But most people are only interested in the consumer side – how else could it be? Most people do not work in the health-insurance industry or in healthcare providers’ billing offices or in relevant government agencies, but everybody goes to a doctor occasionally. And from a consumer’s POV, the ACA is just not very much of an improvement over how things were before. The only tangible improvement most people will notice is not having claims on pre-existing conditions rejected.
I am giving information to someone who might only know about the consumer aspects. I’m not sure of the relevance of informing me that many people only know about the consumer aspects.
Everyone with any interest in this thread should read this whole thing, BTW, though it is lengthy.
The relevance is that to the consumer, the ACA is not seriously huge. Single-payer would be. We might get single-payer at least proposed by President Sanders, but never by President Clinton.
Which is HUGE for a lot of people. Insurance companies abused pre-existing condition exclusions an insane amount. Plenty of people couldn’t even get insurance due to the pre-existings in their background. There is also free preventive care, which is very beneficial for those who don’t make a lot and don’t know if they could afford copays for things like mammograms.
And what you are saying is still irrelevant to my point. I won’t continue this exchange with you.
You know if people are willing to slam Clinton for changing her mind about stuff, they should take it as an equally likely chance she’d change it for the better. She did on gay marriage after all.
I think a President Clinton would seriously work on getting single-payer for the country. Building upon the popularity of Obamacare, she can say that all of the fearmongering and doubters have been proven wrong, but there are still problems that the ACA cannot solve. In comes universal health care, ironically something that First Lady Clinton worked on back in the day. It would be a great political story and a capstone on a terrific career if President Clinton could end her days in politics with the issue that brought her national prominence. I think Clinton has no problems against single-payer, its very popular among the base, and health care reform like that is popular among Americans in general just as long as you don’t call it Obamacare. She’s totally do it, no question
And yet if Bernie can pull her to the left in the primary, what will Trump do to her in the general? If you bend one way in the breeze, you can just as easily bend the other way.
Hillary Clinton: Single-payer health care will “never, ever” happen.
But, it wasn’t single-payer then either, and was roundly criticized for that from the left at the time. Maybe she has changed her mind on that point or will – but, has she given us any reason to think so?
Once she wins and is out of the threat of losing the elections, wouldn’t that pivot her back?
Hillary Clinton: Single-payer health care will “never, ever” happen.
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That link is exactly why I think she can change. Unless you suddenly think her change stops at the point where she opposes what you say, then you have to consider the possibility that she can change back to support what you say. Accusing people of flip flopping has a very big weakness: that person can easily change back to someone you support.
That she can change her mind should give you reason to think she can be convinced to support single payer. Before Obama was elected, its been said many times by conservatives in the act of attacking him that he was also not in favor of gay marriage, the seminal civil rights movement of our generation. Now you can’t imagine he ever held that belief.
Clinton will support single-payer if enough of the base and the American people call for it. And she is capable enough as a politician to get it done should she put the power of her presidency behind it. I’ve no doubt Sanders would work to get single-payer as well, I’m simply less convinced he’ll be successful at it.
I despise the idea that “idealists” and “realists” can’t be one in the same. This is an age where ideals can and should drive reform. This popular assumption of idealism being unrealistic equates into a conventional self-defeatist mentality. What, doe Hillary Clinton think the GOP is gonna just drop its criminal obstructionism when President Obama leaves? Keep dreaming. Today’s GOP on the Congressional level is the product of 20 years of political extortion by conservative extremists to push out all “moderates”–i.e. persons who will use their own brains and vote with their own consciences. Grover Norquist is the linchpin of this extortion scheme which both seeks to control republicans at the top while starving the governmnent of funding through anti-tax pledges and punishment in the partisan media of anyone on the right who considers cooperating with Democrats. A realist needs to know what ideals are achievable–after all, this is what has worked for the GOP to seize the power that they have. Norquist and Ailes and others realized the power of new media to re-create their own party. Democrats not only haven’t done this, they (we) don’t even recognize that the nature of politics in America has been fundamentally changed by technological realities and idealists who avali themselves of them.
