Amy Klobuchar 2020 campaign megathread

[Sbane]

What’s with these bland midwesterners catching on? Pete and Amy have the charisma of a jar of mayo and a wet blanket, respectively.

Someone is salty. There are different types of charisma. There is the type where a guy stands on a table and sounds confident and then there is the type that is relatable to people. Klobuchar is the relatable type. She has been through the struggles with her baby at the hospital and has been through the struggles with the insurance companies. She's willing to go out and give a speech in the middle of a snowstorm and not call it off like the majority of candidates would do. She works whether the weather is good or bad, just like the bad average person. And all those people came out for it in that snowstorm btw.

Beto lost again. You are going to need to get over it. It doesn't make sense to come into the Klobuchar thread over and over months later to show your saltiness. And btw, he had loads of money, but the reason he lost his passion is because he realized his extreme policies that don't work for 90% of the country weren't catching on. Shocker.

I haven’t been a Beto supporter since last June. My support’s gone Beto >> Warren >> Sanders as of NH.

Well obviously there’s different types, but thing is Klobuchar has none. At all. She gets on stage and makes cringe, obviously canned lines and just keeps repeating that she won in Minnesota.

I don’t dislike her. Between Pete, Bloomberg, and her she’s by far and away the best choice. But that’s because she’s inoffensive, and she’s inoffensive because she’s so bland.

To win, you have to appeal to more than just middle aged and old white people. Her problem is that she has no message that appeals to people under 30 or people of color. And that’s because she doesn’t propose policies that excite them because they’re “pipe dreams”.

But what she has going for her over the others in her lane is that she isn’t an overt corporatist, beholden to big donors like Pete or the epitome of oligarchy like Bloomberg.

Amy Klobuchar has put forth a lot of plans. She does very well on the details in the debates. One of her strengths is her knowledge on the issues.

You say she says nothing except she won in Minnesota. She mentions that to try to show electability, but you have not been listening if you think she hasn't mentioned anything else. How about health care/insurance? You haven't heard about her talk about health care/insurance? You haven't heard her talk about the struggles of having a baby that needed expensive care that insurance tried to drag their feet on? You haven't heard her talk about how revising Obamacare is better than forcing everyone onto Medicare-for-All because one will not only never happen, but it'll be very harmful to many people, and it'll open the door for Republicans to pass their plan, which she sees as harmful. She has argued she can drive down costs and increase coverage with modifications. And there are many other issues. You can disagree with her, but to say she hasn't even talked about these issues is ignorant.

The 2 points she stresses over and over again on the debate stage are

1) I won in Minnesota, so I have a record of being electable
2) Don’t push for M4A because Republicans will use to against us

Both are fair points, but they are not rationales for being nominee or President. They are examples of punditry. The reason this primary is so chaotic is because pundits have made voters start thinking like them by constantly harping on the made-up concept of “electability”. Neither JFK, Bill Clinton, or Barack Obama were the “electable” candidates in the primary. They won because they inspired the hearts and minds of voters.

I am not denying that she has plans and knows the details of them. By all accounts she’s made a highly competent legislator and would be a very competent President. But so far she’s just made canned lines on the debate stage, said she’s electable, and attacked the plans of Warren and Bernie for not being passable in the Senate (completely neglecting the fact that, yknow, negotiations and compromises happen on bills).

I do love how willing she is to take Pete and other candidates to the woodshed. She’s a fighter, I just wish she was bolder.

Like I said, Klobuchar has more policies, like getting faster internet to the rural areas. But, lets hammer down on the health care issue since that's so important. Amy isn't simply being a moderate to be a moderate. She's pointing out benefits of actually passing legislation, but lets set that completely aside. If you said Amy, we can pass Medicare-for-All or revise Obamacare, what do you think is better? She would say it's better to revise Obamacare.

There is lots not to like about Medicare-for-All. People want to compare a Bernie plan to the UK, but they are totally different systems. In the UK, the government owns the hospitals and hires/pays the doctors. Here, they are all private. So, Bernie's plan pays the private companies rather than the UK where the government literally manages it. There is no true single payer plan in the USA.

