https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/barack-obama-medicare-for-all-good-new-ideas_us_5b92b971e4b0162f472cd52c
Former President Barack Obama called “Medicare for all” a “good new idea” on Friday afternoon, providing a high-profile boost to the nascent progressive movement pushing the policy.
In a speech at the University of Illinois, Obama argued that Democrats were innovating policies aimed at addressing the unique economic challenges facing young people, who in many
cases do not have the same opportunities as their parents’ generation.
“It’s harder for young people to save for a rainy day, let alone retirement,” he said. “So Democrats aren’t just running on good old ideas like a higher minimum wage, they’re running on
good new ideas like Medicare for all, giving workers seats on corporate boards, reversing the most egregious corporate tax cuts to make sure college students graduate debt-free.”
Medicare for all is what progressive activists and lawmakers call a single-payer health care system. In such a system, which has become a top priority for parts of the Democratic Party
base, Americans would receive health care coverage from the same federal program.
Obama’s complimentary remarks about Medicare for all, while not exactly a dramatic departure from his previous comments, represent the most significant establishment imprimatur
for a policy that most mainstream elected Democrats viewed as fringe as recently as three years ago. During her presidential primary contest against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in
2016, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who went on to defeat Sanders and clinch the nomination, said that Medicare for all would “never, ever come to pass.”
Obama, by contrast, has never dismissed the idea out of hand. While discussing the Affordable Care Act at a May 2009 town hall, Obama said, “If I were starting a system from scratch
then I think that the idea of moving toward a single-payer system could very well make sense.”
“That’s the kind of system that you have in most industrialized countries around the world,” he continued. “The only problem is that we’re not starting from scratch.” It’s a sentiment
Obama repeated as recently as January 2017.
Obama’s remarks were greeted with a mix of reactions from progressive activists on social media, some of whom asked why the former president had not backed the policy sooner.
“I can think of about 8 reasons why this is infuriating for people like me to hear him say now, but I sure am glad he said it,” tweeted Dan Riffle, a congressional aide to Minnesota Rep.
Keith Ellison, the House’s lead co-sponsor of single-payer legislation.
In a follow-up interview, Riffle, who previously worked for former Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), a longtime champion of Medicare for all, was more effusive in his response.
“There’s a very good chance that this is a watershed moment in the single-payer movement,” Riffle said.
He noted that Obama’s stamp of approval could win over some Democrats who reflexively oppose ideas championed by Sanders. “It’s one of the things that can go a long way to heal
that rift between people in the party,” he said. Medicare for all is not technically a new idea. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt considered including some form of universal public
insurance in the 1935 law creating Social Security, and promoted the idea until his death in 1945.
Present-day progressive crusaders like Sanders and Conyers pushed single-payer legislation going back to the early 1990s. But for decades, until Sanders’ presidential run, the policy
was widely treated as a far-left pipe dream.
I know people are gonna say "Why didn't you do this while you were president?" but at this point I'm just happy that the idea is proliferating, and when you have a mostly republican government shooting down all your stuff, I don't think Medicare For All is gonna slip through the cracks.
The ACA would have had a public option,
During the ACA fight, many congressional Democrats and progressive activists unsuccessfully fought for the inclusion of a “public option” in the individual insurance market exchanges the law created. In the end,
then-Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent who caucused with the Democrats, withheld his support for the provision, preventing it from making it into the Senate bill, which became the final legislation.
Ever since, advocates of the policy have debated whether Obama and other Democratic leaders exerted enough pressure on Lieberman ― and whether that would have mattered. While Lieberman ultimately killed
the policy, other moderate senators and key industry groups also made their support of the bill contingent on its exclusion.
Joe Lieberman is like the gollum of American politics. He pokes he shriveled head up every once in a while to completely fucking ruin everything and then returns back to his cave to devour raw fish
I never thought I'd actually be thanking Lieberman of all people for something...
Someone needs to represent the regressive, troglodytic cave-dwellers, I guess.
ya thankyou for only going partway and making the last 10 years all about healthcare.
Went back and skipped through the FP thread from when Obamacare passed, there was a 12-page debate about whether it was good or not. Also a lot of users I recognise and haven't seen in years, RIP
I kinda think it would be a good idea to have something called The Pubic Option to reduce the spread of STDs. I'm not really joking either, as a lot of them spread like crazy yet aren't serious enough to be seen as emergencies.