I remember in the diagnoses after the 2008 or 2012 election, it was the Pubs who came out as not-tech-and-new-media-savvy-enough compared to the Dems, and were looking around for a way to catch up.
And Donald Trump might be the next FDR. We elect Presidents based on what they say they’ll do, not out of a vague hope that they were lying to us the whole election and actually plan to do the opposite. If Clinton says single payer will never, ever happen, what causes you to doubt that? Why else would she say it? Certainly not to attract Sanders voters. She said it because she believes it, or else because she thinks that’s what a majority of voters want. Either way she’s made it clear that single payer is not part of her platform nor something she will attempt to institute once elected. You can hope and pray that she’s actually lying, but there’s no evidence of that, and even if she were lying, it’s not really a point in her favor.
I think Clinton said that about single-payer because she’s trying to sound moderate in comparison to Sanders, who is a bit of an extreme lefty in terms of his ideas (nothing wrong with being extreme left, I happen to be one, but I also know that it doesn’t play well everywhere). What Clinton’s doing is positioning herself for the general election. She doesn’t want the narrative to be about how left she is, she wants to come off as a moderate. Her statement about single-payer is timely then, because so many of us are still in flux with regards to health care. I live in a blue state and have great health care and a state government that supports it, but more than half the states, I think, have not had the smooth transition that California has. Many GOP governors have blocked the expansion or is actively trying to dissuade people from getting on it. This is what half of Americans face everyday when they hear Obamacare. Until that term “Obamacare” is seen by even the GOP base as a fundamental right that no politician would dare touch, talk of single-payer is too early for them. Clinton is trying to win over those who half health care for the first time and those who need health care in red states by saying she won’t take it away for something even more left. Her statement reassures those people of that.
However, once she gets into office, and if she can get a Democratic Congress, she doesn’t have to worry about those people anymore. Knowing how objectively good single-payer is, she will then listen more to the base and pivot leftward, ram single-payer through, and ensure that all Americans are covered. Its not a stretch by any means to think that its a basic outline of her plan.
Sanders is making the gamble that enough people would be supportive of single-payer to win him the presidency. That may be true, I think he’d beat Trump too, but its a risk that Clinton is not willing to take. Sanders isn’t a Democrat, he’s a liberal independent. He doesn’t have the built-in base of support that a traditional Democrat like Clinton has. He can’t match Clinton issue for issue and hope to draw away voters in the primary, he has to risk it all and go for the hail mary to get some of that support away from Clinton. That’s why its perfectly safe for him to say what he does and why Clinton won’t go as far left.
Did Clinton say something like “single payer is a terrible idea and I wouldn’t support it” or something like “single payer is a pipe dream. Let’s focus on something attainable”? Because these are not the same thing.
Two reasons. One is that Trump is disliked by the majority of Americans; the other is that he doesn’t have nearly enough in the way of solid, realistic policies (does he have any?) to pull her towards him.
Assuming that Trump is the R candidate (and that has gotten to be a bigger assumption in the past few days), she doesn’t need to bend.
I should have read this thread before…it seems I’ve been saying similar things in other threads that should have been posted here instead.
P.J. Podesta is a moron and Salon is a rag with little regard for serious analysis.
The polls Podesta is pointing to are irrelevant since neither the media nor his political opponents have actually criticized him that much or gone into his background.
If he gets to the general they will have a field day with him, particularly considering how thin-skinned and blustery he is towards criticism. Remember how he humiliated himself when in the middle of a debate he revealed he thought North Korea was the most dangerous country in the World but didn’t know how whether it was ruled by one dictator more than one, how he flailed at the press after his famous ghetto gaffe.
And wait until the media gets ahold of some of his weird positions from the 70s like how women needed to loosen up and get laid more often to avoid getting breast cancer and cervical cancer.
Is Hillary expecting Sanders supporters to vote for her if she’s the nominee? Not after saying shit like she “feel[s] sorry for young people” who support Sanders because they apparently aren’t intelligent enough to seek out accurate information on the candidates and the issues.
I can’t help but notice that the actual quote stops before the insulting part. What did she actually say?