I don't like Medicare for All as a litmus test

[bluedye33139]

Last edited Fri Feb 14, 2020, 02:05 PM - Edit history (1)

I don't like the idea that people who support Obamacare are somehow enemies or wrong. Of all the litmus tests, this is the most stupid. We can improve the healthcare situation in our country by introducing a robust public option or by moving towards single-payer. It makes no sense for Democrats to be torn apart by this.

[maxsolomon]

1. M4A feels like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Dems don't have the political strength to legislate it, or the cushion to absorb the backlash. Obamacare has nearly been strangled to death by the GOP Senate and the Judiciary as it is.

M$A v ACA is what we talk about so we don't have to talk about President Malignant Narcissist and Gangster Authoritarianism. Or the reality that no one will curb ACC.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. It's a ridiculous litmus test.

In a better world we'd have an efficient and effective single-payer system, but this isn't that world; if it is ever to happen in this world it will have to happen incrementally through improvements to the ACA. Candidates who promise it are not being honest unless they explain how they are going to get it through Congress, pay for it, and put it into operation - and the fact that this will take years if it happens at all. It seems like a lot of people have swallowed the idea that it can be done instantly with the stroke of a president's pen, which is simply not going to happen. So if the litmus test is whether a candidate is for or against Medicare for All, it's a fake test. No Democrat opposes universal health care, which is the true test: Do they want everyone to have comprehensive and affordable access to health care, or not? The Republicans don't want that, the Democrats do.

[R B Garr]

3. M4a is a disaster, especially considering the only campaign

strategy we’ve seen consistently is to insult people who already have insurance, calling them entitled, etc.

We just saw how unions were attacked in Las Vegas. Multiply that by attacking 150,000,000 insured people, and it’s a disaster.

[Progressive dog]

4. I don't either

Not one of the candidates supporting it can really believe that m4all can become law. Even with many states rejecting medicaid and with the Trumpicans taking away the "tax" on the uninsured, over 90% of Americans have health insurance.
It is a fiction that there is a fortune to be saved by going after "administrative costs", "drug prices", and insurance profits . The doctors, the nurses, the medical equipment manufacturers, the researchers, the support staff will pay most of those miraculous savings and they will have to work harder. There already is a shortage of doctors and nurses.
Hospitals and physicians are 50% of the total spending on health care, prescription drugs are 10%. Inflation in drug prices is less than inflation of either physician or hospital prices.