Seriously.
I’ve really never been undecided in my entire life. I’ve been wrong, a lot, but I don’t think I’ve ever not been certain.
She’s the only serious candidate in the primary!
Sanders - way too old
Biden - way too old
Warren - too old
Buttigieg - Will never outlive the Ice Town debacle
Bloomberg - Not on the ballot?
Klobuchar - Winner by default!
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People only know her from the debates, where the media tells them she does well.
The crazy part is she is absolutely terrible in debates, but now she seems to be leaning in to this reputation of being the strong debater among the crowd.
The fact that people on this board don’t understand that bernies healthcare plan lets you go to whatever doctor you want and pay nothing is a little troubling. It’s his signature policy and people are still wandering around thinking that their healthcare choices are going to get worse!
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He needs to put together a 60-second ad introducing himself and defining himself and the movement to the general voting public. With his war chest, he could have even done it for the Super Bowl.
He’s produced these types of ads before, they’ve just mostly been used online. On that note he should be putting that kind of stuff out constantly on FB and IG.
Disagree with this. I thought she was the best chance a month ago but it became painfully obvious to me that Bernie is the only democratic candidate with a real shot.
In the rankings I always had 1. Yang 2. Warren 3. Sanders
I never thought yang had a shot so I thought warren was the choice. But too many factors from Warren flaws to Trump conditions to just the overall environment have convinced me Bernie has a shot because he can neutralize/match trump in many of his strongest areas.
Maybe some people won’t vote for him because they think he is a socialist and will stay home. If they do I will blame them entirely for a second trump term. I didn’t accept not voting for who the candidate was in 2016 and my tolerance has reached non existent levels now.
I actually hate anyone who says they won’t vote if their candidate doesn’t get the nomination. It is stupid, immature and intentionally inflicting massive harm on other people (so it makes them almost the same as any trump voter in all those regards)
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Meh, at various points this cycle I’ve considered voting for just about everyone except for Tulsi.
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Plus I could never vote for somebody that doesn’t understand my love for Lil’ Sebastian.
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ICE town costs ICE clown dem crown?
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Steyer doesn’t want to win and he’s not trying to win.
ice queen is not a nice queen
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This seems overly optimistic to me, and I think it’s reasonable to be uncertain about the outcomes of any particular universal healthcare plan. Most of the conversations on this site seem to be based on the idea that the rest of the developed world has some common healthcare system that the US has chosen not to adopt. But that’s not true - even though the rest of the developed world has adopted universal health care as a principle, countries have taken many different routes to get there. And all of those different routes involve tradeoffs.
This recent article has a pretty good discussion of healthcare in Taiwan, Australia, and the Netherlands:
To me, there are 2 factors that are crucial to how M4A will affect long-term care for the population:
- Reimbursement rates
- Utilization rates
On the reimbursement side, every other country with some form of UHC that I’ve read about exerts substantially more price pressure on providers than the US. I’m not sure exactly how much Sanders’s plan cuts down on provider payments, but different sources claim reductions of 25-40%. (Many of those sources have an obvious bias, so I don’t want to hang my hat on any one in particular.) This (presumably unbiased, but who knows) CBO analysis is interesting because it shows rates for a variety of medical procedures and is very consistent with medicare-level pricing being 25-40% lower than private insurer pricing:
You could argue that the net effect on providers wouldn’t be that bad because what’s being eliminated is admistrative costs and private insurer profits, so that provider net income wouldn’t change. But I think that’s inconsistent with the well-documented fact that physicians in the US earn significantly more than elsewhere. (https://www.medscape.com/slideshow/2019-international-compensation-report-6011814#1)
In any event, if Sanders’s plan just assumes that provider payments will be cut by 25-40% without any accompanying drop in supply, I think that’s an enormously optimistic assumption. (Obviously Sanders believes that people respond to monetary incentives in selecting their occupations - that’s why he supports raising minimum teacher salaries to $60,000.)
In terms of utilization rates, it seems obvious to me that if we’re substantially increasing access to care, there’s going to be greater usage of that care. At least I hope that’s what would happen - otherwise, what’s the point? So a big question is how that increased access will affect the already-insured population. Here, the evidence so far seems pretty good, at least based on the ACA’s Medicaid expansion. For example:
and
But I think there’s some uncertainty about how outcomes based on Medicaid expansion would translate to the M4A setting.
TL;DR:
Much of the support for M4A is based on the belief that it will lower costs and improve access for everyone, while vaguely referencing other countries as if those other countries have some common system that Sanders is simply trying to emulate. There are real tradeoffs involved and it’s very likely that those tradeoffs will negatively affect some part of the population in a move to M4A. It’s silly to act like that’s impossible or like those people are stupid for being opposed.
(I am covered by good insurance, I’m not sure if I’d be negatively affected by M4A, and I support a model that’s similar to public education - provide guaranteed minimum coverage to everyone and allow purchase of private insurance.)
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I would hope that we’re all ok with lowering doctor’s salaries and health systems’ profits as a trade off for providing universal zero cost healthcare for every American.
Like. Public defenders make a lot less than private firm lawyers do. Somehow they’re still incredibly competitive jobs with no shortage of applicants or students going to law school.
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All the “Bernie can’t pass that stuff so you should vote for (Pete/Klob/Mike)” takes are absolute garbage and almost all made in bad faith.
These assholes that gave us Al Gore, John Kerry, tried to give us Hillary and failed, then actually gave us Hillary, all of whom lost, think they have standing to talk about electability? Fuck off.
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There’s also the underlying assumption there that Moscow Mitch is ready to vote for Medicare for All WHO WANT IT, but would turn up his nose at true m4a. It’s ridiculous. If you can pass one, you can pass the other.
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Yeah it’s also like, what, you think Mitch McConnell is going to say, “Okay, you guys nominated Pete and he won, here are your votes on the public option!”
Fuck, no, he’s going to say, “That’s a socialist takeover of the healthcare system and I’m the grim reaper. NO!”
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Putting aside the fact that doctors aren’t ok with that, my point was that a decline in salaries would likely decrease the supply of doctors, negatively affecting healthcare access for every American. Reasonable people can argue about how large that effect might be or how long it would take to show up, but I don’t think you can argue the directional effect it would have.
Like. Public defenders make a lot less than private firm lawyers do. Somehow they’re still incredibly competitive jobs with no shortage of applicants or students going to law school.
This seems like an insane take and very much in line with my argument - there are huge shortages of public defenders, resulting in terrible representation.
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