Wonderful article.

Its no wonder Bernie is one of the most popular politicians/legislators in the nation.

Thank you for posting.

The industrial nations bernie mentions have MEDICAID-like programs, not Medicare-for-all.

Why? B/C Medicaid is inexpensive, comprehensive, and funded out of general revenues.
Medicare is simply insurance for people too old to buy private insurance.

Medicare has monthly premiums, copays, deductibles, paid for by tax on poor/middle-class.
To cover 325 million Americans w/ Medicare would cost $3.2 trillion/yr.

Medicaid has no copays, no deductibles, no premiums.
To cover all Americans would cost just under $2 trillion/yr.
Allowing all employers to buy it at cost, would fund 80% of that $2trillion.

bernie says Medicare is 'popular'--yeah, w/ old people whose alternative, once they lose employer-provided insurance, is nil.
Same surveys bernie cites show people are equally fond of their private, employer-provided insurance, as Medicare.

Medicaid as the Public Option, sold on ACA Exchanges, is the only logical step to single-payer.
If bernie doesn't know that, he should get out of politics now.

I have zero problem w/ single payer. But if Medicare-4-all costs $1.3trillion/yr MORE than Medicaid-4-all, you'd have to be a FOOL to want Medicare over Medicaid.

Canada has a Medicaid-like system [that has no dental or vision coverage]. Canadians pay $50-100/month for private, supplemental policies to cover those. So why does bernie keep bringing up Canada as the best example of single-payer? Ignorance?

That’s just a silly argument for the sake of argument.

America will never get Medicare-4-all. It will get Medicaid-4-all, even if it gets called Medicare. In other words, Medicare would have to morph into Medicaid, to be affordable and comprehensive.

So why does bernie keep insisting Medicare-4-all is preferable to Medicaid-4-all?

Could it be that he WANTS taxpayers to pony up that extra $1.3trillion/yr to fulfill his socialist vision of America?

Almost every goes on Medicare, some go on Medicare, and end up on Medicaid.

If he calls it Medicaid I’m sure the same people will start arguing “why are you trying to make everybody poor?!?! “

Nonsense argument

With so many Boomers experiencing nursing home care for their parents and, increasingly, for themselves, experience with Medicaid has risen dramatically. Especially when the Medicare 20-day window closes.

Why, again, does Sanders pretend that Medicare is Medicaid? Why does he pretend to be a Socialist when he's not? Is he counting on his supporters' ignorance? Surely it''s not his own, right?

To cover everything that medicare doesnt cover.

missed it. I think plitically, it is wiser to call it Medicare for All, and as I said in my previous post, he may actually envision it being funded more like Medicaid. I do think it's an easy sell to convince most people that Medicare for All is a huge improvement over what we have now, including ACA before the GOP and the illegitimate chipped away at it.

a huge improvement over ACA, but you may be right ... and I am guessing Bernie is actually thinking of something that looks more like Medicaid than Medicare when it comes to how it is funded.

So write or email him. You might be surprised at his response.

My medicare covers 80% of most Dr stuff, I still need to buy supplemental insurance or that 20% would be very risky.

My medicare Part D is a joke. Medicare (unlike Blue-Cross, Tri-Care, or the V.A.) is prohibited from negotiating good drug prices. This is an expensive restriction, paid for by "big pharma" buying both parties in congress. Corruption, conspiracy, collusion, whatever you call it, it was a Republican and Democratic disgrace.

Ok, other than that, yeah, Medicare for all.

Cheers.

That’s the goal. I don’t know why people want to get bogged down in an argument over what Medicare is today in 2018. Of course it will be different.

I’ll never forget the look on my friend’s mom’s face when she was visiting from England and I told her about supplemental that elderly people have to buy.

... until congressional corruption created the disaster we ended up with.

But, 100% coverage for medical, drugs, dental, vision, hearing, that's a good place to start from.

The same people were saying last year that John Conyers invented Midicare For All in 1914 and “Oh my gerd Bernie is teh plagiarist!1!1!”

I think this is an attempt at humor. I think that you should pursue a different endeavor.

We don't have to change a thing to achieve it. We only have to drop bernie's ideas.

will be on pharma -- they will either negotiate in good faith or lose market.

Heaps of treasure will be lavished on congress members and staff to fight this. I hope his plan can prevail.

both left and right while the right is in power.

Imo, Sanders is shockingly irresponsible. Does he have any better idea now how to pay for it than he did in 2015 and 2016? Because his plan then was phony, undoable. He didn't even bother to develop a plan that would work. And our nation is in much worse shape now.

Where's the money come from? The Republicans have been emptying our public kitty, with an enormous acceleration over Trump's administration.

Btw, we also have an annual payment coming up in 3-1/2 months on that $1.6 trillion dollar debt the Republicans manufactured for us. If we can't pay, automatic, legally mandated cuts are made across the federal budget. And the idea is to break progressive government by removing the means of paying for it.

The courts they've packed with conservative judges are also making the means of paying for government-regulated insurance systems illegal, even if we have the money. Has Sanders considered upcoming SCOTUS cases that could make ALL public programs unconstitutional?

Right now there's such large bipartisan support for the Obamacare in place that, even with control of congress and the WH, the Republicans haven't been able to repeal it.

There is no bipartisan support for Sanders' plan. Instead there are extreme resistance from the right and doubt and confusion among most Democrats. Left-wing agitation for what the right would bill as the "radical socialism," coupled with right-wing resistance against it, could be used to both keep control of congress and to bring the ACA down.

So this is NOT the time. Because if we don't get control of congress, we really could lose it all. Not just national healthcare.

That's exactly what this is. And there's nothing remotely progressive about it. The PPACA took decades to achieve and is a complex, arduously negotiated system of regulations. Killing it will set us back 80 years and that's the only thing this shameful campaign is ever going to achieve.

Wonder who paid for this left wing propaganda:



Could have been any of the groups meant to benefit, left or right, or Eurasian.

That means Republicans control tax policy and the national checkbook.

Good night.

Republicans control congress is not an excuse for not promoting good programs. Those are what we run on.

And it is hardly a better argument to say that we need to focus on defending the ACA, because somebody might come back and say to that...

What??? REPUBLICANS CONTROL CONGRESS.

“We got nothing for you. We don’t have any power. Sorry”

Please stop Sen. Sanders. We all want universal coverage but the important thing is to save the ACA because if it goes, we get nothing for years.

against the Democratic Party and to undermine pride in and support for the ACA.

Has it NEVER occurred to you that both the GOP and the Kremlin might once again be using Sanders to destroy our chances to get control of congress, and with that to finish the job of destroying the ACA and to continue their dismantling of all controls on corporations?

Gee, what on earth could be their motives?

When it’s supported by at least 59% of all Americans. It’s a winning mainstream issue that every Democrat should be running on.
I think some here hate the messenger, so they tear down the message. That’s just wrong.



https://www.businessinsider.com/poll-medicare-for-all-public-option-bernie-sanders-plan-support-2018-3

...and try to build from there. Bernie once again gives us pie-in-the-sky, and once again the GOP dog-pack is tearing apart the whole picnic before our very eyes.

Sorry, but I have an acute case of Bern-out.

I get his reasoning on the last one because the sanctions had language that affected Iran after a historic deal brokered by Kerry and Obama, and Kerry came out and said those sanctions were a problem. If I were going to take somebody's word on that one, it would be Kerry given his part in that.

Thanks for the thread Hassin Bin Sober,