People routinely die, here in the United States of America, precisely because it’s decided to be a “market society” with respect to health care, which is extremely unsuited for being a market good. And that’s just the day-in, day-out side of things.
More germane to our present moment, one outcome of our largely private, “market society” medical system is that it has little in the way of reserve capacity for an outbreak like this. Reserve capacity is an investment with a 0% return, until that day you need it. It’s basically an insurance policy, writ large.
But it’s a mismatch. We, the people, are the ones who need that reserve capacity. We’re the ones who need that insurance policy, not the big corporations that own the chains of hospitals. By letting this big piece of our medical ‘system’ become privatized, we’ve placed the maintenance of that reserve in the hands of institutions that have every incentive to get rid of it.
Now, as the storm of COVID-19 gathers force, there is little reserve in the way of everything from hospital beds to personal protective equipment to ventilators, and people are going to die specifically because of these shortages.
This is what happens when you treat health care like a market good.
He won the first 3 primary states, now has no chance against a candidate who was written off months ago. He went from a revolution to barely pulling in 30-40% of the vote.
Also its becoming clear that a lot of Sanders support in 2016 wasn’t because people liked his ideas, it was because they hated Hillary Clinton.
Also people keep making very valid criticisms of Sanders by telling him ‘how will you get these laws passed, how will you pay for them’ and he has no real answers.
Also Sanders did worse in tons of states this time than he did last time. Including his home state of vermont. He won 85% of the vote in 2016 and barely 50% in 2020.
Also the youth vote didn’t show up to help him get elected, and some studies showed him turning off purple voters in the suburbs.
I would say a big winner this primary season though was the concept that you can’t buy an election. Bloomberg flooded the airwaves with hundreds of millions of dollars and barely won any delegates. That is a good sign for democracy that money doesn’t necessarily equal victory.
First taking a step away from the unfortunately phrased OP and hopping on to** dalej42**'s comment about Warren – IMO yes the primary season saw on the one hand not so much a straight rejection of the more “pure” progressive stances strictly on their merit, which may have been well received, but on how their presentation began sounding a bit too boondoggley, too trust-me-I’ll-make-it-work and could not be succesfuly sold to the public as something that would restore tranquility and normality.
Part it was the hard-left Bernie wing that was allowed to be the ones to define the terms; to use the mentioned example 12 years ago “Medicare for All” was a reasonable sounding proposal (after all, you can STILL pay into a private insurer to get “a first class ticket” over and above basic Medicare) but the Progressive Purists this time around redefined it into something far more thorough that that, and turned it into an “are you with us or against us” challenge question. And to this day some Sanderistas go on along the lines of expecting the winner to embrace the runner-up’s key platform, or else.
Yes, Bernie hits his ceiling and prevents Warren from taking off, but at the same time Biden becomes the mainstream standardbearer almost exclusively on “OMG we need the safest choice possible”. I dunno about that. The mainstreamers have better be aware that their offer DOES need to contain specific proposals of things that will be different. Having the allegedly liberal party be just more humanitarian pro-corporatists is what got us where we are. Having the priorities of the Nation’s well-being hinge on keeping the Dow going up is not any better just because your side will want race/gender diversity in a gun-free boardroom with onsite daycare.
Also as** Wesley Clark **mentions, another loser is the concept of some sleeping monster youth vote that can turn everything on its head. But maybe that can be turned around into a realization that you have to rise in the ranks, not just stand there and say “we’re morally right! yield to us!”.
And as to the other matter…
And you get people in the frame of mind that if they “pay for a first class seat” then *they *will be safe.
Me, this current situation is a problem because by the time the health care providers are back to handling normal cases that “could wait”, I may no longer have my first class ticket, and the things that “can wait” could get worse in the meantime…
They dont have ANYTHING like Sanders plan, which covers everything (including dental, etc), outlaws private insurance, will bankrupt an entire industry, lay off tens of thousands of workers, etc.
You can have UHC without sanders gold-plated Cadillac plan.
Sander’s misleadingly named “M4A” (it has nothing whatsoever to do with medicare) is too big, too expensive and too much of a change. REAL* Medicare for all *would work.
Biden is proposing a plan where anyone who wants a public option can have it. It could pass Congress.
Sander’s crazy plan could never, EVER pass Congress, not even with a solid Dem Majority.
So it’s notsanders gold-plated Cadillac plan or nothing at all.
There is nothing stopping blue states from enacting medicare for all. But they won’t do it either.
Vermont tried, but found it was too expensive (which was short sighted, as M4A would reduce medical costs by 25% over a decade).
Nothing is stopping deeply blue states like CT, CA, RI, etc from enacting a state level medicare for all system.
But if in states where democrats control 70-80% of the state legislature seats and the governorship wont’ do it, theres no real chance that it’ll happen on a national level where the democrats are lucky to control 51% of the legislature seats.
Hear, hear! It shouldn’t be M4A, it should be “Tri-Care for all!”
