...Or does an air of inevitability obtain?
That question of healthcare, and just that, could be used by voters as a ruler by which the positions/agenda of every individual Dem candidate, top ticket to bottom, can be measured. It’s been asked man times in the past, by many people, so it’s not a new question. Just one that is almost off limits anymore it seems.
Does every person in this country of ours have the right to healthcare via a single payer system or should every person depend on access to affordable healthcare provided via the insurance industry cartel?
It really could be made that simple again, if just for a moment here, to think on. A question to help determine which candidate(s) to support. The Dem candidates that believe the government of the people should be in charge vs the Dem candidates that believes the for-profit insurance interests should continue to control access to healthcare, and where each candidate (and incumbents) stand on making real lasting changes in this country.
The talk of the need for change is coming from both major political parties along with many promises. Yet the “common wisdom” from both parties assumes that we as a people must support a for-profit insurance cartel as the middleman for healthcare. That simply is not true, yet there are as many excuses supporting this theory as there are insurance lobbyists paid to make us believe it is true when it is not.
By narrowing the focus to just Healthcare instead of the many other urgently important issues, just for a time, helped me to make the distinction between laissez-faire neoliberalism (that to this day remains an underpinning of the 1990’s centrist movement — ‘Third Way’ — within the Democratic party) and radical revolutionary progress. Progress that is our mission as Dems, at least as I have come to understand it.
This same type of question, taking one issue at a time, one after the other, could be asked on most any important issue where for-profit “interests” are involved, as a tool to gauge which candidate suits the voters preferences for a better more egalitarian future
Four areas of society where the for-profit motive is corrosive & a detrimentally negative incentive that stand out:
• Healthcare; denial of service to boost profits; Big Pharma; corruption of GPO’s (group purchasing organizations)
• Education; massive student debt
• Prison industrial complex; mandatory minimums; soaring incarceration rate under cruel conditions; selling punishment
• and War; MIC and the obvious — No incentive for peace
Each has the for-profit motive that works as a negative incentive worsening that which should be the goal
These are some of my notes, links, sources & stuff:
• Bernie wants to make healthcare a right, while Hillary takes millions from healthcare companies. — good point but it is not about Hillary Clinton that is most important. It is about the insurance cartel and the status quo. The accepted inevitability that they are and will continue to be considered a legitimate industry and a necessary part of health care — yet the negative incentive of profit encourages denial of medical care. The insurance industry plays a vital role in society, but NOT in healthcare.
• incorrect debate point made by HRC that has been making around the msm concerning the cost of a single payer system
• Expanding Medicare to a single payer system would indeed save $5 trillion over ten years
• again Expanding Medicare to a single payer system would indeed save $5 trillions dollars over ten years
• Expanded Medicare for all — the basic idea is covered in HR 676 — same as it always has been. (link to full comment)
• Single payer healthcare could be enacted via reconciliation — a response to BBB’s questioning where is Bernie Sanders plan (HR 676 btw has the basics)
• A possible path to Single payer healthcare law (?): 42 CFR 406.10 - Individual age 65 or over who is entitled to social security or railroad retirement benefits, or who is eligible for social security benefits. — change age 65 to all persons with a social security number (?) maybe
• The question; Why vote for Hillary over Bernie? is not producing very adequate reasons — imo — and inevitability seem to be the real excuse, but rarely acknowledged as such
• Inevitability seems to be the less talked about, even avoided rationale behind most who would vote for Hillary Clinton in the primary — a reasoning that doesn’t quite cut it
• Hillary or Bernie. Nafta or The New Deal. Third Way or Bedrock Democratic principles. (very informative links included covering an historic timeline)
• We as a nation of people still haven’t recovered from Reaganism (my comment with Reagan the young propagandist disparaging socialized Medicine with fearmongering — the video was scrubbed — with a new link to the unscrubbed 1961 video) and all the propaganda spawned by the “conservative” movement and the Fox “News” advertising wing of the corporate shell company aka as GOP
• America has never recovered from Ronald Reagan. That’s why Bernie Sanders is so important. by Conor Lynch
• What compromise has not achieved can still be dealt with by voting for real and radical change: The Rise Of Bernie Sanders And The Panic Of Democratic Centrists — Third Way types that raise fears about altering the status quo and touted ‘moving-to-the-right’ as the winning strategy in the 1990’s
• small businesses (the truly small businesses, not just filing as one — that is) would be helped by a single payer Health care system — a lot
• with a single payer system of healthcare, worker mobility is greatly enhanced by no longer being beholden to a particular job for health care — promotes entrepreneurship and innovation. Cool creations and inventions happen
So nothing new, just this question that could be used as a gauge is at the heart of this diary about whether we’re making a choice or going with what the current political machinery has settled as the inevitable: Keep the for-profit healthcare industry as the go to provider.. or.. Healthcare as a right of all people regardless of the ability to pay the premiums? It seems to me to be a fundamental defining aspect (anti-privatization for profit — preserving the public space) in the choice of Dem candidates that could also be applied to a wide range of issues, from the top of the ticket all the way down the ballot.