So, under Bernie's plan we'd see the costs skyrocket, because the government basically has to pay it. If they don't, the people will vote out the politicians to save their health care. This will cost taxes to go up. This will cause big problems for people paying their taxes and harm our economy. So in order to get the costs down because taxing too much gets the politicians voted out is to lessen the care that is given. Refuse to cover more stuff and that amount of stuff will grow-and-grow. Rich people will simply buy supplemental insurance from the private industry. Low and probably Middle Class people won't be able to. This is what people mean by a two-tiered system that benefits the rich over the poor in terms of care.

That's not the worst of it, though. Things get really dark when the government chooses what will and won't be covered. They could set an age limit and say any baby born before 24 weeks won't be covered by insurance. That means doctors won't care for the babies. That means the babies die, even though 22 and 23 week old babies regularly live. Stuff gets dark real fast under Medicare-for-All. Medicare-for-All isn't bold, it's just bad.

If you want someone bold and willing to lead, I'd argue that Amy is proving that she is a leader right now. In the primaries, Democrats tend to push for more extreme policies because there aren't as many Republicans voting. So right now, it's actually cool to be extreme. So when it's cool to be extreme, that means it's not bold, because that's what people want you to be. What is bold is to hold your ground and argue for your policies that will truly help the country most. That's what Amy is doing. That's one of the many reasons she is a leader.

I swear I heard all these arguments from Republicans right before the Affordable Care Act was enacted.  You are literally talking about death panels in your third paragraph. 

You say that costs will skyrocket under Bernie's plan, but you forget that prices will be negotiated with healthcare providers.  Currently, Klobuchar is trying to pass a bill with Republicans that will allow medicare to negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical companies on behalf of senior citizens.  Why just a bill for seniors enrolled in medicare?  Why not create a bill that helps lower drug prices for everyone, including people that receive drugs from private health insurers?  The whole point of the bipartisan bill is to replace the price determination that is set by private insurers negotiating for drugs.  They don't trust drug companies, because discounts and rebates often don't wind up in consumers' wallets.  This is not just the case for drugs, but also health service provided by a hospital.  They keep the consumer savings, and that's a problem. 

So.  You envision this fantasy of healthcare prices skyrocketing under a single-payer system, but do you not realize that this is already a reality with the private insurance market.  The U.S. pays more for healthcare services, drugs, and devices than every other country in the world.  Those drug companies and health insurers are making a killing and laughing at all those people defending them.  They have all the politicians in their pocket, including Klobuchar.  That's why you won't see any real change relating to the manner in which they negotiate and set prices on behalf of their customers.  The bipartisan congress is only willing to reduce drug prices for seniors enrolled in single payer - medicare - right before the election.  That's why people want medicare for all.  Those seniors are receiving this prescription drug bill right before the election, and the private insurers are pretty much unaffected.  That's why older Democrats don't care for Bernie as much as younger voters.

Now I'm not 100% in favor of the Bernie plan.  I will vote for him, because I think something good could be negotiated with him in office. He's on the side of ordinary Americans. Eventually programs/bills will have to move towards the center for compromise, but I would prefer that the advocate for an equitable healthcare system start from a position of strength. 

1) You start off badly saying that Republicans made my arguments before. So what if they did? This is either an ad hominem or irrelevant (and probably an attempt to attack my credibility through association). You can do better than that.
2) You falsely compare Medicare right now to what Medicare would be under a new proposed plan. Medicare right now is often through private insurance companies anyways. People are often limited as to what doctors they can see depending on the plan. This is okay, because people choose to be on Medicare, but under the new plan, everybody would be forced on Medicare, and it would be paid for by the government, not through private insurance. Because everybody would be forced on Medicare, the private insurance would be very expensive. Even if one chooses to get private insurance, which would probably go up in expense, they would still be taxed for Medicare.
3) Discounts and rebates are typically for the uninsured. There are coupons through companies like Goodrx. The insurance companies do negotiate down prices, but the customer isn't paying for the drug anyways. The insurance company is. So of course the insurance company saves the money, because the person pays whatever the agreement with the insurance is (such as a co-pay). It's not a problem at all that the insurance companies keep direct savings on drugs the consumers aren't paying directly for.
4) You mention a single payer system. I again stress that the plans for Medicare-for-All are not actually single payer. The government will not be running, managing, and owning the hospitals. They will simply be paying private companies who do.
5) You bring up high costs with insurance companies. I agree, there are high costs. Nobody wants to keep the system we have now. That's why the alternative to throwing the system completely out is to improve the system, not to keep the same system with no changes.

