JUST IN: Exit Polls Nevada: 6 in 10 support eliminating private insurance

[Donkees]

Link to tweet

[George II]

1. Exit polls???? Many of them just got IN and virtually no one has yet exited! Sheesh.

[still_one]

6. That is strange. Another post indicated an entrance poll

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1287560391

who knows?

The shadow know I think

[George II]

11. MSNBC is talking about entrance polls right now. But if it's a caucus, many people change...

...their votes during the caucus anyway.

Either way, this stuff is beyond ridiculous.

[still_one]

14. That is what I thought also George, in a caucus can't people change their vote?

[Boulevardier]

12. These are actually entrance polls. I think OP made a mistake.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/entrance-polls-2020-nevada-caucuses/

And they are preliminary and will be updated.

But right now, "About 6 in 10 Nevada caucus-goers said they support replacing all private health insurance with a single government plan for everyone, early entrance polling finds. That is very similar to support for switching to a single-payer health system in both Iowa and New Hampshire, and in those states, a plurality of those voters supported Sanders."

[DanieRains]

2. Man

Saving money?

How could that be?

Oh, not everyone had either a union, or affordable healthcare.

[Aaron Pereira]

3. It's going to be a good day!

[LonePirate]

4. Private insurance has (A) made people dependent on their jobs and (B) made health care unaffordable.

Private health insurance as the primary means to obtain health care in this country needs to be abolished.

[David__77]

5. Point A is a big deal in my opinion, that hinders labor power.

...

[Garrett78]

13. Indeed. It means unions have to spend time and energy fighting for something that should be a given.

Unions should want healthcare taken care of, so they can focus on other issues. “Wouldn’t it be great if we had a single, universal access point for health care and we could instead spend our time bargaining for lower class sizes and wrap around services and increases to people’s pay?” mused Randi Weingarten, President of the 1.7 million-member American Federation of Teachers, who is typically an unreliable ally of progressive movements. “Wouldn’t it be great it if it wasn’t always dominated by health care fights?”

Exactly. What could union workers win if they didn’t have to spend so much of their time, energy, and bargaining power just keeping up with increasing healthcare costs? Would it mean time to focus on wages and retirement benefits which have been sacrificed to keep healthcare coverage? Would it free up space for unions to challenge short-staffing and rampant sub-contracting of what were once decent full-time positions? Could taking healthcare off the bargaining table open up space for fighting for reduced hours, or greater control over working conditions, even fights for self-management? And getting Medicare for All done would open up more space for labor to use its political power to advocate for immigration reform and a wide range of other burning issues affecting workers.

In fact, we don’t have to rely on our political imagination to envision what Medicare for All could mean to workers’ struggles. The moving and powerful general strike in France—the longest series of rolling strikes in the country since May 1968—has already defeated an attempt to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. They are now looking to defeat the pension cuts entirely. The French pension system has achieved one of the lowest old-age poverty rates in the world, which puts the U.S. to shame (3.4 percent of French people age 66 and older are income poor, compared with 23.1 percent of Americans in that age range). A large sector of German workers won the right to work 28-hour work weeks after a series of short strikes in 2018. Not having to constantly fight just to get healthcare coverage has meant that unions in other countries have often been able to go on to fight for bigger and better things.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/01/why-would-a-union-oppose-medicare-for-all

[Garrett78]

8. Yep

Private health insurance is an unnecessary part of the healthcare system. Insurance companies are middlemen, and insurance just exists to make sure that providers get paid. It was our government’s own choice to encourage the proliferation of private insurance, through laws like the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973. It was the federal government that subsidized private insurance companies and encouraged employers to use them. Other countries didn’t build this kind of healthcare system, for two reasons:

It doesn’t cover everyone.

It creates a bloated, inefficient insurance bureaucracy.

