Presidential Election: 11/3/20 ---Now the President Elect Joe Biden Thread

[DoneMessedUp]

 

 

So many damn Republicans in the Democratic party

 

[DoneMessedUp]

[Dan T.]

18 hours ago, China said:

 

Time to pull out the shaving razor?

 

 

 

 

The DJ is Steven Wright!

[NoCalMike]

One thing I wish the "middle" and/or "moderate" faction of both sides would realize is that the solutions the left present are often in reaction to the last 30 years of for the most part, a shift to the right on most economic/finance issues.   

For example, the minimum wage issue.  There reason people are demanding it go up by how much it is, is in direct correlation to how it stayed stagnant and didn't keep up with it's original purpose for so long.  An over-correction has been a long time coming.  You can't have it not move for so long and then expect people to be cool with it going up by $1.00.  

 

The college tuition/loan/lending issue is similar.  I don't ultimately think this is really about college being free, I think those cries for it, or another example of over-correcting the problem which is that the cost to go to college has ballooned so much, the loans have become a way to sign up kids for a lifetime of debt before they even exit school.  It is a huge problem that has seen little motivation from "the middle" to solve, so it feels hopeless unless you wipe out the problem completely.

 

Neo-liberalism has been a very passive "resistance" to right-wing politics over the past 30 years.  The right, despite support going down for their policies, have managed to push through their legislation time and time again, while neo-liberalism has not put up much of a fight and/or a very ineffective, limp fight.   

 

 

[StillUnknown]

 

this campaign does not listen to anyone under the age of 70

[Momma There Goes That Man]

23 minutes ago, StillUnknown said:

 

this campaign does not listen to anyone under the age of 70

No malarkey, Joe gonna go tell the stories of how he used to skip pennies down at the soda fountain 

[Springfield]

No Malarkey?  Come on Joe.  What octogenarian do you have running your campaign?

[Forehead]

I liked the Lex Express bus better.  Only in hindsight did I realize how awful that tour was.

[The Evil Genius]

23 hours ago, Destino said:

 

Is every argument against anything the far left proposes a republican talking point now?  I generally like AOC but if she's trying to become a gatekeeper and deciding who the real democrats are and what arguments should be allowed, that's going to change in a hurry. 

 

 

AOC is correct (again) though. Mayor Pete is echoing verbatim a Republican talking point. It's  probably a more nuanced view but it puts him on the outside of what he's probably trying to capture (unless he's going after a subset of the Biden voters).  

 

Personally I have no problem with free college for anyone and everyone.  The same for school meals in public schools (through high school).  

 

As an aside..and this isn't directed at you Des...but I think it applies to issues like this.

 

[Cooked Crack]

1 hour ago, Springfield said:

No Malarkey?  Come on Joe.  What octogenarian do you have running your campaign?

You know it's bad when you got to have the definition of malarkey on the bus.

[DoneMessedUp]

Hmmmm

 

 

So is Pete's plan "revolutionary" or is Bernie a Republican? I'm so confused. 

[Destino]

4 hours ago, The Evil Genius said:

 

AOC is correct (again) though. Mayor Pete is echoing verbatim a Republican talking point. It's  probably a more nuanced view but it puts him on the outside of what he's probably trying to capture (unless he's going after a subset of the Biden voters).  

 

Personally I have no problem with free college for anyone and everyone.  The same for school meals in public schools (through high school).  

 

As an aside..and this isn't directed at you Des...but I think it applies to issues like this.

When this issue came up during this election democrats everywhere were talking about how it was realistic.  It doesn’t become a republican talking point, off limits to discuss, simply because republican happens to agree that a unrealistic thing, is in fact unrealistic. 

 

I’d bet that if you put this to a vote in the house today, it would fail.  Many democrats would vote against it. When something hasn’t reached a consensus among democrats, it’s bull**** for AOC to pretend any opposition is essentially a betrayal of the party.  She’s not even the leader of the party.  

