody paying attention, Schumer knows there won’t be a bipartisan fix in the near future and doesn’t plan on making the Affordable Care Act weaker. This is purely about messaging.
He’s trying to make himself and the Democrats look like the more reasonable group by emphasizing bipartisanship which is what the pundits and general population like to hear since they’ll sound like the adults in the room. But he knows Mitch McConnell and the Republican’s previous attempts to sabotage the ACA and he’s not seriously going to cave to them and work with them to ruin healthcare.
He’s also using McConnell’s old words against him during the ACA debate when McConnell kept saying that they should start over and make a bipartisan bill. So in other words, Schumer’s mocking McConnell.
Indeed, pragmatism is key. The thing is while the ACA passing years back was big and splashy it took a lot of what people HATE doing: work. Progress and legislation take effort, compromise, deals, and a lot of other boring, tedious busywork that is necessary for governance. This is a long haul, so picking battles is key
I will continue to challenge your assertion that “ACA leaves 27 million uninsured.” Again, several million uninsured are in states that did not expand Medicaid.
Eleven to 12 million are here illegally and cannot take part in the ACA.
And several million chose to not buy insurance, either for ideological reasons or because they cannot afford it.
Hey, weren’t you the guy who lectured JFK on unicorns and rainbows when he proclaimed the US would put a person on the moon by the end of the decade, before most of the technology to accomplish that literal Pie-in-the-Sky dream was invented? Maybe Democrats should quit worrying about what Republican’t might say about things (because they are going to trash it no matter what, even if it’s their own freaking idea) and start acting like a Party with real beliefs and real backbone…
You can challenge it all you want, but facts are facts. Under ACA there are 27 million without health insurance. As you point out, there are many reasons for that, but those reasons don’t change the bottom line of 27 million without health insurance under the ACA.
Kaiser estimates about 5.4 million people don’t qualify for insurance because they are here illegally, not 11 - 12 million.