A Primetime Clash Over Health Care
Sept 26, 2017 6:00 AM ET
Excerpt:
It was Sanders, however, who took full advantage of the national audience to articulate a position on health-care that was more nuanced than his critics—both Democrats and Republicans—often attribute to him. Some Democrats had feared the Vermont independent would allow Graham to goad him into a debate over single-payer when the party needed him to focus on defeating the Republican repeal bill.
But Sanders appeared more agile than he did during some of his presidential primary debates with Hillary Clinton last year. He assailed the Graham-Cassidy while defending the strengths of Obamacare and talking up consensus Democratic proposals, including a gradual expansion of Medicare, a public insurance option, and allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies.
“The truth of the matter is the Affordable Care Act has done some very important things,” Sanders said. “Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.” Echoing the Democratic Party line, he urged Republicans to “work together and improve the Affordable Care Act, not repeal it.” Sanders made a distinction between the “short-term” goal of improving the current system and his longer-term goal of Medicare-for-All, which he acknowledged had no chance of passing while the Republicans controlled Congress.
Graham and Cassidy appeared frustrated at times by his restraint. “Bernie is the most honest person in the Senate, because he believes in government-run health care from cradle to grave,” Graham said. The tone of the debate remained cordial throughout, with the senators often referring to each other by their first names. The four even tip-toed toward consensus at points, as Graham and Sanders laughingly agreed that insurance companies were making out too well under Obamacare, and Sanders and Cassidy agreed on the need to control drug prices. But once the senators began to dig a little deeper, the agreement quickly faded. When Sanders tried to get Cassidy to commit to backing his bill on allowing negotiated drug prices, the Louisiana Republican ignored him and called him “a socialist” instead.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/09/the-health-care-debate-must-go-on/541056/
= new reply since forum marked as read
and I believe Kolbachar said as much during the debate last night.
I was happy with the way Bernie handled the issues, but they did need to jump on these jerks for saying the system is doomed. Yeah, it's experiencing cost increases and the insurance companies say it is because of the uncertainty the Republicans are causing. Why didn't Bernie or Amy say something in response to this?! It can be documented, so it's not out of bounds to respond with something along those lines.
On the other hand, Cassidy and Graham were so melodramatic in their pronouncements of doom that it came off as comedic, so maybe Bernie and Amy just decided to leave well enough alone.
Cher
For decades the Koch-funded radical libertarians have carefully sown distrust and hatred of the government, which is the wrong enemy. What Koch wants is everything devolved to state level, because states are much easier to control than either the federal government or local governments. And by making the very people who should love the government hate it instead, Koch and his fellow billionaire parasites have, in effect, gotten away with sucking off more and more money from our treasury, both in the form of government contracts that are given at the expense of programs that help the American people, and more indirectly in the form of tax cuts, which merely keep the money for programs that help people from being available at all.
The government can overreach. It can certainly screw stuff up fast. I concede that point. But please, please, please, let's not get rid of government (drown it in a bathtub, as Grover Norquist says) and replace it with unrestrained capitalism, which is what the billionaire criminals want.
Living under unrestrained capitalism is great for billionaires, shitty for the earth and all life therein and a living hell for most people. We really, really, really DON'T want to live under unrestrained capitalism.
And, a last thought: if you put a pot on the stove and boil some hatred of government broth, add a cup of chest pounding nationalism, and a cup of unrestrained capitalism, then season with some half-baked theology, you get...
"We can no longer afford to pay so much, so that so many can pay so little."
"So many" at the one Senate hearing.