[Captain Wiggles]

Majority of democrats are in favor of m4a. Some polls say 80%+. So its a lil bit of a betrayal I'd say. Representatives once again ignoring the will of the people.

[TheGreatBuzz]

7 minutes ago, Destino said:

She’s not even the leader of the party.  

Anyone told her that?

[PokerPacker]

6 minutes ago, clietas said:

Majority of democrats are in favor of m4a. Some polls say 80%+. So its a lil bit of a betrayal I'd say. Representatives once again ignoring the will of the people.

Are they supposed to represent Democrats, or Americans?

[Renegade7]

34 minutes ago, PokerPacker said:

Are they supposed to represent Democrats, or Americans?

 

Both, and MFA still has majority approval across all Americans, not just Dems.  This all comes back to the amount of Republicans being against it, bringing it overall down to 50-50, and the GOP machine trying to convince their base this is a bad idea without an alternative.  This is a different conversation if the GOP even had an agreement on an alternative to ACA, but they didn't when they had the chance, why should we take them seriously on solving this issue now?  They don't want to solve it, why should we even bother getting them to agree with our plan when they don't have one to even compare to?

[NoCalMike]

The closest thing the GOP has come up with as an alternative is "buy across state lines" however the idea that it would lead to lower costs or premiums has already been debunked.  The GOP plan has been to get rid of Obamacare and go back to the previous system across the board.  They got pretty quiet about it when it showed to be an unpopular thing to do and when it was revealed the "replace" part was missing from the "repeal & replace" mantra.

 

Has the GOP come up with any plans short or long term for health care, besides saying no to every single thing proposed by Democrats?  Oh wait, they did sort of author Obamacare in the first place, so credit there I guess?

 

 

[PeterMP]

1 hour ago, clietas said:

Majority of democrats are in favor of m4a. Some polls say 80%+. So its a lil bit of a betrayal I'd say. Representatives once again ignoring the will of the people.

 

Polling on healthcare is hard, especially as how you define medicare for all.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/live-updates/election-2020/third-democratic-debate-analysis-and-fact-checking/what-polling-says-on-medicare-for-all/?arc404=true

 

"A Kaiser Family Foundation poll released Thursday found 77 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents favor adopting a Medicare-for-all national health plan, which has been embraced by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and others. But an even larger 87 percent majority of Democrats support having the government offer a “public option” for health insurance that would compete against private health insurance plans."

 

One way to read that is that 77% support Medicare for all.  Another way to read that is 87% don't support Sander's plan.

 

Going further:

 

"The KFF poll also found that Democrats are overwhelmingly supportive of the 2010 Affordable Care Act and that a 55 percent majority prefers to build on that law rather than replacing the ACA with a Medicare-for-all plan. Relatively few Democrats, 14 percent, said they would vote only for a candidate who wants to replace the ACA with Medicare-for-all."

 

14% support what Sanders seems to be pushing.

[Renegade7]

@PeterMP another way to interpret that is Bernie and Warren have done a terrible job of forcing the "public option" candidates to explain how that way will address the rising costs of health care.  Everytime I see a poll like that, I realize that a lot of people are more concerned with losing their doctor then the fact the bill is changing how their doctor gets paid. Doctor's won't be allowed to deny Medicare recipients, out of network will become a thing of the past.

 

Sometimes I get what some conservatives are saying in they are more scared the government is going to screw this up then saying its actually a bad idea.  It's an impossible pill to swallow for small-government folks to sign on to the government taking over an industry as large as health coverage.  This is one of those I'm convinced the only way most people will agree that it can work is if its in place and its working.

 

It's ACA all over again, there will be just this unreal level of resistance, then when push comes to shove on getting rid of it, too many people like it and getting rid of MFA will be pretty much impossible.  And then the country lives happily ever after and eventually forgets we used to let health insurance deny coverage because of pre-existing conditions and hopefully medical bankruptcy becomes a thing of the past.

