Op-Ed There are 3 types of single-payer 'concern trolls' and they all want to undermine universal
healthcare
Adam H. Johnson at the LA Times
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-johnson-concern-trolls-single-payer-20170921-story.html
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With momentum building for single-payer healthcare among Democratic voters and a growing number of 2020 hopefuls, Sen. Bernie Sanders unveiled a “Medicare for All” bill last week. Immediately, a number of pundits denounced the legislation as an “unrealistic” “bloated” “disaster” full of “magic math.”
Some of the naysayers are conservatives who simply abhor “big government.” Some have perfectly valid reasons to question the merits of single payer in general or Sanders’ methods in particular. Yet others claim they support universal healthcare in theory (one day, perhaps) but cannot do so now because of a “concern.” They are “concern trolls” — broadly defined as “a person who disingenuously expresses concern about an issue with the intention of undermining or derailing genuine discussion.”
The nuance troll: ‘We need more details!’
Less than 24 hours after the bill’s introduction, New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait lamented that the bill gets America “zero percent” closer to single payer. While saying he agrees with single payer in theory, he insisted that the 155 million Americans who already have healthcare represent an insuperable barrier, and that the issue of how to move them all to a government-run system “is not a detail to be worked out. It is the entire problem.” As he noted, Lyndon Johnson failed and Hillary Clinton failed and Barack Obama failed to undo the private system. So why bother? It’s too hard; everyone go home.
Progressives lose nothing by setting bold targets right out of the gate.
Nuance trolling is argument by way of tautology, an attempt to pass off power-serving defeatism as savvy pragmatism. Nuance trolls simply cannot envision a bold legislative movement to alter the system.
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