There are lots of changes that can be made. For instance, right now there is a middleman that was created to help the hospitals bulk order from the suppliers. This was intended to drop the costs of supplies and write up the contracts for the hospitals. Unfortunately, the middleman is getting kickbacks from the suppliers, so the suppliers can keep their prices high, the middleman takes their cut, and the hospitals end up with higher costs when the middleman isn't really doing anything except drawing up the expensive contracts. If we get rid of this middleman industry, hospital supplies and pharmaceutical costs will go down. That's just one of many changes that can occur. Health care/insurance is very complicated and there are many things that can be done to drop costs.
6) The USA actually has far better coverage than we are given credit for. A lot of times comparisons that make our system look bad are not what they seem. For instance, we naturally have a different diet from other countries. Our diet leads to a lot of issues. We also try to save a lot more premature babies, where places like the UK consider babies that would often be saved in the USA as unviable in the UK. This drives up the statistics of costs and and neonatal deaths, but the reality is that we're actually doing the best for saving premature babies.
7) Part of what helps systems like the UK work is that they take our innovation. If we went to a system that didn't innovate, they would have less to borrow from. We also wouldn't have ourselves to borrow from at that point, and so our system and their system would become worse.
You made a claim that drug companies have Klobuchar in their pocket. Which drug companies and what is your specific evidence? I don't want generalities, I want specifics.
9) Again, the Medicare system we have for seniors is not single payer. They go to private run hospitals and the insurance is often (or always?) private as well.
10) You mention that you want something negotiated, but Bernie is not a negotiator, no matter what you think of Klobuchar or other moderates. He stood against the USMCA even admitting it would improve the lives of workers because he said it didn't go far enough. Sanders is about purity, he is not about compromise.

You are confusing nationalized healthcare with single payer. The UK has a nationalized healthcare system where all the hospitals are owned by the government and health care professionals work for the government. Canada has a single payer system where the only health insurance available is through the government. Medicare for all would indeed be classified as a single payer system. Now, I don't think we will get true single payer in this country, but what Bernie is proposing right now is a true single payer system.

As for controlling costs, a single payer system can do just as well as a nationalized healthcare system while providing better results. If everyone is covered under the same insurer, that insurer gains maximal power to negotiate rates with providers. Medicare for all doesn't even necessarily have to be administered solely by the government. Allow Medicare advantage plans but CMS negotiates rates for everybody. Then you can cut costs in the major urban areas where there is a lot of competition among health care providers, while subsidizing rural providers and hospitals.

[Sbane]

What’s with these bland midwesterners catching on? Pete and Amy have the charisma of a jar of mayo and a wet blanket, respectively.

Someone is salty. There are different types of charisma. There is the type where a guy stands on a table and sounds confident and then there is the type that is relatable to people. Klobuchar is the relatable type. She has been through the struggles with her baby at the hospital and has been through the struggles with the insurance companies. She's willing to go out and give a speech in the middle of a snowstorm and not call it off like the majority of candidates would do. She works whether the weather is good or bad, just like the bad average person. And all those people came out for it in that snowstorm btw.

Beto lost again. You are going to need to get over it. It doesn't make sense to come into the Klobuchar thread over and over months later to show your saltiness. And btw, he had loads of money, but the reason he lost his passion is because he realized his extreme policies that don't work for 90% of the country weren't catching on. Shocker.

I haven’t been a Beto supporter since last June. My support’s gone Beto >> Warren >> Sanders as of NH.

