And They're Off! The Democratic Candidates for 2020

[71 dB]

They never ask "how are we gonna pay for it" when it's about Wall Street bailouts, tax cuts for the rich and military budget increases. There is always money for those things, but the second it's about improving the lives of regular people, there is no money at all. Funny how that works. As if the system was utterly corrupt, wouldn't you say?

[71 dB]

I don't see the U.S. Electorate going in for the "It'll get paid for, somehow, Trust-Me play."

Somehow? Bernie wrote himself the "damn bill" so that these things are explained. We KNOW how medicare for all would be paid for: Tax increase. For regular people the savings of not having to pay premiums etc. costs outweight the tax increase. For the richest people tax increase outweights the savings. That's what Bernie means by "the rich will pay their fair share."

[Karl Henning]

"Somehow, Bernie will get the bill through! He's a miracle!

[ritter]

https://www.youtube.com/v/z_xU6hkdgAw

[71 dB]

"Somehow, Bernie will get the bill through! He's a miracle!

Okay, for the sake of argument let's assume Bernie gets elected the president and he fails to get medicare for all bill through. What do you lose in that situation compared to a corporate president who doesn't even want to do medicare for all? Nothing. You have only something to win with Bernie.

As Kyle Kulinski says, even if Bernie only gets 20 % of his agenda implemented, it will help regular people a lot. Fighting for medicare for all may only give you public option as a compromise, but even that is an improvement compared to ObamaCare. If you start the fight from public option, how much improvement can you get? 

[71 dB]

DNC & Iowa Dem Party Not Even Hiding Their Contempt For Democracy

https://www.youtube.com/v/-sn2-P2aUbs

[drogulus]

They never ask "how are we gonna pay for it" when it's about Wall Street bailouts, tax cuts for the rich and military budget increases.

     You don't have to ask. The whole point of the howyougonna is not paying for things, not about how. It's new or expanded social programs that you don't pay for, not high earner tax cuts or military budgets.

    I'm probably alone here in that I don't want to reduce spending for bombs in order to feed the poor or starve people to build bombs. It's unnecessary. We can create dollars for both. The dollars won't run out. The resources could if we were short of them, but we almost always underdeploy the resources we have by running out of dollars in advance of any shortfalls. It's dumb to use dollar shortages as substitutes for nonexistent resource shortages. It's inefficient to run an economy that way. I'm offended by the very idea of it.

[Herman]

Okay, for the sake of argument let's assume Bernie gets elected the president and he fails to get medicare for all bill through.

Surely you have heard that Bill Clinton, back in the day, tried to change the health care system. Didn't happen.
Obama wanted to redesign the system and ultimately copied Romney's Massachusetts' proposal (if I remember correctly) and even that was a massive battle.
And you think Sanders is going to pull it off, even though he's got none of the negotation skills Clinton and Obama had? And I mean Zero?
Reality is just going to change?

[71 dB]

Surely you have heard that Bill Clinton, back in the day, tried to change the health care system. Didn't happen.
Obama wanted to redesign the system and ultimately copied Romney's Massachusetts' proposal (if I remember correctly) and even that was a massive battle.
And you think Sanders is going to pull it off, even though he's got none of the negotation skills Clinton and Obama had? And I mean Zero?
Reality is just going to change?

That's because corporate Dems SUCK!! Bernie is not like that. Unlike Clinton and Obama, he doesn't take corporate money. Bernie has zero negotation skills? How then is he the "amendment King"?

[JBS]

Somehow? Bernie wrote himself the "damn bill" so that these things are explained. We KNOW how medicare for all would be paid for: Tax increase. For regular people the savings of not having to pay premiums etc. costs outweight the tax increase. For the richest people tax increase outweights the savings. That's what Bernie means by "the rich will pay their fair share."

Bernie's taxes won't pay for Bernie's plan.  Wealth taxes violate a specific clause of the Constitution, and even if the Supreme Court rules otherwise, it will take a few years of litigation to decide the matter. During which the rich will make sure they invest their money outside the US and otherwise render it immune from US taxes. The art of tax avoidance has a long history in the U.S.  So thinking the rich will pay their fair share (whatever that would be in practice) is yet another delusion you have imbibed from the Young Turks.

The other component of his plan is a federal sales tax that will require an entire new bureaucracy to implement, and which will hit hardest the "regular people" you claim you want to help. All sales tax do that: they are regressive. 

And of course once the plan gets through Congress it will require premiums, deductibles, and co-pays. No plan without them will get through Congress.

There will be a tax increase, and it won't be paid for by the 1% no matter how hard Bernie huffs and puffs.

[JBS]

Okay, for the sake of argument let's assume Bernie gets elected the president and he fails to get medicare for all bill through. What do you lose in that situation compared to a corporate president who doesn't even want to do medicare for all? Nothing. You have only something to win with Bernie.

As Kyle Kulinski says, even if Bernie only gets 20 % of his agenda implemented, it will help regular people a lot. Fighting for medicare for all may only give you public option as a compromise, but even that is an improvement compared to ObamaCare. If you start the fight from public option, how much improvement can you get?

Given all the bad ideas in Bernie's agenda, such as complete takeover of the housing market by the Federal government, the government taking on all student debt as its own (the Constitution won't allow any other way of cancelling student debt), etc,  even 20% would cause serious problems.

