Elizabeth Warren 2020 campaign megathread

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On this episode of Atlas Forum Hates Fun: we're calling people childish and juvenile because their dogs have twitter accounts

Does it really matter, like at all?

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It doesn't matter, although it does make the candidates involved look ridiculous. It is somewhat insulting to voters. These people are candidates, not comedians. It shows.

The People: politicians are too stiff, we want to see them act like humans, not robots!!!!

Politicians: dogs are fun and cool, people like dogs, i may as well do a light-hearted thing with my dog to show people i'm human and fun

The People: How dare these politicians try to act like human beings with a sense of humor?!

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No one cares. Just like no one cares about Gillibrand forcing Al Franken out, Klobuchar abusing her staff, Harris sleeping with a married man, Sanders and whatever he does, and Biden's policy atrocities. This doesn't have a hook to sustain months of media coverage like Hillary's emails (which was an active investigation in real time). Nothing to see here.

Absolutely this, except I think most of the reason why Gillibrand's campaign didn't take off is due to the Al Franken thing which is, frankly, a huge black mark on the Democratic Party that we're not talking about, but that's neither here nor there...

Republicans only care about racism when they can use it to deflect from their own racism.

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So she’s got Deb Haaland in her corner. If she gets endorsements from specific tribes and the National Congress of American Indians, does that help counteract Trump’s Pocahontas barb?

You’re working under the assumption that Trump uses the racial slur because he cares about Native Americans.

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I think I support Warren as much as I support Pete at this point. It’s like a 1A/1B scenario.

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I'm starting to firmly believe that if Warren can survive this primary, she's going to win the general election. Everything about her message (which she is INCREDIBLY good at sticking to) foils Trump in ways Hillary was never able to.

I was listening to Pod Save America a couple of weeks ago and they made a great point about Liz's "electability issue": she has all these plans, asks that you trust her on these plans, now she's asking that you trust her when she says she will beat Trump in the general. I trust her.

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https://twitter.com/samstein/status/1176511971971215365

Now this is what I want to see.

A true queen. Sara Gideon is an amazing candidate.

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https://twitter.com/peterdaou/status/1179016940381179910?s=19

R I C H T E A R S

aggressively donates to Liz

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The ads just write themselves.

Unlike the big banks , most people like the tech companies

Nobody likes Facebook.

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Boy i was reading through the earlier comments in this thread and it sure does continue the Atlas tradition of being horribly, laughably wrong

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I don't see what Gillum adds to the ticket. Abrams would be a great choice, but she will almost certainly sit 2020 out and challenge Kemp in 2022. Am I the only one that thinks there aren't any perfect VP options? Like for any of the candidates?

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I don't see what Gillum adds to the ticket. Abrams would be a great choice, but she will almost certainly sit 2020 out and challenge Kemp in 2022. Am I the only one that thinks there aren't any perfect VP options? Like for any of the candidates?

Tammy Duckworth would be a good VP IMO.

A ticket with two women isn't unlikely, but methinks it won't go over well. I would love this ticket, but you know...America gonna America. Duckworth is also from a safe D state and doesn't necessarily help drive out the voting demographics that Warren needs.

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Senator Warren releases plan to pay for Medicare For All.

Highlights:

Under my plan, Medicare for All will cover the full list of benefits outlined in the Medicare for All Act, including long-term care, audio, vision, and dental benefits. My plan will cover every single person in the U.S., and includes common-sense payment reforms that make Medicare for All possible without spending any more money overall than we spend now.

No middle class tax increases

Every candidate who opposes my long-term goal of Medicare for All should explain why the "choice" of private insurance plans is more important than being able to choose the doctor that's best for you without worrying about whether they are in-network or not. Why it's more important than being able to choose the right prescription drug for you without worrying about massive differences in copays. Why it's more important than being able to choose to start a small business or choose the job you want without worrying about where your health care coverage will be coming from and how much it will cost.