[NoCalMike]

The problem is we can't have an honest debate about health care in the country when half the population has been trained to see any legislation as poison if it contains certain buzzwords, such as "tax" or "gov't/gov't run"

 

The polling on M4A ends up all over the place based on how you are framing the program itself.  It is basically a repeat of polling on Obamacare vs. "The Affordable Care Act."  Republicans poll often that they hate Obamacare but like ACA.  Their minds are blown, or put in a state of perpetual freeze when it is explained to them that they are the same exact thing. 

 

You are all witness to this every single time Bernie has to answer the same exact question about taxes being raised to pay for M4A.  The answer is the same every time, anything you pay in taxes is offset by your overall costs towards healthcare going down.  It isn't a complicated answer to understand, yet the media and debate moderators act like it is some kind of sinister revelation every time the question is answered.

 

[PeterMP]

15 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

@PeterMP another way to interpret that is Bernie and Warren have done a terrible job of forcing the "public option" candidates to explain how that way will address the rising costs of health care.  Everytime I see a poll like that, I realize that a lot of people are more concerned with losing their doctor then the fact the bill is changing how their doctor gets paid. Doctor's won't be allowed to deny Medicare recipients, out of network will become a thing of the past.

 

I honestly don't think that's a conversation Warren or Bernie want to have because it would come out poorly for them.  If you start with the assumption that Sanders plan is Constitutional (which seems unlikely given the current Supreme Court) doing things like having the government set maximal drug prices for everybody in the US (independent of insurance provider) is certainly possible.

 

Doing things like what the ACA essentially did for insurance company profits and compensation is easy to do for other industries.

 

Bernie and Warren don't want to have a conversation about how to control costs of healthcare because in doing so it will become clear that many countries have controlled costs without going to the extreme measures Bernie is proposing.  And when taking into account the likely increase in consumption with having no co-pays or deductibles, it isn't at all clear how much Bernie's plan is actually going to to control costs.

25 minutes ago, NoCalMike said:

The problem is we can't have an honest debate about health care in the country when half the population has been trained to see any legislation as poison if it contains certain buzzwords, such as "tax" or "gov't/gov't run"

 

The polling on M4A ends up all over the place based on how you are framing the program itself.  It is basically a repeat of polling on Obamacare vs. "The Affordable Care Act."  Republicans poll often that they hate Obamacare but like ACA.  Their minds are blown, or put in a state of perpetual freeze when it is explained to them that they are the same exact thing. 

 

You are all witness to this every single time Bernie has to answer the same exact question about taxes being raised to pay for M4A.  The answer is the same every time, anything you pay in taxes is offset by your overall costs towards healthcare going down.  It isn't a complicated answer to understand, yet the media and debate moderators act like it is some kind of sinister revelation every time the question is answered.

 

 

There's no real evidence that's true, especially in this case as we are just talking about Democrats.

 

If anything, the polling benefits Bernie's style of M4A in terms of naming because what Bernie is proposing it isn't really M4A.  It is a radical new plan that goes further than medicare (and any government run healthcare except for countries like Cuba).

[Destino]

2 hours ago, clietas said:

Majority of democrats are in favor of m4a. Some polls say 80%+. So its a lil bit of a betrayal I'd say. Representatives once again ignoring the will of the people.

It's too early in the process for that to mean anything.  Right now the discussions is basically "rich people will pay for everyone's college!"  Who could hate that?  The problem is that's as real as "Mexico will pay for the wall!"  (That promise also, probably, enjoyed tremendous support among republicans at the time.)

 

I wonder if that would count as a republican talking point. 

[Renegade7]

8 hours ago, PeterMP said:

 

Bernie and Warren don't want to have a conversation about how to control costs of healthcare because in doing so it will become clear that many countries have controlled costs without going to the extreme measures Bernie is proposing.  And when taking into account the likely increase in consumption with having no co-pays or deductibles, it isn't at all clear how much Bernie's plan is actually going to to control costs.