And if Bernie couldn't get MfA passed, nothing would get passed. Public option is not a compromise position.  But you start off calling for public option, you are much more likely to get public option.

[JBS]

This just crossed my transom
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/02/10/bernie-sanders-radical-past-donald-trump-attack-fodder-column/4706779002/

[Karl Henning]

This just crossed my transom
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/02/10/bernie-sanders-radical-past-donald-trump-attack-fodder-column/4706779002/

Yep. Bernie would be easy meat.

[Karl Henning]

In October, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), at 78 the oldest Democrat in the field, had a heart attack. He promised to release his full medical records before primary voting started. Now, on the eve of the second presidential nominating contest, Sanders still has not released his full medical records. He insists he is "in good health." He told NBC's Chuck Todd he has released as much medical information as other candidates, which ignores an important point: There is no other 78-year-old who had a heart attack just months ago in the field. He says if he released his records, there will be no end to it. He says his doctor told him to walk and sleep more. (Good thing he is not running for a job where sleep may be disturbed constantly due to national crises or jet-lagged travel.)

[71 dB]

Biden's support held up admirably for a year, but now that people are actually voting the weakness of Biden's support is being revealed. It's "default" support. As Biden is losing support Michael "carpet bombing the airwaves" Bloomberg is surging strongly. Since Buttigieg is likely to struggle after these early states, it looks like it's Bernie vs Bloomberg. The people vs the money.

There is this recording of Bloomberg, but people who support him just because they see his adds 20 times a day may not care... 

[Ratliff]

The point drogulus is making is valid, although he likes to obfuscate by MMT terminology. What makes a country wealthy is all of the people working all the time at something they are good at. (Hours worked times productivity.) The role of money and markets is to give people the incentive to work on things which are the most valuable. We have a country where a larger and larger fraction of money is being put at the disposal of a few super rich individuals. As a result, the construction industry is building ever larger mansions in which no one lives, and not modest homes where our burgeoning homeless could find shelter.

I think the reason so many thing "medicare for all" or some form of universal, single-payer health coverage is not feasible is because they are not aware of what is being paid now. Health insurance for a typical family (two parents plus a child or two) costs at least $20,000 per year. People don't see it. It is paid as a overhead by their employer and they only see their own contribution on their pay stub, which typically amounts to about $6,000k.

If we had universal health care, yes we'd need big additional tax. But in Canada health care spending is only half what it is in the U.S., per capita. If we could implement a similar system here we would need $10,000 per family additional tax, but the $20,000 per year health insurance premium would disappear. If that money your employer pays for your health insurance premium ended up in your paycheck instead you'd be way ahead, even with the additional taxes. And people on the whole would get better care.

It would be disruptive, the entire health insurance industry would vanish. But that's good. They are just economic vampires, after all.

[Karl Henning]

It would be disruptive, the entire health insurance industry would vanish. But that's good. They are just economic vampires, after all.

I like the theory. Can we rely on the government to serve as a competent replacement?

[71 dB]

1 % reporting in New Hampshire:

Klobuchar 29,6 %
Sanders 14,8 %
Warren 14,8 %
Yang 11,1 %
Biden 7,4 %
Buttigieg 7,4 %
Steyer 3,7 %
Gabbard 3,7 %

Time for Klobuchar to declare victory. 

[Ratliff]

I like the theory. Can we rely on the government to serve as a competent replacement?

My Mom is on medicare and she has no complaints with it. Canada has such a system which provides high quality care at lower cost than the U.S. Your argument is that the U.S. is incapable of doing what Canada and most developed countries have done?

My work colleague was at the hospital because his wife was having routine surgery. He was there a long time and got dehydrated and exhausted, and fainted. (He has a history of fainting spells.) He was taken to the E.R., a nurse claimed she saw some brief irregularity on his heart monitor, and they left him in a room on a heart monitor for something like 12 hours. They seemed to have forgotten about him. Finally a doctor came in, said "you're fine, you can go now." He was billed close to $25k, the insurance said the treatment was unjustified and covered $5k. He was left to pay a bill of close to $20k. That is your definition of "competence" that medicare for all has to compete with?

[JBS]

My Mom is on medicare and she has no complaints with it. Canada has such a system which provides high quality care at lower cost than the U.S. Your argument is that the U.S. is incapable of doing what Canada and most developed countries have done?

My work colleague was at the hospital because his wife was having routine surgery. He was there a long time and got dehydrated and exhausted, and fainted. (He has a history of fainting spells.) He was taken to the E.R., a nurse claimed she saw some brief irregularity on his heart monitor, and they left him in a room on a heart monitor for something like 12 hours. They seemed to have forgotten about him. Finally a doctor came in, said "you're fine, you can go now." He was billed close to $25k, the insurance said the treatment was unjustified and covered $5k. He was left to pay a bill of close to $20k. That is your definition of "competence" that medicare for all has to compete with?

I had to deal with Medicare a lot while taking care of my mother. The care she got was more on the level  your colleague recieved, not your mother. Except for paying the 20, 000 dollars. (And every insurance plan I have ever dealt with wpuld have made the hospital write off anything over that $5000.)