The economics on the question of public option vs true single payer are not complicated. For profit healthcare has looted and pillaged this country at least since WW2. We spend 6% more of GDP on healthcare than the next developed world competitor, and that’s worse than it sounds like because in real terms our GDP is significantly larger.
That 6% goes a lot of places, but ultimately it’s pure rent seeking and buys us a system with worse results than the rest of the world gets. We are doing absurd amounts of unnecessary medical work while simultaneously not doing huge amounts of massively +EV medical work because of insurance coverage… because the unnecessary puts money in the pockets of the rent seekers.
This is the big economic issue of our time. That money could be used to improve our schools, rebuild our infrastructure, do massively more basic research (including drug research into… cures. Something drug companies aren’t generally too keen on because the ROI isn’t as good as having a pill you need to take for the rest of your life), and generally make life better for everyone.
People ask how we’re going to pay for stuff. Reclaiming the 6% of GDP we’re wasting would be a damn good start. If you claim you’re a liberal/progressive/sensible person and think that we need to keep for profit healthcare you’re kidding yourself.
This issue is more important than any of the other issues (except maybe climate change) combined. It helps drive every bad thing in our country. It matters more than LGBTrights, racial justice, or making the tax code more progressive… because getting raped by healthcare costs is having a bigger impact on LGBT Americans, POC Americans, and poor Americans than literally anything else. It’s not just the fact that they are disproportionately affected by the terrible quality of our healthcare system, it’s that the 6% we are wasting could be spent on literally anything else.
So yeah Pete is a complete piece of shit. So is Joe Biden. So is Amy Klobuchar. Their stand on that stage at the 4th debate taking shots at M4A for the benefit of their own personal careers is literal proof that they are selfish assholes who don’t deserve to be elected dog catcher. Really any Democrat who took health lobby money to fight against public healthcare in this country falls into the same category. I know it’s a lot of names and includes pretty much the entire GOP. I could forgive some of these people, but if there was an option to have them all drummed out of public life with a snap of my fingers they’d be gone in 5 seconds or less.
This probably seems extreme and I’m sure skydiver is going to be really mad at me about it. I don’t particularly care. This is the issue I care the most about because it’s the biggest issue full stop. If our next president got nothing at all done but M4A they’d be the best president of this century probably through 2100.
I don’t care even a little bit how many eggs they have to break to get that done. And I don’t give even a microscopic amount of shit about the mostly administrative employees who will lose their jobs as a result of M4A. They need to find new jobs for the good of the country.
This issue is very black and white and very big. It is causing an unbelievable amount of human suffering when you zoom all the way out and look at the real impacts of both getting worse results in one of largest countries in the world’s health system + the loss of 6% of GDP in the supposedly wealthiest country in the world. It’s just bigger than any individual person. This thing is macro important and the only reason it didn’t get done in the 50’s, 70’s, 90’s, or 2000’s is just corruption plain and simple.
As to the incrementalist approach… we haven’t beat the healthcare lobby once yet. Even though we’ve tried god knows how many times. So let’s not pretend like planning on beating them more than once is a viable strategy. If we let them live they will do everything they can to weaken the healthcare system for their own profit until we are right back where we are today. This thing needs to be uprooted, burned, and completely replaced. We can’t keep any aspect of the current system because the current system is a cancerous tumor on our nation. You don’t keep pieces of tumor so that they can regrow. You cut them out completely.
Just about the only good news about the current system is that, like a tumor, it is starting to kill its host. Everyone can see it and everyone wants something done about it. If we fix it partially and push it back below the water line we are making a devils bargain that allows it to keep feeding on us to 50-75% of the current extent, and guarantee that our children/grandchildren will be facing an identical situation to the one we face today. That option is literally worse than doing nothing. At least the status quo is obviously terrible and is generating political will in favor of really changing it. We need to take this pain until it becomes so excruciating that we can justify doing the right thing. We do not need to remove 50% of the tumor so that we can be more comfortable while it regrows so that we can move on to smaller/easier things.
post imo.