Bernie Sanders' Medicare-For-All Bill

Yesterday Sanders introduced a bill proposing Medicare be expanded to cover everybody, for basic healthcare. Our taxes would go up, but we'd no longer have to buy health insurance (or our employers wouldn't either).

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In the House of Representatives, 115 out of the 187 Democrats have signed up to co-sponsor similar Medicare-expansion legislation. In the Senate, 15 out of 48 are with Mr Sanders on his bill.

The bill of course stands no chance of being brought up to a vote, much less passing. It would require drug companies to negotiate prices (which the lobbyists won't allow) and it would basically put 526,000 health insurance workers out of a job.

But it's an opening for discussion, and the fact that it even made it this far indicates that change is in the wind.

Eventually.

Well, don't you think the nation's gonna have to deal with people like me eventually? I mean ya'll might can wait until we die off but damn, that's gonna take a while and cost a lot while waiting.

It's coming up for discussion again.

But it's tricky:

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Medicare for All envisions the federal government spending a lot more money on health care than it does today. The government has to find that money ― by raising revenue through taxes or government-imposed premiums, cutting other spending, accepting higher deficits or some combination of the three.

The taxes and premiums would be in lieu of what private individuals and employers pay for insurance today, so that, advocates say, a majority would come out ahead. But exactly how many would depend on the budget arithmetic in the rest of the program. If the cuts in payments to doctors and hospitals aren’t deep enough, for example, the whole program would end up more expensive, requiring bigger taxes and swelling the ranks of people who would feel worse off financially.

And a whole industry would be wiped out:

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The political benefit of this simplicity is that it’s easy to explain. The main policy benefit is that it would simplify billing, which means that hospitals, clinics and other providers wouldn’t have to hire so many administrative staff. That would make health care less expensive.

But wiping out private insurance would also mean ending the insurance arrangements that the majority of Americans now have, either through their employers or through Medicare Advantage, which is the private insurance option for seniors on Medicare.

By the way, since when has Medicare billing been "simplified"? From everything I've heard it's a nightmare.

And MFA will face fierce opposition:

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The big question is how doctors, hospitals, drugmakers and all the other industries related to health care would react. Some would figure out how to become more efficient or live with lower margins. Some would react simply by reducing capacity, right at a moment when millions of newly insured people were seeking it.

And that’s assuming the price cuts would even become law. Even modest proposals to reduce what government programs pay providers and suppliers of medical care generate huge opposition from their lobbying groups. The kind that would come with Medicare for All would likely provoke an all-out war, one for which industry groups are already preparing.

Perhaps a gradual, generational, implementation makes the most sense:

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Others ... think it would be more practical, as policy and politics, to have a more gradual transition ― for example, by making the new public insurance plan voluntary for individuals and employers, while enrolling newborns so that it gets bigger over time. That’s the approach of a new bill from Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.).

Such a scheme could also preserve a role for private insurers, providing the same kind of alternative, tightly regulated coverage they do for seniors on Medicare today. Hybrid systems with both public and private insurance are actually pretty common around the world ― and succeed in establishing health care as a right, just as single government programs do.

I maintain that it can be done. Other countries have. We could move payments over to the "employment taxes" type section of paychecks. Employers pay some like most do now, those who make enough pay some in. I remain incredulous that we can lose track of trillions in the defense dept but we can't give folks healthcare.


Look, a lot of things are gonna have to change. We can't continue to live like this. On this topic and many others. Yes, entire areas or markets might be wiped out. But new ones will rise. It's like how they make sure things like electric cars and hemp don't take off because there's so much money to be made off chemicals and petrol. But that's short sighted. Just like cotton farmers survived the freeing of slaves, we will survive the freeing of people from medical debt and the need to burn long dead dinosaurs.

We're also gonna have to seriously discuss ubi soon.

Jenni wrote:

We're also gonna have to seriously discuss ubi soon.

Coincidentally:

Yuval Noah Harari wrote:

Some might argue that humans could never become economically irrelevant, because even if they cannot compete with AI in the workplace, they will always be needed as consumers. However, machines and computers could do that too. Theoretically you can have an economy in which a mining company produces and sells iron to a robotics corporation, which [then] sells robots to the mining corporation.

In fact, today computers and algorithms are already the most important buyers of bonds, shares and commodities. Similarly in the advertising business, the most important customer is the Google search algorithm.

So, if humans are needled neither as producers or consumers, what will safeguard their physical survival and psychological well-being?  One new model gaining increasing attention is universal basic income. UBI proposes that government tax the billionaires and corporations controlling the algorithms and robots, and use that money to provide every person with a generous stipend covering his or her basic needs. A related idea proposes to widen the range of human activities that are considered “jobs.”  At present parents take care of children, neighbors look out for one another, and citizens organize communities without any of these being recognized as jobs. Maybe we need to flip a switch in our minds and realize that taking care of a child is arguably the most important and challenging job in the world.

When the headline doesn't match the copy.  "Backfired"?  What backfired?

Bernie Sanders may get 'Medicare for All' as part of the coronavirus response plan.

Which is fucking ironic -- and overdue.

NoCoPilot wrote:

When the headline doesn't match the copy.  "Backfired"?  What backfired?

I don't see the word backfired anywhere in the linked article.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Bernie Sanders may get 'Medicare for All' as part of the coronavirus response plan.

Which is fucking ironic -- and overdue.

Holy shit. I could get my sore teeth fixed. That would be awesome. And new glasses. Haven't had new glasses in like 7 years. Which granted isn't as long as last time around, but still - these have never been right.

Jenni wrote:

We're also gonna have to seriously discuss ubi soon.

Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders have introduced a $2k/mo bill, but

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The plan stands a poor chance of passage in the Republican-controlled Senate, which has soured on spending.

Now is not the time to apply a dressing to that wound.  Let it bleed out first, then we'll have less bleeding to stanch.