In recent years, several economists and think tanks have attempted to estimate the cost of a single-payer system in the United States. Those estimates consider how much our nation’s health care spending will change over a ten year window, and range from a $12.5 trillion decrease to a $7 trillion increase. They also consider how much additional money the federal government would need to fund this system, and those estimates range from a low of $13.5 trillion to a high of $34 trillion over ten years.

Because nobody can actually see the future, some of this variation results from different assumptions about how parts of our health care system might work differently under Medicare for All. But most of the difference comes from policy choices. And while the Medicare for All Act is clear about some of these choices – for example, generous benefits, long-term care coverage, and virtually no out-of-pocket expenses – it is silent on a number of really important ones. How much will we pay for medical care and for prescription drugs? What do we do with the existing money that states spend on Medicaid? How aggressively will we cut administrative costs? Aggressive choices mean a lower total cost. Less aggressive choices result in a higher total cost.

Medicare for All will save money by bringing down the staggering administrative costs for insurers in our current system. As the experts I asked to evaluate my plan noted, private insurers had administrative costs of 12% of premiums collected in 2017, while Medicare kept its administrative costs down to 2.3%. My plan will ensure that Medicare for All functions just as efficiently as traditional Medicare by setting net administrative spending at 2.3%.

If we expect the American people to be able to afford health care, we need to rein in these costs. Comprehensive payment reform, as part of Medicare for All, will reduce this component of health care spending. Under my approach, Medicare for All will sharply reduce administrative spending and reimburse physicians and other non-hospital providers at current Medicare rates.

Under my approach, Medicare for All will sharply reduce administrative spending and reimburse hospitals at an average of 110% of current Medicare rates, with appropriate adjustments for rural hospitals, teaching hospitals, and other care providers with challenging cost structures.

Under Medicare for All, hospitals won’t be able to force some patients to pay more because the hospital can’t agree with their insurance company. Instead, because everyone has good insurance, providers will have to compete on better care and reduced wait times in order to attract more patients.

Reining in prescription drug costs should be a top priority for any President – and there’s no better way to do it than through Medicare for All. My administration will use a suite of aggressive policy tools to set a net savings target that will bring down Medicare prices for brand name prescription drugs by 70% and prices for generics by 30%, with an initial focus on more expensive drugs.

Under Medicare for All, the federal government would have real bargaining power to negotiate lower prices for patients. I will adopt an altered version of the mechanism outlined in the Lower Prescription Drug Costs Now Act which leverages excise taxes to bring manufacturers to the table to negotiate prices for both branded and generic drugs, with no drug exceeding 110% of the average international market price, but removes the limit of the number of drugs Medicare can negotiate for and eliminates the “target price” so Medicare could potentially negotiate prices lower than other countries.

If negotiations fail, I will use two tools – compulsory licensing and public manufacturing – to allow my administration to ensure patient access to medicines by either overriding the patent, as modeled in the Medicare Negotiation and Competitive Licensing Act, or by providing public funds to support manufacturing of these drugs, as modeled in my Affordable Drug Manufacturing Act.

Right now, America’s total bill for health care is projected to be $52 trillion for the next ten years. That money will come from four places: the federal government, state governments, employers, and individuals who need care. Under my approach to Medicare for All, most of these funding sources will remain the same, too.

Existing federal spending on Medicare and Medicaid will help fund Medicare for All.

Existing state spending on health insurance will continue in the form of payments to Medicare – but states would be better off because they’d have more long-term predictability, and they’d pay less over time because these costs will grow more slowly than they do today.

Existing total private sector employer contributions to health insurance will continue in the form of contributions to Medicare – but employers would be better off because under the design of my plan, they’d pay less than they would have otherwise.

Here’s the main difference: Individual health care spending.

Over the next ten years, individuals will spend $11 trillion on health care in the form of premiums, deductibles, copays, and out-of-pocket costs. Under my Medicare for All plan, that amount will drop from $11 trillion to practically zero.