 

 

Rate setting is in his senate bill and the house bill for MFA.  What i believe will happen is the consumption will go up, the block grants will as well, and the decision will be made in whether to raise medicare rates or the size if the block grants.  Either way, the government is paying for it directly, we would be paying for it indirectly via taxes.  For now, the limited affect I'm seeing would be in my standard deduction, it will be hard to say what it will take for the situation to stabilize, but that's the goal with MFA. 

 

From what i can tell, that's not the goal of public option.  Everytime it comes it, it's presented as price controls being separate with only Khobuchar bringing it.  This is where i agree with you Bernie doesn't want to address the other ways countries do this, but the centrist don't want to address this at all, missing that this is the actual source if this conversation.  The closest we have to government insurance rates being fair to private insurance rates is Maryland and it's failing miserably. 

 

You can't price control and keep private insurance happy, their goal is to make as much money as possible.  So will centrist still have the spine to require all healthcare entities to accept public option recipients knowing the rates will be different then private insurance?  I Expect the health care contraction commercials to go into overdrive to stop this, which will allow costs to continue to skyrocket for the half that doesn't do public option at minimum, again, not solving the problem.  

 

If the Public Option candidates would come forward with their plans for price control and why they'd work better then MFA I'd be all ears.  I'm not disagreeing with everything you saying, i just feel both sides are running from the price control problem, which is the source of this debate in the first place.  It's frustrating as I'm watching my health care costs go up, this directly affects me.

[Renegade7]

8 hours ago, Destino said:

It's too early in the process for that to mean anything.  Right now the discussions is basically "rich people will pay for everyone's college!"  Who could hate that?  The problem is that's as real as "Mexico will pay for the wall!"  (That promise also, probably, enjoyed tremendous support among republicans at the time.)

 

I wonder if that would count as a republican talking point. 

 

It's automatically different because we're talking about making a different country do something versus our own citizens.  Second, there are some countries that have figured out free public college, who has ever gotten another country to pay for a wall for their neighboring country? 

 

From what I'm reading the number of folks going to college won't spike or double, the number of students with ridiculous amounts of student debt will drop like a lead balloon, that's the point, that's the real goal.  I've said before I'd prefer a realistic way to pay back my 6 figures versus having it paid off, but i absolutely support anyway to keep other folks from going through what I'm going through right now.  Millennials may have to take the L to protect Gen Z, and i can live with that if that's the compromise.

[bearrock]

8 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

If the Public Option candidates would come forward with their plans for price control and why they'd work better then MFA I'd be all ears.  I'm not disagreeing with everything you saying, i just feel both sides are running from the price control problem, which is the source of this debate in the first place.  It's frustrating as I'm watching my health care costs go up, this directly affects me.

 

Tbf, Buttigieg has come out and said he would call for uniform reimbursement rates regardless of insurance.  That would essentially fix the reimbursement at what Medicare or Medicaid negotiates, which would be the primary cost control measure under MFA.  

 

To me the real elephant in the room is the scope of coverage under MFA.  Bernie's plan is the most expansive single payer plan in the world.  That comes with a hefty price tag.  What he is essentially proposing is that we take the saving (and possibly more) from going to private insurance delivery system to single payer and use it to provide the type of expansive coverage that doesn't happen in a typical single payer program.

 

Using hypothetical numbers, suppose we spend 10k per capita on healthcare.  We can save it to 5k per with a typical single payer.  Instead, Bernie is proposing to reinvest that 5k savings in providing more coverage and eliminate deductibles that would typically be left up for people to insure on their own (as with most if not all single payer and current medicare).  

 

It's a proposal we can debate.  It may be the most meritorious.  But to me, it's a little disingenuous to call it MFA when it really is nothing like the current medicare that enjoys extremely high popularity.