tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8611810694571930415.post9133398102167256505..comments2024-03-28T12:25:01.094-04:00Comments on the daily howler: Sanders proposes Medicare for all!<b>bob somerby</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/02963464534685954436noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8611810694571930415.post-7641059660449425112017-09-17T02:45:46.216-04:002017-09-17T02:45:46.216-04:00Off the top of my head, a few reasons:
1. The ins...Off the top of my head, a few reasons:<br /><br />1. The institutional goal of both parties to obstruct grassroots efforts keeps it off the agenda. Overcoming willful representatives is key, and yet, they will rarely swear off the juicy campaign donations from pharma. We can't have poor people demanding "a Chavez" as top Democrat donor once said, or as the leading representative of the liberal class put it in a book explaining what happened in 2016, "a pony." A combination of brute tribalism and paychecks, or in other words... <br />2. Very smart lobbying. The insurance / pharma lobby spends money to control the dialogue around healthcare through fear. Recall the scare of "death panels" in 2007, launched by Newt Gingrich, correlated with a several year drop in support for government healthcare. It parallels the creation of Medicare, which was decried at the time as Soviet infiltration. Even the mild reforms of CHIP and managed care were attacked by astroturf campaigns funded by the industry lobby. Combine this with both parties refusing to rally people to the cause, and their own susceptibility to compliments to their strategic intellect, and the astroturf works. The leadership are convinced the population really does oppose providing themselves with healthcare. A big media trope is to point and laugh at people in red states who are at risk of losing Obamacare. Oddly, the privatization and nutritional undernourishment of the national Wendy's/Dunkin Donuts diet doesn't seem to factor into improving the intellects of the heathens. They are simply to be punished.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8611810694571930415.post-39195553996515118172017-09-16T22:00:52.274-04:002017-09-16T22:00:52.274-04:00Anon 11:39
Your reasoning has served the Military ...Anon 11:39<br />Your reasoning has served the Military Industrial Complex extremely well, though with different outcomes.gravymeisterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16075831177588700301noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8611810694571930415.post-36798722595716354572017-09-16T14:56:14.660-04:002017-09-16T14:56:14.660-04:00“…made $4.5 billion profit in the first quarter of...“…made $4.5 billion profit in the first quarter of this year. Annualized that is $18 billion out of $3.4 trillion...”<br /><br />Billions next to trillions sounds like a small thing. But I ask you, why should there be profit considered in the context of healthcare? It’s obscene. It’s depraved.<br /><br />When this issue is discussed in economic terms regarding loss of jobs (a speculative assertion), it misses the entire point of the idea of universal healthcare. At this point in time, it’s a privilege, not a right. That paradigm is corrupt to its core.<br /><br />The jobs that currently exist in our for-profit system will be affected, no doubt. But we need a better system. How we make the transition is the discussion we must have.<br /><br />Respectfully,<br />Leroy<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8611810694571930415.post-84079311103346220492017-09-16T11:52:22.720-04:002017-09-16T11:52:22.720-04:00"Using your reasoning, it would seem that we ..."Using your reasoning, it would seem that we can vastly improve our economy if we would just overpay everyone for the work they do."<br /><br />How do you and others here feel about raising the minimum wage. Please consider how it relates to this sentence. <br /><br />"You also seem to assume that all the money we would no longer spend on health care would suddenly evaporate from the economy. I would guess that if we no longer had to pay twice as much for health care we might suddenly be able to afford education for all and finally fix our infrastructure problems."<br /><br />Consider the financial crisis a decade ago. All that money (value) did essentially evaporate. <br /><br />"If we no longer had to pay twice as much for housing..."<br /><br />Interesting you picked the two examples, education and infrastructure, that are also known for excessive costs in the United States. <br /><br />"All those health insurance jobs would go the way of the buggy whip manufacturers, but there would be plenty of jobs in other areas of the economy where the spending would increase."<br /><br />It wouldn't be just health insurance jobs. Health insurance doesn't make a whole lot of money in the big scheme of things. Consider that the top five insurance companies. According to https://www.axios.com/profits-are-booming-at-health-insurance-companies-2418194773.html they made $4.5 billion profit in the first quarter of this year. Annualized that is $18 billion out of $3.4 trillion (https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2017/02/16/spending-growth), or 0.1%, spent in healthcare. Also consider that $60 billion was lost due to "fraud and waste" at medicare every year according to the GAO. (http://mds.marshall.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1178&context=mgmt_faculty) Apparently we've been making progress on this front, perhaps it is only $40 billion now. Still dwarfing health insurance profits.<br /><br />So if we reduced healthcare spending by half it would be hundreds of thousands of people affected, perhaps millions, including doctors, nurses, therapists, etc. People with mortgages and student loan payments whose entire life just got flipped upside down. Then they're told they could be teachers or construction workers instead? I'll go ahead and add "coders" in there too. It would be a greater disruption than the financial crisis of 10 years ago. <br /><br />---<br /><br />"So I think it seems a bit of a stretch to say that the 19% of our economy of which healthcare is comprised would go bankrupt. As I mentioned, it will be a difficult transition. But once the profit motive is excised, with all of its attendant overhead, I would think (as no expert on economics) that it could be done."<br /><br />It would probably be larger than 19%. It would affect the companies directly involved, the schools whose graduates are now unemployed, the banks who own their houses, and so on. One man's cost is another man's wages. <br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8611810694571930415.post-82380034572468051282017-09-15T19:02:13.773-04:002017-09-15T19:02:13.773-04:00Looks like I missed the word “sure” in my response...Looks like I missed the word “sure” in my response to your post. Oops!