Rep. Keith Ellison Defends Bernie Sanders Single-Payer Bill Rollout

[Hassin Bin Sober]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/keith-ellison-defends-bernie-sanders-single-payer-bill_us_59cc1c52e4b053a9c2f63a48


Rep. Keith Ellison Defends Bernie Sanders’ Single-Payer Bill Rollout

The Minnesota congressman dismissed criticism about the timing of the bill, given the subsequent GOP Graham-Cassidy Obamacare repeal effort.


Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) extolled Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) as an “awesome” health care advocate in an interview with HuffPost on Wednesday, dismissing those who questioned the timing of Sanders’ rollout of single-payer legislation.

Days after Sanders introduced his “Medicare for All” bill earlier this month, it started to look like the Graham-Cassidy bill, a final Republican bid to repeal the Affordable Care Act, stood a chance of passing.

Prior to Graham-Cassidy’s death on Tuesday, some Democrats complained that Sanders had created an opening for a last-minute GOP health care push by distracting attention away from the party’s nightmare scenario of an Obamacare repeal.

The griping peaked when CNN revealed that Sanders had agreed to debate Graham-Cassidy on live television.

“We create the time, by pushing the issue. The issue becomes ripe because we push it,” Ellison said. “If we sat around waiting for the most opportune moment then we wouldn’t have been able to gain the support we acquired.”

[Proud Liberal Dem]

1. It probably would've been better to bring out AFTER 9/30 IMHO

Not that they weren't going to try again anyway but it gave Republicans an easy way "out" of bipartisan negotiations that had been occurring about stabilizing insurance markets.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

2. Repigs are always going to have an "out"

I agree with Ellison:

“We create the time, by pushing the issue. The issue becomes ripe because we push it,” Ellison said. “If we sat around waiting for the most opportune moment then we wouldn’t have been able to gain the support we acquired.”

The sooner we realize this is a Street fight the better off we will be. Pretending some bi partisan hand job is going to lead to anything other than a complete fucking over of the 99% is silly when the other side is literally getting paid to kill anything good for the middle class and poor.

[Rene]

3. and what do they propose happen to all the Insurance companies and their employees?

[Jim Lane]

4. The rub is that that's where a lot of the cost savings will come from.

Right now, because of the role of the private, for-profit health insurance corporations, a big chunk of our "health care" spending goes to administrative costs, including the denial of actual care. Along with insurance company employees, there are, for example, people who make their living from the companies' advertising.

When we transition out of this absurd system, we should do what we can to cushion the blow. Those folks might be given preference for federal civil service jobs. We might even consider locating facilities in places like Hartford, even if the more logical place would otherwise be the DC area.

The fact remains, though, that it's going to cause some pain. Right now we're wasting a lot of money. Eliminating the waste will hurt some people who benefit from the waste.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

5. Let's ask the families of kids with cancer begging for change with tip jars in convenience stores.

Or the families of the 45,000 that die each year in this country due to lack of healthcare.