He believes in America, checks and balances, and Coming Together. Not everyone runs for executive office hoping to rule by fiat.
Having said that, I don’t really think Biden really wants UHC. He would likely prefer for everyone to have HC, but wants it via a ACA pro-insurer platform.
We disagree on whether Biden is part of the problem or whether he is trying to advance progressive policy goals.
Biden is operating under a system he helped create and he shouldn’t get a pass for that.
I don’t think anyone on this forum disagrees with that.
A large part of that is because of Biden’s statements during the campaign specifically against UHC.
You have no idea what I’ve read so let’s not start insulting. This is a perfectly respectful debate. When I said something doesn’t align with politics 101 I’ve made it clear based on my understanding of it.
Man, you give Biden’s words quite a bit of influence over American politics.
I think this probably overstates matters. Theres no path to UHC because the majority of congress doesn’t want it. As far as I know there’s no way to enact UHC via executive order.
Incrementalism makes more sense in a Congress full of Joe Manchins, where bipartisan compromise and trade-offs are how things get done. It makes less sense in a partisan, polarized atmosphere where incrementalism as a default strategy is effectively negotiating with yourself.
True, but Biden ran against the Medicare For All guy and won.
If Bernie had won, the whole narrative shifts dramatically.
I mean I’m a fairly successful person and I don’t have health insurance right now because my wife got laid off from one of her two hospital jobs earlier this year when the pandemic subsided. It happened to be the one my insurance was through. COBRA was something insane like 1400/mo. and I didn’t even bother looking to see if it was possible to get it through the marketplace because the plans there have always been terrible.
I have a couple health conditions where I need to be going to the doctor regularly. I now am not going.
So this isn’t an abstract issue for me and I imagine it isn’t for many people. Yes I technically could shell out five figures for insurance that still requires me to pay a ton if I get sick. I realize I am making a financial gamble here. But that’s the whole problem with our system. That isn’t a choice I should have to make. The fact the Dems have no real urgency or plan to fix any of that is criminal especially because voters actually want it.
We don’t disagree. He is clearly part of the problem. I am on the record dozens of times making this same claim. I’m just not willing to claim everything he ever does is bad because of it.
I can agree 100% with this post you made and that the tweet is still good for healthcare access.
Exactly why the tweet is good!
I don’t think everything Biden does is bad btw. I think he has done some good things. If the infrastructure bill passes he will have done more in one year than Clinton or Obama did in eight and it won’t be particularly close.
Again I completely agree. Your healthcare system is awful. Worst by a mile among wealthy nations. It’s a national embarrassment.
What we disagree on is the reality of immediate wholesale change.
I know you don’t. I didn’t mean that directed at you. More generally. As we have established we are much closer than it sometimes appears. We are arguing over methods etc and not goals.
I do agree with this because the President has a relatively higher influence on public opinion than on the passage of legislation (executive orders excluded).
Again happy to bet it does the opposite if polling exists to settle it.
The more I think out this PC the less your position makes sense. You are an advocate of political change through protest. The entire point of protests is to amplify a message to help it get into the consciousness of the ruling class.
Today mainstream news and politics regularly discuss BLM and even abolish as totally normal topics of political discourse. A decade ago, both of those were only discussed among a tiny fraction of extreme left activists. Now Nancy fucking Pelosi is forced to respect BLM or lose her power.
Biden tweeting that healthcare is a right is the same process.
I would love to have access to Twitter or other social media data as I would also hypothesize that you could literally track the phrase “healthcare is a right” from the far left, to Bernie etc then to people like Biden.
This is obviously not true based on my posting and I guess you prefer to just insult me than to have a discussion. I’ve shown myself to change my position many times based on discussion in this forum.
I don’t see any insult there.
There’s a false narrative that history is a natural progression towards a specific end. It’s the equivalent of phyletic gradualism as a theory of evolution. But there’s not a natural political evolution towards a political end.
This is an interesting one. Assuming its true (I’ve never seen poll data on this trend over time, but I think its plausible) that would imply that some people used to think HC was a human right and now they don’t. The only way I can square that circle in my mind is that now people have come to understand that the HC = Right belief implies that single payer UHC is necessary. That sounds like progress in public perception to me.