<br /><br />My mother, an RN with an MBA, worked for years for a private company (one of the peripheral industries you allude to), and her sole job was to approve Medicare and Medicaid payments. She was good at it, and would routinely deny payments when she deemed them inappropriate.<br /><br />If we do get Medicare for all, I think we would see a transition from insurance companies making life-or-death decisions to one where actuaries work for the new system. For jobs in which my mother worked, there would likely be no net loss. It takes an expert to do this kind of work, so insurance company employees in the field would likely find that work.<br /><br />So I think it seems a bit of a stretch to say that the 19% of our economy of which healthcare is comprised would go bankrupt. As I mentioned, it will be a difficult transition. But once the profit motive is excised, with all of its attendant overhead, I would think (as no expert on economics) that it could be done.<br /><br />Leroy<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8611810694571930415.post-15685544964373697702017-09-15T17:52:46.698-04:002017-09-15T17:52:46.698-04:00Good day everybody,
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[Zzzzz]"What is the point ....?"<br /><br />[Zzzzz]Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8611810694571930415.post-26229312357303287232017-09-15T09:32:16.614-04:002017-09-15T09:32:16.614-04:00Actually, Medicare for all would increase everyone...Actually, Medicare for all would increase everyone's taxes. And if Republicans think Obamacare is socialized medicine, imagine what they would think about this idea. <br />Does Bob actually advocate Medicare for all? It's never quite clear from his columns. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8611810694571930415.post-57450090697347896762017-09-15T07:57:12.592-04:002017-09-15T07:57:12.592-04:00What is the point of this cryptic slam? What is the point of this cryptic slam? Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13197292277189338349noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8611810694571930415.post-62259018189492656912017-09-15T07:45:45.988-04:002017-09-15T07:45:45.988-04:00Bob does this kind of column routinely, and I, for...Bob does this kind of column routinely, and I, for one, found the Mika columns very interesting, too. Especially since I have no plans to ever read them, I found Bob's synopses of these books both comical and alarming, especially as part of his larger point about the relative paucity of simple fairness and predictable sanity that seems to go far to define the outlook and behavior of so many of our "star" liberal pundits.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13197292277189338349noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8611810694571930415.post-5021321144116854192017-09-14T23:37:21.949-04:002017-09-14T23:37:21.949-04:00The NYTimes did a good job comparing Tig Notaro an...The NYTimes did a good job comparing Tig Notaro and Louis CK today.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8611810694571930415.post-48128774731903487852017-09-14T22:34:02.609-04:002017-09-14T22:34:02.609-04:00" .... but I think Bob ...."
[yawn]" .... but I think Bob ...."<br /><br />[yawn]Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8611810694571930415.post-25282254740404306852017-09-14T19:58:27.146-04:002017-09-14T19:58:27.146-04:00Bob asks why no one has addressed the seeming cont...Bob asks why no one has addressed the seeming contradiction. I suspect it is because you don't want to be criticizing Medicare when you are trying to expand it to cover more citizens. It is flawed, as Somerby notes, but pointing out those flaws while launching a major campaign to promote more Medicare for all, just seems counterproductive.<br /><br />This isn't rocket science. Why isn't that obvious to Somerby? Does he really think Maddow should be attacking the system Sanders is trying to expand? (Yes, it will be perceived as an attack, even though it is an improvement to it.)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8611810694571930415.post-81918542575036142442017-09-14T19:00:49.475-04:002017-09-14T19:00:49.475-04:00“For the curious, Medicare isn't much of an im...“For the curious, Medicare isn't much of an improvement than the $9400 figure per capita.”<br /><br />I appreciate the link, but I think Bob directly addressed just that point: Medicare covers people over 65, and it can be assumed that spending for the elderly is almost by definition more expensive than spending for younger people. Wouldn’t Medicare for all serve to spread costs (statistically) to lower that per capita figure?<br /><br />I’m not how you reasoned that cutting costs to the levels that other nations with universal healthcare pay would result in a 1.5 trillion loss to the economy, but it seems to me that figure would necessarily include the waste and profit motive that defines our current system.<br /><br />Just like the fossil fuel model we currently subscribe to for our energy needs, healthcare needs a serious overhaul. It ain’t gonna be easy, and it won’t happen overnight, but the necessity for it is obvious.<br /><br />But perhaps neither scenario will happen at all, as long as our government is in thrall to the oligarchs. It’s going to require a mass movement to get these things done. Bernie seems to be on the front in addressing the healthcare issue.<br /><br />Leroy<br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8611810694571930415.post-90535968151219936532017-09-14T17:26:28.818-04:002017-09-14T17:26:28.818-04:00For the curious, Medicare isn't much of an imp...For the curious, Medicare isn't much of an improvement than the $9400 figure per capita.<br /><br />http://www.kff.org/medicare/state-indicator/per-enrollee-spending-by-residence/<br /><br />Sad to say that if you cut costs to international levels you also cut $1.5 trillion and more from the economy. Fact is the USA is POOR and getting worse. Shipping all those jobs overseas does have an effect, you're seeing it in the average american being priced out of healthcare, education and housing. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8611810694571930415.post-88740781973186355982017-09-14T16:29:00.916-04:002017-09-14T16:29:00.916-04:00I like the tone of this post, although don't k...I like the tone of this post, although don't know why the snark at the end about Rachel Maddow and how much she makes. After all, I heard Sanders saying this on MSNBC! Good on them, right? <br />I know this is just the beginning of the discussion, but not every doctor accepts Medicare patients currently. That's a potential problem. And what will happen to the billions of dollars that the insurance companies invest in the market? <br />Anyway, I would rather see columns about this than about Mika Brzezinski's books. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com