Well obviously there’s different types, but thing is Klobuchar has none. At all. She gets on stage and makes cringe, obviously canned lines and just keeps repeating that she won in Minnesota.

I don’t dislike her. Between Pete, Bloomberg, and her she’s by far and away the best choice. But that’s because she’s inoffensive, and she’s inoffensive because she’s so bland.

To win, you have to appeal to more than just middle aged and old white people. Her problem is that she has no message that appeals to people under 30 or people of color. And that’s because she doesn’t propose policies that excite them because they’re “pipe dreams”.

But what she has going for her over the others in her lane is that she isn’t an overt corporatist, beholden to big donors like Pete or the epitome of oligarchy like Bloomberg.

Amy Klobuchar has put forth a lot of plans. She does very well on the details in the debates. One of her strengths is her knowledge on the issues.

You say she says nothing except she won in Minnesota. She mentions that to try to show electability, but you have not been listening if you think she hasn't mentioned anything else. How about health care/insurance? You haven't heard about her talk about health care/insurance? You haven't heard her talk about the struggles of having a baby that needed expensive care that insurance tried to drag their feet on? You haven't heard her talk about how revising Obamacare is better than forcing everyone onto Medicare-for-All because one will not only never happen, but it'll be very harmful to many people, and it'll open the door for Republicans to pass their plan, which she sees as harmful. She has argued she can drive down costs and increase coverage with modifications. And there are many other issues. You can disagree with her, but to say she hasn't even talked about these issues is ignorant.

The 2 points she stresses over and over again on the debate stage are

1) I won in Minnesota, so I have a record of being electable
2) Don’t push for M4A because Republicans will use to against us

Both are fair points, but they are not rationales for being nominee or President. They are examples of punditry. The reason this primary is so chaotic is because pundits have made voters start thinking like them by constantly harping on the made-up concept of “electability”. Neither JFK, Bill Clinton, or Barack Obama were the “electable” candidates in the primary. They won because they inspired the hearts and minds of voters.

I am not denying that she has plans and knows the details of them. By all accounts she’s made a highly competent legislator and would be a very competent President. But so far she’s just made canned lines on the debate stage, said she’s electable, and attacked the plans of Warren and Bernie for not being passable in the Senate (completely neglecting the fact that, yknow, negotiations and compromises happen on bills).

I do love how willing she is to take Pete and other candidates to the woodshed. She’s a fighter, I just wish she was bolder.

Like I said, Klobuchar has more policies, like getting faster internet to the rural areas. But, lets hammer down on the health care issue since that's so important. Amy isn't simply being a moderate to be a moderate. She's pointing out benefits of actually passing legislation, but lets set that completely aside. If you said Amy, we can pass Medicare-for-All or revise Obamacare, what do you think is better? She would say it's better to revise Obamacare.

There is lots not to like about Medicare-for-All. People want to compare a Bernie plan to the UK, but they are totally different systems. In the UK, the government owns the hospitals and hires/pays the doctors. Here, they are all private. So, Bernie's plan pays the private companies rather than the UK where the government literally manages it. There is no true single payer plan in the USA.

So, under Bernie's plan we'd see the costs skyrocket, because the government basically has to pay it. If they don't, the people will vote out the politicians to save their health care. This will cost taxes to go up. This will cause big problems for people paying their taxes and harm our economy. So in order to get the costs down because taxing too much gets the politicians voted out is to lessen the care that is given. Refuse to cover more stuff and that amount of stuff will grow-and-grow. Rich people will simply buy supplemental insurance from the private industry. Low and probably Middle Class people won't be able to. This is what people mean by a two-tiered system that benefits the rich over the poor in terms of care.

That's not the worst of it, though. Things get really dark when the government chooses what will and won't be covered. They could set an age limit and say any baby born before 24 weeks won't be covered by insurance. That means doctors won't care for the babies. That means the babies die, even though 22 and 23 week old babies regularly live. Stuff gets dark real fast under Medicare-for-All. Medicare-for-All isn't bold, it's just bad.