Our government has always been playing catch-up trying to get more people covered. It’s created employer subsidies, Medicaid, CHIP, and the Obamacare exchanges in a desperate bid to get this system to do its job, and despite decades of piecemeal healthcare reforms 13.7 percent of Americans remain without health insurance and millions more have inadequate coverage. Offering to let Americans “buy-in” to Medicare keeps Americans paying premiums, and as long as Americans must personally pay premiums to receive healthcare there are going to be some people who can’t or won’t pay those premiums and go without. It turns Medicare-For-All into a publicly run HMO. Maintaining an employer-sponsored health insurance system means remaining in a situation where large numbers of people go through a period of being uninsured each year, because when you lose your job you lose your insurance. (Currently 1 in 4 Americans go through an uninsured period each year.) Single payer advocates ask the question: “Why have a nightmarish tangle of public and private options, varying by state, with people moving on and off all the time? Why not just pay for healthcare with taxes, cover everyone, and make it free at the point of use?”

Not only will a public option fail to cover everyone, it will do nothing to restrain the growth of healthcare costs. Single payer systems control costs by giving the health service a monopoly on access to patients, preventing providers from exploiting desperate patients for profit. If instead there are a large number of insurance companies, providers can play those insurance companies off each other. Right now, we have a two-tier system, in which the best doctors and hospitals refuse to provide coverage unless your insurer offers them exorbitantly high rents. To support that cost while still making a profit, your insurer has to subject you to higher premiums, higher co-pays, and higher deductibles. Poor Americans with poor-quality insurance are stuck with providers who don’t provide high enough quality care to make these demands. The best providers keep charging ever higher rents, and the gap between the care they offer and the care the poor receive just keeps growing. Poor Americans are now seeing a decline in life expectancy, in part because they cannot afford to buy insurance that would give them access to the best doctors and hospitals. Costs balloon for rich Americans while the quality of care stagnates for the poor.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/07/why-a-public-option-isnt-enough

[George II]

15. I worked for about 45 years in a number of jobs. I never felt "dependent" on my job for insurance.

[LonePirate]

18. You are a rare expection to the norm. Consider yourself lucky.

[Rilgin]

22. With respect.

There are a lot of moderates in the Democratic Party and others who have similar views then you express on this site. However, maybe you are seeing graphically that there are democratic party members who disagree with your opinions on candidates and policies and methods of obtaining democratic goals. Nevada, a very diverse state, shows that in fact Democrats are neither scared of Bernie nor think his policies are bad. Your opinions of Bernie are unassailable as your opinions. However, it should be clear that other Democrats actually like him. Maybe that can penetrate your thinking in the future.

[jalan48]

7. Wha??? People don't want health insurance industry health care? How dare they!!!!

[nycbos]

9. The elimination of private insurance is a fantasy that will never happen.

Even if medicare for all is passed, (which won't happen) private insurance will still exist as supplemental benefits. Most counties that have universal healthcare also have private plans because the national plan doesn't cover 100% of costs.

[George II]

16. What many people don't realize is that private insurance companies do MOST of the administration....

....of medicare. The medicare system would grind to a halt without the private insurance companies.

[MoonlitKnight]

21. Not true

[Jersey Devil]

10. "Exit" polls remind me of PT Barnum - "This way to the egress"

since they take exit polls on the way in and not the way out. Perhaps they should call them egress polls

[evertonfc]

17. lololo

Fantasy land

[helpisontheway]

19. Let them fall for Bernie's lies now..they will not have MFA

AND they will be stuck with Trump for 4 more years. Congrats to them..Bernie wins the nomination but we lose the general electionby a landslide.🙄 Or by some very unlikely miracle Bernie wins the general election and they still don’t get MFA because of Congress...Thank AOC and the media for not vetting Bernie.

[VarryOn]

20. Count me in the four in ten at this point....

If they can make me feel better about the capacity of the healthcare system, then they will have me. Now, my wife or doctor need to see a doctor under my current plan, I can see one within 2 or 3 days. Often, I can see one the same day. Granted...maybe that's an incredibly unrealistic expectation. I've had it quite good and that will/should come to an end for the good of society.

I can only imagine day 1 of MFA or whatever program that adds millions. The pent up demand means millions will be seeking appointments. Of course, I want those people to see doctors, but, I just havent seen an idea on how they get phased in while the rest of us don't take a hit on the quality of our existing care.

This is a real concern some of us have. It's just hard to bring it up without sounding like a dick.