The Sam Spade Memorial Good Post Gallery

[NeverAgain]

The difference, of course, is that TRUMP admits he wants to repeal Obamacare. Sanders' supporters, on the other hand, act deeply offended and outraged when it is correctly pointed out that Bernie wants to do the same.

The fact is that the Democratic spent a lot of time, energy, political capital, money and public trust on Obamacare. It's a major part of our President's legacy. We essentially traded our House majority for it. Bernie Sanders wants to, essentially, start all over again from scratch. He wants to go to the American people, and essentially tell them "Sorry about that Obamacare thing that we spent seven years defending, but it actually sucks and now we're going to do a whole new thing that is going to be many times more disruptive, many times more expensive, and this time literally zero of you are going to be able to keep your insurance, even if you like it!"

That's a tough sell. It will cost considerable political capital. It will strain what little trust the American people have left in the competency of the Democratic Party, in the competency of government, in the very idea of an activist government, to be told "oops, we messed up on healthcare reform, time to repeal it and start all over trying a totally new thing!" Sanders should be honest about this.

Oh, please. Sanders saying he wants the replace the imperfect reform package passed seven years ago with another reform does not mean he wants to go back to the previous system, which is what a "repeal" implies. There is no doubt that if a Republican Congress sent a repeal bill or a "reform" that made the system worse from a liberal perspective, he would veto it, and if you would deny that, you are a liar. Sanders has been very clear that Obamacare is an improvement over the previous system, but that it is still highly flawed and should be replaced with something better. You can argue that the American public has no appetite for another reform so soon, or that single-payer would be a worse system than Obamacare, and those would be perfectly legitimate criticisms. However, claiming that Sanders's plan would roll back Obamacare, all but comes out and says that he wants a return to the previous system, which is an outright lie. What passing single-payer would do would be to replace Obamacare with a system that has never been fully implemented in the United States, but has been successful in several other countries, and I know you know it. Your extreme disingenuousness and trolling got old a long time ago.

[NeverAgain]

While I generally agree with the way it is payed for, the lack of specifics on how his transition to medicare for all is a bit concerning.

As others on this forum have echoed, I don't understand the aversion to having small middle class tax increases to help pay for a vastly increased social safety net.

I assume the plan will get more detailed. How to pay was quickly added because Hillary was making a big deal of that. If it had been a $2 trillion Iraq war that she voted for that led to the creation of ISIS, she would have never asked how we pay for it.

That's a red herring. Bringing up Clinton's past mistakes doesn't mean Sanders' current ones are forgiven. We can't keep on acting like Sanders is this perfect candidate, that's not a way to win a primary and hopefully general election. This plan, which I agree with in principle, is flawed. It's incredibly vague on implementation, and the numbers which he uses in his cost estimations for this plan are much more favorable to his proposal than many experts project for this kind of single-payer plan. Whenever our candidate makes a mistake, we shouldn't just bash the opposition, we should demand that he rectify it, in this case with a much more detailed and comprehensive plan.

[NeverAgain]

I would think this describes my attitude toward social issues, but I am not sure if questioning such a fundamental position bars me from being a true Scotsman.

Depends on how you define social conservative.  I'm pro-choice and I consider myself socially conservative.  I think there should be at least two categories of social conservative a mean one and a nice one.  The nice ones leave other people alone as long as those people leave them alone.  The mean ones want to run everyone's lives.

I don't like abortion but I realize clamping down on it does more harm than good.  I would much rather have good sex ed and free contraception.  There is nothing "conservative" about lying to teenagers and restricting their access to contraception.

Honestly we would have a much calmer well ordered society if better sex ed and free contraception was available.  I simply don't see how having a bunch of broke uneducated people spitting out babies in tumultuous relationships makes society more "conservative".

[NeverAgain]

I've always liked Perriello, but I'll be volunteering for Northam.  

Change your avatar then.

First of all, Northam is not a Dixiecrat or anything like that. He's not even as conservative as Webb for that matter. He's a typical VA Dem, but further, Perriello isn't even some "progressive hero". He just happened to fight for Obamacare and the Obama administration when it wasn't popular to do so.

Also, you have a Green avatar, lol. Why do you get to insinuate that Miles is too conservative to be a Democrat, if by your own admission you don't fit in the Democratic spectrum either? You should be aware that VA is not a progressive bastion, exemplified by the slew of centrist politicians, as well as Bernie getting crushed in the primary.

My hackishness, and newfound hate of ShadowOfTheWave has made me put this here.

[NeverAgain]

According to the BLS, employment in insurance industry as of April 2017 was 2629.3 thousand, or about 2.6 million. Let's say that health insurance administrators account for roughly 25% of that. That's ~650,000 people who would stand to become unemployed if we adopted single-payer. Why is this treated as such a non-issue? Oftentimes it's not even a part of the conversation, which is bewildering.
 
You can quite easily make the argument that from a utilitarian perspective, 650,000 jobs lost is a small price to pay in order to ensure that everybody has coverage, but that only speaks to the moral component of this question, and does nothing to resolve the political consequences or address the very real instability and uncertainty these people would face.
 
It is true that, from a policy perspective, dealing with the resulting unemployment would likely be fairly straightforward. Many of those displaced could find employment in the expanded Medicare system which would arise, and practically speaking many could be retrained to eventually occupy positions in separate, unrelated fields. I also don't doubt that the type of reform we're discussing is needed and likely the morally correct thing to do. So that's all well and good. Mitigating the political consequences, however, would be anything but straightforward. Progressives would rejoice in their victory, but Democrats would get absolutely clobbered because they would in the eyes of many have basically confirmed the common Republican critique, namely that they don't care all that much about Americans having jobs/don't regard it as a priority. Add in the fact that healthcare is a true political third rail and the electoral consequences look horrifying. The Republican ads, speeches, and campaign slogans would craft themselves. And while it's noble to say that morality should trump politics, many will not share that view.
 
With the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, there has been a corresponding increase in the amount of jobs in the health insurance industry. The reason is obvious--more claims, applications, and purchases, so more employees. And yet instead of this being a reversal of past trends, it's probably more accurate to describe it as an acceleration: This is a sector that has seen consistent growth for decades. So another element of this healthcare debate is that if the Senate GOP does decide to go through with repeal and replace, it will be interesting to see the impact that legislative activity has on employment trends in the health insurance industry both in the immediate short-term and over the coming years.
 
I don't know. Just some thoughts.

A new guy, but I really liked his #analysis.