@chambord Is the tell.

Whenever Warren is pressed to answer questions about healthcare, she goes on about health insurance companies.

@Not Henry Kissinger Ted talked like an outsider, and made some in his party uncomfortable, but he was obviously establishment through and through. He was always sucking up to other candidates, hoping to be everyone's 2nd or 3rd choice when their fave dropped out. Hopefully the analogy holds and we get to see Liz pick a fake running mate a la Carly. Julian Castro?

She's just like Bernie, only different...

Warren uses public messaging in her crusades as well. And I have no doubt that, as president, Sanders aides would scour the U.S. Code to make change if stymied by the political opposition. But the natural inclinations of the two senators are clear: Sanders works from the outside, Warren dives in to find ways to make progress. They can be complementary skills, and in a polarized country with lots of checks and balances, both will be important in the next Democratic administration.

But to know where someone is headed, it’s worth looking at where they’ve been. And this has been Warren’s approach since before being elected: knowing what levers of the administrative state to pull, and then using outside activism and insider relentlessness to get them pulled. It’s a worthwhile quality in a chief executive, not least because it shows a desire to do something in office beyond getting re-elected.

The Warren strategy seems clear:

1. cling to Bernie like industrial velcro to split the Progressive vote,
2. wink and nod to establishment types that, despite her 'insider relentlessness', Liz won't make structural changes.

That comes out to 12,500. For someone who makes $60K/year, that actually uses their insurance - like a broken bone, that is 20% of total wages - before taxes - that's almost the entire income tax burden...

If they don't use it at all, it's 10% of total income.

Private health insurance is a 20+% tax for most Americans. Only to be denied care and to pay $500 for the therapeutic dose of ibuprofen(4 200mg pills).

Medicare for All (I would suggest calling it the whole name, rather than the initials) will shift money from private coffers public coffers and deliver actual medical care while saving the patient thousands per year. This is a winner, clearly.

Thanks for the breakdown, @Pluto's Republic .

But how about Warren? She has refused to acknowledge that M4A would require a middle-class tax increase!

The stated tax increase is misinformation. It's an ugly poison pill that Republicans want to plant.

What families want to know is that their monthly (or yearly) total out of pocket costs for health care "insurance" will be about half what they are currently paying. Additional savings will come from substantial savings on pharmaceuticals and the lack of crippling co-pays. There will be no need to write a check to the insurance companies for $1,000+ every month for a family of four. Americans will have a lot more disposable income that they did before M4A, apart from any tax increases.

And one more thing. No more medical bankruptcies. Currently, two-thirds of the million or so personal bankruptcies that wipe out families every year are caused by exhorbitant medical bills. And the majority of these people had good health insurance!

We need to stop talking about this basic human right like a bunch of losers.

If you tell Americans that Medicare-for-all will eliminate premiums and reduce out-of-pocket costs for most Americans, the support for M4A increases to 67-30. If you tell them it will guarantee health care as a human right for all Americans, the support goes to 71-27.

However, Americans also have wariness about reforms specifically, where the track record is not so great. The last liberal attempt to fix the system — thanks to Obama selling out to the health care profiteers — manifestly failed to cover everyone or put American health care on a sustainable footing. By aborting the Public Option, ObamaCare could not bend the cost curve — thus, the health care "marketplace" didn't work at all how it was supposed to.

"Oh great, the freaking Democrats are going to 'help' us again," millions are probably thinking.

Add to this the medical lobby that is dead set against any reform that cuts into their gargantuan profits. They are flooding the media with propaganda to misinform the public and mobilize their cynicism. And, it's working.

Right now, 69 percent of Americans mistakenly say they think they would still have to pay deductibles and co-pays under Medicare-for-all, and 54 percent wrongly think they will still have to pay premiums.

But, neither is true — there is no cost-sharing whatsoever except for prescription drugs, and that is capped at $200 per year. Even more incredible, under the Sanders bill, not only is medical care covered, but for the first time the program will include dental, vision, nursing, and long-term care for all Americans, as well. This plan is wildly better than virtually any private plan — and would be accepted at every medical provider in the land. People would be celebrating in the streets once they figured out it wasn't some scam.

The key political task for a presidential candidate who wants to fix American health care is to build confidence, aggressiveness, and a sense of righteousness in the American People. A constant and broad educational campaign is something we should all participate in. We must loudly denounce the Democratic candidates who are again betraying the American People with their partial plans and stall tactics, and and trying to deny them this fundamental human right in order to enrich their corporate donors..

This is the only way out of America's dystopian health care nightmare.

______________
h/t to Ryan Cooper, national correspondent at TheWeek.com, whom I liberally paraphrased.

@tle First, there is no fucking way the DNC lets the Bern win. They'll pull a Hillary on him, just like they did in '16. By the way. H Rodent Clinton is running again, lacing up her track shoes, you know the ones with outriggers on them, ready for the race.

