Sanders gets best reception at early 2020 audition

[ehrnst]

154. The ACA is the step towards it - NO universal health care will be acheived in under 20 years.

The ACA is effectively our national health care system, and it has been attacked and weakened by the GOP. What do you think they would do to an attempt at Single Payer.

My point was, that ACA does not get at the 'private' insurance problem -- only mandates it for those that are above a certain income level and not getting it through an employer.

As I said, you cannot eliminate private health care coverage in less than 20 years, and other countries acheive universal health care with some participation by private insurance. Did you skip over that part with the examples from Germany and the Netherlands?

There are still millions of people who make too much money to qualify for government subsidies on buying a plan -- and cannot afford ~20K a year for a family plan without such subsidy. Yep, that's what it costs.

Bernie's not going to get that fixed in under 20 years, either.

The Democratic platform regarding healthcare, once we strip away the platitudes and other non-specific rhetoric -- calls for (maybe) lowering the age you can join Medicare to 55.

That's what Hillary Clinton was planning, allowing people to buy into Medicare at age 55. Perhaps you've heard of her? Big Democrat. The platform states the goal of universal health care coverage, and doesn't lock into just one specific tactic, especially one that hasn't materialized in nearly 40 years of attempts.

Real Universal Healthcare for all -- would lower that age to zero (0). I think Bernie had the right idea.

Again, that didn't happen in Ted Kennedy's lifetime, and it's sure not going to happen in Bernie's. Ideas are one thing - results are another. Bernie's idea isn't really financed like Medicare, but putting Medicare in the name is good political marketing.

But it’s important to understand that “Medicare for All” is not a particularly accurate description of most single-payer proposals, notably that being promoted in the Senate by Bernie Sanders and by his supporters around the country. Medicare deploys both premiums and co-pays; one of the big selling points of single-payer is that it gets rid of both of those cost-sharing features. Medicare, like its first cousin, Social Security, depends heavily on lifetime contributions into a fund that pays for a sizable portion of benefits. By definition, single-payer is available to everyone, including people who haven’t paid a dime into the system. Medicare covers mostly acute care. Single-payer covers pretty much every medical service. And most of all, Medicare has a robust private-insurance component: about a third of the Medicare population gets its coverage through private Medicare Advantage plans. Single-payer proposals by and large abolish private health insurance: thus the name single payer.

https://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/05/voters-who-like-medicare-for-all-may-not-like-single-payer.html