I was watching a Secular Talk video the other day, and he said that, during the 2008 primary against Hillary, Obama was against universal coverage whilst Hillary was for it. Strange how times change. Obama ran a pretty progressive campaign, but actually turned out to be fairly moderate - it's a shame, but it shows that people like Bernie can definitely win, because people don't necessarily vote based on an overton window policy matrix, but rather candidates' personalities and perceived sincerity.
Honestly, we need less healthcare for all, and more checks n' balances for price gouging. Seriously, the shit that happens between insurances and hospitals regarding the price of things is fucking ridiculous.
Why not both?
Whilst healthcare remains so insanely profitable, price gouging is almost inevitable. I honestly think universal healthcare is something that can be implemented with less chance for it to be destroyed later.
People will be dumb and forget the political climate back then was completely different to today. Some watered down version of it in the ACA was fear mongered as communism reborn.
Bernie Sanders wasn't even a blip on the radar until 2016 for anyone except for the most politically aware.
Do you remember when Scorpius was a proper libertarian? I do. Kinda funny to see how much things have changed - feels like I've been here forever, and still I was only barely around for that thread (don't remember if I read it, though).
I've been chuckling to myself for the last half hour thinking about this post- to the point where my coworkers are giving me concerned looks. Thanks. proboardslol
Joe is a weird one. He wanted to ban video games (literally his words), but settled for the ESRB, which ironically allowed developers to make more transgressive material.
Jesus christ that thread is just an amalgam of completely uninformed anecdotes and insanely stupid and misleading ideas. You can't call something like that a "debate" imo.
No I'm pretty sure we need healthcare for all like those nations that already do that and have better life expectancies than us and pay less public money per capita for healthcare than we already do. Public money, not even counting our private expenditures, which are massive compared to other nations.
Actually, healthcare is one of those things (like education) that you can completely socialize and still massively improve your economy. Typical market forces literally do not apply to any pharmaceuticals other than OTC garbo
Nah y'know what, it's a terrible idea. A single payer system is substantially less of an economic backbreaker, but it's still a financial assistance system that is geared more towards paying off insurance costs than anything else
The US needs an NHS more than the monetary black hole that is its various medical financial assistance programs to help pay for something that's ridiculously overpriced in the first place
All this stuff about paying for people's coverage is increasingly starting to strike me as chaff. We shouldn't be worried about people's coverage and who's going to pay for it, we should be worried about why the hell it's so hard to pay for it in the first place. How the hell do bags of literal salt water end up costing hundreds of dollars?
I've already made noise about this subject here and here
The healthcare conversation needs a fundamental change in its subject matter. Who the hell cares who's paying the bill when there is objectively no reason for the bill to cost this much? Look literally anywhere else in the world. Medicine does not and should not cost this much
US almost got something resembling a baseline universal healthcare and some users were heralding the doom of America. Surreal.
While obviously that situation would be the ideal, this is a significantly easier to implement, immediate partial fix. We should implement this and then immediately begin work to socialize health care, but this is an important stopgap for people in the meantime.
why
why
what the fuck?
Obama was for single payer from before he even ran for office. He settled for Obamacare because there wasn't enough support for it, either publicly or even within the democratic party.
I realize it starts in a slightly weird place and people don't like Joey but is this post actually that objectionable? I'm like 70% sure what he's talking about is basically the same thing as my post up there with the exception of the US needing an NHS part
My point is saying that we need to put more regulations on price gouging before we go full front with bringing forth a national healthcare program. Right now, if we were to enact a National Healthcare program, we'd be paying far more then would be needed, thanks in part to current price gouging methods.
I mean, that is kind of fair, and Bernie's current bill doesn't actually do much to address it.
But this also isn't an either/or situation, and if this bill is ever passed it will most certainly be expanded and revised.
The issue is that a one-payer system would need a bill that hits both birds with one stone. Creating price gouging protections in the current political climate on their own would be a huge fight just to keep them from being repealed. However, getting them in with a OPS bill would give them the protection they need. Once OPS is implemented, revoking it would be like revoking Social Security.
I want a one payer system, but not a half-assed one. If, as Sitkero pointed out, the prices for everything are significantly more extensive than what is found in other 1st world nations (without addressing it simultaneously with the OPS) then it will turn into a fuck ball really quick.
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