How can we win Medicare for all?

[guillaumeb]

From the article:

Before the ACA, Michael Moore's 2007 documentary Sicko--which focused on the victims of the for-profit health insurance industry rather than on the United States' exclusion of fifty million people from health care coverage--provided a serious boost to activist organizing for Medicare for All......

The Medicare-for-All movement is engaged in a number of strategic debates right now. Should we puruse a state-based legislative strategy or a national one? How much of our collective resources should we devote to political lobbying and electoral campaigns versus broader political organizing? How do we organize the millions of health care victims? How do we build Medicare-for-All committees in communities and workplaces?

To read more:

https://socialistworker.org/2017/09/05/how-can-we-win-medicare-for-all

[guillaumeb]

1. Also from the article:

Yes, We Should March
For the first time since Medicaid and Medicare came into being, we are within striking distance of a successful fight for universal health care. But we are not yet on the precipice of victory. We desperately need to develop the social forces capable of challenging both parties' pro-corporate obstinance toward government-provided health care.

[Demsrule86]

12. We have no branches of government...we are not within striking distance...the bill in the Senate

will not be even brought to a vote...but we are within striking distance of losing the ACA and killing thousands...priorities folks.

[guillaumeb]

16. I interpreted the statement to mean that public sentiment

is clearly in favor of single payer.

[Demsrule86]

19. I don't see that, but even if true...the GOP cares nothing for public sentiment.

[delisen]

2. address any issue of job loss for implementing medicare for all

[guillaumeb]

5. Address the job losses attendant upon the rise of the automobile industry.

Many stables, horse farms, carriage makers, and attendant industries lost jobs. This is a non-issue that is generally raised by the Insurance industry.

[delisen]

13. I doubt it is a non-issue for people working

Your question was "How can we win Medicare for All"

I took your question seriously, and am a person who is well aware of worker displacement issues and the problems workers and their families, including children, face when a breadwinner is displaced due to changes in an industry.

I think any plan for Medicare for All, need to include a plan for meeting the income needs of workers who may be displaced by a change to a more efficient system both from a human rights standpoint and as a practical means of getting the support of workers in the industry.


You cite the rise of the automobile industry-but this is 2017 not early 1900s. Why would you not want to include a plan for meeting the needs of displaced workers workers in any plan?

[guillaumeb]

17. The primary goal should be to improve healthcare in the US.

Retraining displaced workers, whether they are coal workers, or oil industry workers, or Insurance industry workers, should also be addressed, but as a secondary issue.

[GulfCoast66]

3. I do not want Medicare for all...

The nations with Medicare for all type systems like the U.K. and Great Britain are in no way better and in many ways worse than nations with mixed financed universal health care like Germany and France.

Plus, the mixed systems will be so much easier to sell to the people since employers still have a role. I am willing to pay more taxes for healthcare for all like under the ACA, but even a social democrat like me would pause at the notion that the good health care I have would become Medicare.

Please read about all the various ways other nations provide health care for all their people. Hell, the ACA would be sufficient if all states bought in and congress actually worked to make it work.

That is what infuriates me about making 'single payer' or 'Medicare for all' a litmus test for getting votes from 'progressives' whatever that means.

Have a nice evening.

[guillaumeb]

6. Do you prefer that the US is ranked number 37 in health outcomes?

There is literally no reason that healthcare should be linked to the private Insurance industry. Private insurers exist to make a profit out of denying access to healthcare. The Canadian system is ranked much higher, and it accomplishes this higher ranking at a significantly lower cost per citizen than does the US profit centered system.

So by any comparison, cost or access, the US system and the ACA fail because the ACA is linked to the profit centered US Insurance industry having a monopoly.

[GulfCoast66]

11. The Canadian system is far better than ours

But IMO the French and German system is better than the Canadian system.

So sue me if I want to emulate 2 of the best systems in the world. Not to mention I believe it would be an easier sell to the American people.

[guillaumeb]

15. I misunderstood your previous post. I apologize.

I am very familiar with the Canadian system. Most of my family still lives in Canada. The reason that I believe that a Medicare based system would work is that US voters are already familiar with Medicare, and millions are already covered by Medicare. It has the advantage, if that word truly applies, of being a US crafted approach.

[GulfCoast66]

18. You make a valid point

And may be correct. My thought is that if we do a mix of systems, leaning heavily on non-profit primary providers subsidized by a mix of private non-profits for those wanting to abound any out of pocket cost it would be more palatable to Americans than a Government run system. It also keeps the employers in the picture. Lots of Americans believe they get great health coverage from their employers and would be reluctant to give it up totally. France eased into their current system like I believe the US will have to do. Personally I would prefer an immediate change. Regardless the key is to pretty much remove the profit motive from health care. It is flat out immoral.

I think we agree on the big picture. Maybe we vary on the details.

Have a nice day.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

10. Medicare is a "mixed" system.

I have Medicare, which I pay for each month, the amount determined by my income of a few years ago. Then, I have supplemental insurance, to cover the percentage that Medicare doesn't cover.

I'm uninsured for dental and vision, unlike when I worked.

So, it's not exactly like the Great Britain's health service. It's not "single-payer".

[Generic Other]

14. My mother had both Medicare and Tricare for military retirees

She received 1000 times better care than civilian hospitals. No billing, no waiting, extremely competent doctors and specialists.

It is bull that Americans can't have decent affordable healthcare. It is just that some people don't want the rest of us to have healthcare at all.

[BigmanPigman]

4. We should do it as a law. Kamala Harris signed onto it with

Bernie. Many Repubs in the past actually wanted it (Nixon is one of them). Today's GOP is against everything the Dems want just because they are intent on being partisan and the Freedom Causus/Tea Party asses have put it into the GOP creedo. Of course they would never admit that Rupubs ever wanted universal healthcare now. I hate them and McCain who now gives "thumbs up" to repealing the ACA.

[guillaumeb]

7. Agreed. The point about Nixon is a great one because Nixon was a conservative in 1960.

But the GOP, and the parameters of acceptable political thought, have been steadily moving to the far right since Reagan began following the plan given to him.

[MineralMan]

8. Elect strong Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress,

along with a Democratic President. That's how. No other plan will work. That's how we can do that, or an equivalent single-payer healthcare system.

Until we do that, there is no chance of such a thing being enacted. So, there's our challenge for 2018 and 2020. Are we up to it?

[guillaumeb]

9. On target.

We must change Congress. Surveys show generally strong support for a single payer system, but the GOP has no interest in changing anything that might impede the flow of campaign contributions from a very profitable industry.

If likely Democratic voters actually voted in every election the GOP gerrymandering that occurred subsequent to the 2010 election would not have happened.

[Demsrule86]

20. There is this little thing called the gerrymander you know...I hope we can change Congress but

it's a toss up.