Secondly, to mention reduction of the MIC budget is the kiss of death in Establishment politics currently, which is why the Establishmentarians won't let Tulsi win either--but her time approaches.

yet I quickly found numerous specific proposals from Sanders to finance M4A; https://www.sanders.senate.gov/download/options-to-finance-medicare-for-...

I noticed that, as someone already on Medicare, I would pay higher taxes (tax on a little unearned income, and/or an additional 4% on all income). Well, boo hoo.

I notice also that there is no reference to cutting military spending to finance M4A. That should be politically useful in getting it passed, although I’d expect him to push for military cuts anyway.

@tle Why doesn't he get on the stick and press for huge military cuts rather than say we need to increase taxes? That would be progressive. I think the answer is pretty clear. His foreign policy sucks.

yet I quickly found numerous specific proposals from Sanders to finance M4A; https://www.sanders.senate.gov/download/options-to-finance-medicare-for-...

I noticed that, as someone already on Medicare, I would pay higher taxes (tax on a little unearned income, and/or an additional 4% on all income). Well, boo hoo.

I notice also that there is no reference to cutting military spending to finance M4A. That should be politically useful in getting it passed, although I’d expect him to push for military cuts anyway.

@Big Al

. . . and call me the minute it starts.

But I don't see it happening.

On the other hand, Bernie has a tiny chance of pulling it off. A chance of a lifetime opportunity.

budget to offset MFA taxes, it's much more than that. The dem party politicians can talk about that, but unless they come out and propose an end to US imperialism and the quest for world hegemony, it won't mean shit. Talking about reducing the defense budget by ten percent or some such bs (probably over a period of years) would hardly be the offset needed to persuade people to pay more taxes to fund M4A. Especially when the budget deficit is nearing 1 trillion per year and the national debt is now past a gazillion (over 22 T).

Not only that, truly going to a nationalized health care system, because we better do that or the rich will get all the best doctors and service any fucking way, will require a major shift, basically a shift toward socialism. So there's a double whammy, trying to justify socialism while ending imperialism. Trying to both at the same time, via this duopoly political system and this divided (by the two party system) citizenry? Right.

Don't see it happening. The only solution is revolution.

@Big Al

to the level we had at the height of the Iraq War. That was 270 billion/yr. That would keep us above every other country on earth. The only country that would be even close to us in spending would be China, which spends 215 billion/yr. We'd still be exceeding them by 55 billion dollars/yr. The next highest spender is Russia, which spends 69 billion/yr, a little more than a quarter of 270 billion. Exceeding the other countries of the world by that much should be enough imperialism for anyone, even the psychopaths who run the U.S. government. The reason it isn't is that the MIC essentially gets whatever money it asks for from the puppet Congressmen and Senators, and who would voluntarily end that racket if they were on the receiving end? Well, some people would, but those people wouldn't have set up that murderous racket to begin with.

Now, that's assuming that this spending competition matters in the way they say it does. In truth, as long as there's money enough to maintain the gigantic pile of nukes they have and money enough to spy effectively on their counterparts in other countries, there isn't going to be any organized, hot-war threat to the United States. As for terrorism, relatively little of the massive military budget actually does anything to stop a terrorist attack. Again, you're talking about surveillance and what actually ought to look more like police work, mostly, since terrorism is actually a crime and neither warfare nor a reason for warfare. Neither the nukes nor the expensive military planes nor any of a dozen other high-price implements of warfare have any applicability to preventing a terrorist attack. So the idea of this "defense" spending competition is, itself, based on a lie.

So in truth, we could have as much as 400 billion dollars a year to spend on things like healthcare--actual healthcare, rather than health insurance, which is all anybody, even Bernie, seems to want to discuss.

The real reason we can't have nice things is that Raytheon and U.S. Healthcare and their colleagues want to keep their profits.

budget to offset MFA taxes, it's much more than that. The dem party politicians can talk about that, but unless they come out and propose an end to US imperialism and the quest for world hegemony, it won't mean shit. Talking about reducing the defense budget by ten percent or some such bs (probably over a period of years) would hardly be the offset needed to persuade people to pay more taxes to fund M4A. Especially when the budget deficit is nearing 1 trillion per year and the national debt is now past a gazillion (over 22 T).

Not only that, truly going to a nationalized health care system, because we better do that or the rich will get all the best doctors and service any fucking way, will require a major shift, basically a shift toward socialism. So there's a double whammy, trying to justify socialism while ending imperialism. Trying to both at the same time, via this duopoly political system and this divided (by the two party system) citizenry? Right.

Don't see it happening. The only solution is revolution.

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal I think that the best side effect of investing more money in America and Americans will be that it will result in reduced defense spending and maybe less imperialism. Taking money from the DoD simply to reduce the deficit, etc., doesn't have a prayer in this age---look how easy it was to massively increase the defense budget under tRump. However, providing healthcare rather than a gold-plated weapon or a military base in the middle of Africa just might get public support sufficient to overcome the MICgrifters.

We are spending 670 billion on military and security matters every year, so actually, it probably wouldn't require a middle-class tax increase. It only requires that if we accept military and security spending as untouchable.