If you want someone bold and willing to lead, I'd argue that Amy is proving that she is a leader right now. In the primaries, Democrats tend to push for more extreme policies because there aren't as many Republicans voting. So right now, it's actually cool to be extreme. So when it's cool to be extreme, that means it's not bold, because that's what people want you to be. What is bold is to hold your ground and argue for your policies that will truly help the country most. That's what Amy is doing. That's one of the many reasons she is a leader.

I swear I heard all these arguments from Republicans right before the Affordable Care Act was enacted.  You are literally talking about death panels in your third paragraph. 

You say that costs will skyrocket under Bernie's plan, but you forget that prices will be negotiated with healthcare providers.  Currently, Klobuchar is trying to pass a bill with Republicans that will allow medicare to negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical companies on behalf of senior citizens.  Why just a bill for seniors enrolled in medicare?  Why not create a bill that helps lower drug prices for everyone, including people that receive drugs from private health insurers?  The whole point of the bipartisan bill is to replace the price determination that is set by private insurers negotiating for drugs.  They don't trust drug companies, because discounts and rebates often don't wind up in consumers' wallets.  This is not just the case for drugs, but also health service provided by a hospital.  They keep the consumer savings, and that's a problem. 

So.  You envision this fantasy of healthcare prices skyrocketing under a single-payer system, but do you not realize that this is already a reality with the private insurance market.  The U.S. pays more for healthcare services, drugs, and devices than every other country in the world.  Those drug companies and health insurers are making a killing and laughing at all those people defending them.  They have all the politicians in their pocket, including Klobuchar.  That's why you won't see any real change relating to the manner in which they negotiate and set prices on behalf of their customers.  The bipartisan congress is only willing to reduce drug prices for seniors enrolled in single payer - medicare - right before the election.  That's why people want medicare for all.  Those seniors are receiving this prescription drug bill right before the election, and the private insurers are pretty much unaffected.  That's why older Democrats don't care for Bernie as much as younger voters.

Now I'm not 100% in favor of the Bernie plan.  I will vote for him, because I think something good could be negotiated with him in office. He's on the side of ordinary Americans. Eventually programs/bills will have to move towards the center for compromise, but I would prefer that the advocate for an equitable healthcare system start from a position of strength. 

1) You start off badly saying that Republicans made my arguments before. So what if they did? This is either an ad hominem or irrelevant (and probably an attempt to attack my credibility through association). You can do better than that.
2) You falsely compare Medicare right now to what Medicare would be under a new proposed plan. Medicare right now is often through private insurance companies anyways. People are often limited as to what doctors they can see depending on the plan. This is okay, because people choose to be on Medicare, but under the new plan, everybody would be forced on Medicare, and it would be paid for by the government, not through private insurance. Because everybody would be forced on Medicare, the private insurance would be very expensive. Even if one chooses to get private insurance, which would probably go up in expense, they would still be taxed for Medicare.
3) Discounts and rebates are typically for the uninsured. There are coupons through companies like Goodrx. The insurance companies do negotiate down prices, but the customer isn't paying for the drug anyways. The insurance company is. So of course the insurance company saves the money, because the person pays whatever the agreement with the insurance is (such as a co-pay). It's not a problem at all that the insurance companies keep direct savings on drugs the consumers aren't paying directly for.
4) You mention a single payer system. I again stress that the plans for Medicare-for-All are not actually single payer. The government will not be running, managing, and owning the hospitals. They will simply be paying private companies who do.
5) You bring up high costs with insurance companies. I agree, there are high costs. Nobody wants to keep the system we have now. That's why the alternative to throwing the system completely out is to improve the system, not to keep the same system with no changes.

