ACA, the Expansion of Medicaid, and Sanders Rigid Ideological Fixation on Single Payer
Sanders is, imho, an intellectually rigid, politically dishonest, ideological purist, incapable of evolution and adjustment in light of changed political circumstances and opportunities. And though I started out kinda of liking his authenticity," I now find almost nothing to admire in his campaign.
Nothing illustrates his rigidity and dishonesty better than his approach to Universal Healthcare.
Sanders loves to go on and on, like a robot, about the 29 million, out of over 300 million, uninsured. That is one of his main justification for wanting to start over. We can do better. Europe does better, Canada does better. So hey, we can do it too.
But two things.
First, he never ever mentions real costs and benefits involved from getting where we are to where he thinks we should be. And when he does mention costs and benefits, it's all fantasy-land stuff, easily debunked.
He is dishonest in the extreme about who would win and who would lose in the transition. He pretends as if the poor and the middle class would all be winners and the only losers would be the evil millionaire and billionaire class. But this is sheer demagoguery on his part. As many, many have pointed out, over and over again, this is just not so. The poor, for example, who are on medicaid, might be losers, as the Washington Posts points out here:
Study: Bernie Sanders’s health plan is actually kind of a train wreck for the poor
Second, he never offers any analysis -- other than the evil drug companies and the evil insurance industry -- of why that number remains as high as it is, despite the passage of the ACA. I think that's on purpose. And it's more demagoguery in action. A sober analysis of who the uninsured are and why they are still uninsured would point away from Single Payer as the most feasible and achievable way forward.
Just take one glaring example. Everybody democrat knows, or should know, that part of the reason for the 29 million still uninsured has to do with the fact that the Supreme Court, in its infinite non-wisdom, partially gutted, in a 5-4 decision, the ACA by striking down the provision that compelled states to expand Medicaid, as a condition of keeping Medicaid. The court declared that States had the right to opt out, while still keeping their current Medicaid coverage.
And we all know that many Republican governors and state legislatures decided, contrary to the interest of their own citizens, out of pure ideological pique and purity not to expand Medicaid.
How many of the still uninsured are uninsured because of this? Not all of them, but a not insignificant number of them. Roughly 5 million, by one estimate
For more see The Coverage Gap: Uninsured Poor Adults in States that Do Not Expand Medicaid – An Update
Now ask yourself, which is the more politically feasible way to get closer to universal coverage -- which we are already within less than 10% of achieving -- now that the ACA is law?
Should we do things like working to expand Medicaid and tweaking the ACA's cost controls around the edges, while making other incremental adjustments to the act?
Or should we start from scratch and take on this huge and exhausting political fight from scratch.
Only a rigid, foolish, ideologue with Europe envy, who is utterly blind to context and the path-dependency of the politically possible could opt for Sander's go for broke approach to this problem at this particular moment in history.
It's a fool's errand. Count me out. Indeed, count almost the entire Democratic party out -- even long time advocates of single payer.
Frankly, I will be so glad when Clinton finally wraps this thing up so Democrats can stop arguing over stupid strategies that amount to nothing more than tilting at windmills and genuflecting on the alter of rigid ideological purity.
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Told them then that the numbers came from Kenneth Thorpe, a former Clinton adviser.
They ignored that and are now posting OTHER quotes from the SAME article and this time with IMAGES!
No one who believes in objectivity is going to buy this article written by a Clinton crony.
I am sorry you see life that way...but it explains why we are supporting different candidates. I know we don't see eye to eye on this but I hope you have a good day. 
Check out who controls the majority of state houses.
She has no plan,she has no specifics,she has no funding proposals to pay for anything,she talks about working with states to do it that never in a million years will and you say it is viable.
thanks 