When DH was on active duty, and I had a baby on Tri-Care, we didn’t pay a penny, and it was a very complicated birth. I also got a 5-day hospital stay.
Pete Buttigieg won Iowa.
Bernie Sanders won New Hampshire. Still, it was such a narrow win that he ended up tied with Pete for the most delegates in NH, making Pete the delegate leader he don’t into Nevada
That’s not the type of win Sanders was expecting nor what he needed.
This is fucking inhuman. Sorry about the pit-appropriate language, but it is.
We’re done. We, meaning this nation, this society, this community (not that it’s a community anymore, if it ever was).
You know what? I have a family, too. Three kids and a wife. And I support universal health care. Call it Medicare for all, if you like.
Not being a fucking ostrich with its head in the sand, I’ve seen quite a bit of the world (not to mention having married into a Canadian family). UHC works. It works better than what we have.
And if the consumers of luxury health care won’t surrender a bit of it for the good of all, well, too bad.
You know what? You can work to make health care available to all, now, or you can have your Cadillac care taken away from you later, by force.
That’s not a threat, that’s just a prediction, based on having read a book or two about history.
America is heavily divided by race, class, religion, ideology, etc. Its why we can’t get large scale social welfare programs up and running, because Americans hate each other too much. When social security was started, they had to structure it so it excluded black people by excluding fields black people worked in like agricultural and domestic work. FDR and Truman wanted to push for a single payer health care plan, but southern democrats (back then the south was almost all democrats, before LBJ) opposed it because they didn’t want to integrate hospitals or give health care to black people.
Its just a shitty side effect of being American.
Having said that, we can have universal coverage and still have options for cadillac health insurance coverage. Australia has a single payer system where you can purchase private insurance on top of the single payer plan. It seems to work there.
The Netherlands and Switzerland have a multipayer UHC system where you can purchase cadillac insurance if you want to spend the money.
Progressive leftism lost in a self-fulfilling way. When Democrats clamored for Biden, saying that “only a centrist can beat Trump,” this therefore guaranteed that progressives would be perceived as unelectable. Ditto for women. “A woman can’t beat Trump,” ergo, a woman *became *unelectable even if she wasn’t originally.
As one who sells health insurance, the number of elderly people who pine for their private coverage over Medicare is 0. Zero. None. Nada.
We just don’t see it. What we do see is the opposite - “My company has me (the owner) on their health insurance rolls, but I turn 65 in X months. Can we price this years’ premium without me on it?”
But I think we have a winner here! A year ago today, Beto was at 8.4% in the RCP average, trailing only Biden, Bernie, and Kamala Harris. And for a good deal of the next month, he was in third, ahead of Harris and trailing just Biden and Bernie.
And then he was nowhere. From rising star to has-been, all but overnight.
When the U.S.A. emerges from the Covid-19 crisis, I hope that there will be new feelings of community, and new paradigms for American society going forward.
After the Black Death in the 14th century, some European countries had a reduction in inequality, partly due to the shared experience of seeing peasant and aristocratic corpses piled up next to each other.
Thus there could be a silver lining in this dark cloud.
Or no silver lining. You may call me a dreamer.
Mr. Arden presumably is in an excellent financial situation. He is delighted that health care is a market good: He (or his insurer) can outbid other Americans for whatever ventilators, etc. he might require.
I am just going to comment on your post and ignore all the pitting this thread has degenerated to.
Canada does have socialized insurance, with each province running its own scheme. But hospitals get an annual block grant and have to make do with that. Doctors are private and get a fee for each act they perform but based on a provincial fee set by the province. Unless they choose to practice outside the plan, they must accept those fees. If they practice outside the plan they set their own fees and cannot get anything from the government. In other words their practice is either entirely in the plan or entirely outside. (There is an exception if a doctor comes to an accident scene and renders emergency service.) At least that’s how Quebec works. If you see a doctor for treatment, no money changes hands. Nothing. He is allowed to charge for filling out forms, say for a driver’s licence for example, but that is the only exception. If you go to a hospital, you never see a bill. Ever. There is no dental care, which is a big lacuna.
The other serious problem is a shortage of doctors. I have using one family physician for 40 years and he is now semi-retired. When he does finally quit, I don’t know what I will do. There is a clinic about 1/4 mile from my apartment. While they will give emergency care if you need it, they are not accepting any new patients into their system. I do not know what I will do. They do not even maintain a wait list.
So far, it has worked well for me and my family, but I can see a future problem.
Oh, and there is also a provincial drug insurance that has both a deductible and a co-pay, but beyond a certain amount per month, you pay nothing. They negotiated strongly with the drug companies, unlike the US which is forbidden by an act of congress to negotiate prices but must pay list.
Mr. Arden presumably is in an excellent financial situation. He is delighted that health care is a market good: He (or his insurer) can outbid other Americans for whatever ventilators, etc. he might require.