There are lots of changes that can be made. For instance, right now there is a middleman that was created to help the hospitals bulk order from the suppliers. This was intended to drop the costs of supplies and write up the contracts for the hospitals. Unfortunately, the middleman is getting kickbacks from the suppliers, so the suppliers can keep their prices high, the middleman takes their cut, and the hospitals end up with higher costs when the middleman isn't really doing anything except drawing up the expensive contracts. If we get rid of this middleman industry, hospital supplies and pharmaceutical costs will go down. That's just one of many changes that can occur. Health care/insurance is very complicated and there are many things that can be done to drop costs.
6) The USA actually has far better coverage than we are given credit for. A lot of times comparisons that make our system look bad are not what they seem. For instance, we naturally have a different diet from other countries. Our diet leads to a lot of issues. We also try to save a lot more premature babies, where places like the UK consider babies that would often be saved in the USA as unviable in the UK. This drives up the statistics of costs and and neonatal deaths, but the reality is that we're actually doing the best for saving premature babies.
7) Part of what helps systems like the UK work is that they take our innovation. If we went to a system that didn't innovate, they would have less to borrow from. We also wouldn't have ourselves to borrow from at that point, and so our system and their system would become worse.
You made a claim that drug companies have Klobuchar in their pocket. Which drug companies and what is your specific evidence? I don't want generalities, I want specifics.
9) Again, the Medicare system we have for seniors is not single payer. They go to private run hospitals and the insurance is often (or always?) private as well.
10) You mention that you want something negotiated, but Bernie is not a negotiator, no matter what you think of Klobuchar or other moderates. He stood against the USMCA even admitting it would improve the lives of workers because he said it didn't go far enough. Sanders is about purity, he is not about compromise.

You are confusing nationalized healthcare with single payer. The UK has a nationalized healthcare system where all the hospitals are owned by the government and health care professionals work for the government. Canada has a single payer system where the only health insurance available is through the government. Medicare for all would indeed be classified as a single payer system. Now, I don't think we will get true single payer in this country, but what Bernie is proposing right now is a true single payer system.

As for controlling costs, a single payer system can do just as well as a nationalized healthcare system while providing better results. If everyone is covered under the same insurer, that insurer gains maximal power to negotiate rates with providers. Medicare for all doesn't even necessarily have to be administered solely by the government. Allow Medicare advantage plans but CMS negotiates rates for everybody. Then you can cut costs in the major urban areas where there is a lot of competition among health care providers, while subsidizing rural providers and hospitals.

1) Single payer health care is nationalized health care. They are synonyms. If you want to use the term single payer health care insurance then fine, but that's a hybrid system that is not like what the UK has. That's basically a co-opting of the term single payer to change the meaning. Typically, single payer includes actual management.

You are the one changing the meaning of single PAYER for some unknown reason. Single payer means there is only one payer. Payer means the entity that pays for healthcare. In our system it is a hybrid model where Medicare and Medicaid pays for roughly half of healthcare costs and the private health insurance system pays the rest along with self pay, of course. Medicare for all is calling for the elimination of private health insurance for at least the benefits that are covered by Medicare (so health insurance for cosmetic surgery or LASIK will still be legal but I doubt anyone would purchase such a product). It is also calling for the elimination of all out of pocket costs. Thus, Medicare would be the single payer for the covered health benefits.

What is interesting is that single payer doesn't necessarily have to be run by the government. If we didn't have anti-trust laws, I wouldn't be surprised if our private health insurance system didn't start morphing into a single payer system. The trend is occurring right before our eyes. Just look at the amount of vertical integration going on in the health care industry. CVS acquiring Aetna for example. Or hospital groups buying up physician groups. Getting big in healthcare today means more profits because you have more negotiating power. The more covered lives you have in a specific area, the more you can squeeze reimbursement rates with providers. The greater the number of providers you control in a specific area, the more you can squeeze the payers to reimburse you more. This is also why cash prices in a lot of healthcare settings is absolutely insane. An aspirin at a hospital really doesn't cost $10. The Atorvastatin generic at your local Pharmacy really doesn't cost $600. You just keep the rates high to provide more space to negotiate the actual reimbursement.

[Sbane]

Under Medicare for all, the government pays the hospitals since it would be the only single payer for such services.

In any case, I doubt we ever quite get to that system. It will likely end up being an opt-in system with Medicare while preserving Medicaid. I just hope they end deductibles and co-pays with Medicare and let people buy in by paying 5% of their income.