For years now, I (along with many others) have criticized Bernie Sanders for the big blank section of his "pure" Medicare for All single payer healthcare proposal. He's kind of, sort of given some ideas about how he proposes paying for it in the past, but yesterday he finally released an updated, revised list of additional taxes, loophole cuts and so forth which he claims would cover the total cost.
According to a February 15, 2020 study by epidemiologists at Yale University, the Medicare for All bill that Bernie wrote would save over $450 billion in health care costs and prevent 68,000 unnecessary deaths – each and every year.
However, in the wake of that back & forth, a Twitter follower of mine, a woman of color who goes by the handle @Kamalaallday, posted an angry rant which I felt lent a lot of insight as to why many in the black community aren't nearly as keen on "Medicare for All" as envisioned by Sanders and other M4All activists as you might expect.
I already knew about some of her complaints and concerns below, but not all of it. Instead of putting words in her mouth, I'm just gonna let her speak for herself.
I've embedded the first tweet directly, but have converted the rest of the thread into bullets and reworked the structure (putting half-sentences together and adding paragraph breaks, etc.) for easier readability, but have otherwise left her entire thread as is. I strongly advise that folks read it all...food for thought:
I don't normally post blog entries about the occasional Twitter flare-ups I get into with die-hard Medicare for All supporters, but this one strikes me as being especially noteworthy for several reasons.
David Klion is the News Editor at JewishCurrents and a writer for The Nation and The New Republic. As you can imagine, he's a pretty left-wing/progressive kind of guy, and a devout Bernie Sanders supporter. He has a verified account (as I do) and has about 55,000 Twitter followers (compared to my 35,000, FWIW). In other words, both of us have small but respectable followings on social media and are what the powers that be would likely consider "low-level" (?) Twitter influencers.
He and I have followed each other on Twitter for several years. We don't directly talk to each other very often, however.
So last night I whipped up a bit of a fuss on Twitter with my response to an exchange between Pete Buttigieg and Rachel Maddow:
Asked by @maddow about a McKinsey client laying off thousands of insurance company workers — and whether Buttigieg’s work played a role — Buttigieg turns it around and warns that Medicare for All advocates would end every insurance worker’s job.
Maddow: "When you did that cost & overhead assessment for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, a couple years after that, they laid off like 1,000 people. Was your work part of what led to those layoffs?
Buttigieg: " I doubt it...I don't know what happened after the time that I left, that was in 2007, when they decided to shrink in 2009. Now, what I do know is that there are some voices in the Democratic primary right now who are calling for a policy that would eliminate the job of every single American working at every single insurance company in the country."
In mid-November, a few dozen of the country’s most influential advocates of Medicare-for-all were reviewing details of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s plan to finance the proposed government-run program when they learned that she had unexpectedly changed her position.
A few weeks ago, I said the following about Sen. Elizabeth Warren regarding healthcare policy:
I'm generally supporting Elizabeth Warren in the Democratic Primary (not a full endorsement, but I've been strongly leaning her way for awhile now)...
...but I'm also not happy with her seeming 180 degree shift on how to best achieve universal healthcare coverage from her brilliant CNN Town Hall response in March to her cut 'n dried "I'm with Bernie" stance since June.
HOWEVER, for the time being at least, that seems to be where she's decided to lay her marker, so it is what it is.
(Note: Since then, I've publicly stated that I'm now leaning more towards Sen. Kamala Harris who was always my strong #2 choice. This doesn't mean I no longer like Warren--the two have simply swapped places in my #1 and #2 column.)
(sigh) Regular readers know two things about me when it comes to Sen. Elizabeth Warren:
I'm generally supporting Elizabeth Warren in the Democratic Primary (not a full endorsement, but I've been strongly leaning her way for awhile now)...
...but I'm also not happy with her seeming 180 degree shift on how to best achieve universal healthcare coverage from her brilliant CNN Town Hall response in March to her cut 'n dried "I'm with Bernie" stance since June.
HOWEVER, for the time being at least, that seems to be where she's decided to lay her marker, so it is what it is.
The single biggest headache she's been dealing with all summer and fall, however, has been the "Will You Raise Taxes On The Middle Class" question which keeps popping up in interviews and the Democratic debates. Bernie Sanders has, to his credit or detriment, stated it plainly: Yes, his plan would indeed raise taxes on households earning more than $29,000/year.
(Yes, that's my own selfie with Sen. Warren from Netroots Nation, July 2014)
A few months ago, I noted a rather jarring shift in Sen. Elizabeth Warren's rhetoric when it comes to achieving universal heatlhcare coverage between her CNN Town Hall in March and her first official Presidential Debate appearance in late June.
In March, she gave a detailed, thoughtful, 5-minute answer which mentioned the importance of protecting the Affordable Care Act from Trump & the GOP's sabotage, including specifically calling out the looming #TexasFoldEm lawsuit which threatens to wipe out the entire law.
Had a great time discussing #MedicareForAll opposite @charles_gaba on Medicare for America for Ferndale Dems. Happy to report no one was called a neoliberal or a Bernie bro.
Over the past month or two, I've written a couple of pieces which explored the whole "MFA would eliminate private health insurance" issue.
My main point was that while most MFA activists have long insisted that eliminating (or virtually eliminating) private health insurance companies is not only a feature but the entire point of moving to single payer, ever since Kamala Harris walked back her “get rid of all that!” comment in a CNN Town Hall the next day, I’ve seen some MFA activists fall all over themselves to suddenly insist that “no, no...there’d still be plenty of room for private insurance, really!”