I asked top experts – Mark Zandi, the Chief Economist of Moody’s Analytics; Betsey Stevenson, the former Chief Economist for the Obama Labor Department; and Simon Johnson – to examine options for how we can make up that $11 trillion difference. They conclude that it can be done largely with new taxes on financial firms, giant corporations, and the top 1% – and making sure the rich stop evading the taxes we already have.

That’s right: We don’t need to raise taxes on the middle class by one penny to finance Medicare for All.

Let’s start with a basic fact: American companies are already paying a lot for health care for their employees. They are projected to pay nearly $9 trillion over the next ten years, mostly on employer contributions for employee health insurance and on health-related expenses for employees under workers’ compensation and long-term disability. My idea is that instead of these companies sending those payments to private insurance companies, they would send payments to the federal government for Medicare in the form of an Employer Medicare Contribution.

Small businesses – companies with under 50 employees – would be exempt from this requirement too if they aren’t paying for employee health care today. When either new or existing firms exceed this employee threshold, we would phase in a requirement that companies make Employer Medicare Contributions equal to the national average cost of health care per employee for every employee at that company. Merging firms would pay the weighted average cost of health care per employee of the two firms that are merging.

That way, my plan helps unions that have bargained for good health care already, and creates a significant new incentive for unionization generally by making collective bargaining appealing for both workers and employers as a way of potentially reducing the employer’s Employer Medicare Contributions.

Over time, an employer’s health care cost-per-employee would be gradually shifted to converge at the average health care cost-per-employee nationally. That helps make sure the system is fair but also gives employers and employees time to adapt to the new system.

There are a variety of ways to structure an employer contribution to Medicare for All. This particular approach has the benefit of helping American employers in a few ways:

Employers would collectively save $200 billion over the next ten years.

Employers receive far more certainty about how their health care costs will vary over time and affect their finances.

Small businesses – who often suffer when competing for employees because they can’t afford to offer health care coverage – would no longer be at a competitive disadvantage against bigger businesses.

Employers can reduce their Employer Medicare Contribution by supporting unionization efforts and negotiating with workers to provide better wages and benefits – reducing costs and promoting collective bargaining at the same time.

Because my plan holds health care cost growth to GDP levels, businesses will have stable balance sheets that grow with the economy instead of crowding out other priorities.

And it continues on and on but I'm not going to post the entire plan here--but it's extensive, so read it yourself. This addresses a lot of the concerns that have been raised about her plan.

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Bill Gates is scared of Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax.

https://twitter.com/ewarren/status/1192237965113790466

Poor Bill Gates. If he got taxed $100 billion, he'd have to live off of just a measly $7 billion. How tragic.

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Ralph Nader has written a letter to the NY Times on Warren:

No wonder that Elizabeth Warren’s conservative proposals have Wall Street rattled. She offers comprehensive law and order to bring under control the corporate crime wave, the reckless speculation with “other people’s money” and the violations of fiduciary duties to their clients.

For years before and after the 2008 self-inflicted Wall Street crash — steeped in greed and conflicts of interest — the undertaxed financial firms have expected immunities and taxpayer bailouts, weaker regulation and diminished disclosures.

What Senator Warren is telling them is that the sheriff is coming to town. The Wall Streeters should not be above the law any longer.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/opinion/letters/warren-ralph-nader.html

As soon as someone talks about banks "feeling entitled" to bailouts, I know to ignore them.

The "bailout" was a loan that the banks paid back to the government, with interest.  American taxpayers profited from the bailout.

You're such a moderate hero, you're defending the BANKS? Good god, man. Get a grip.

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Ralph Nader has written a letter to the NY Times on Warren:

No wonder that Elizabeth Warren’s conservative proposals have Wall Street rattled. She offers comprehensive law and order to bring under control the corporate crime wave, the reckless speculation with “other people’s money” and the violations of fiduciary duties to their clients.

For years before and after the 2008 self-inflicted Wall Street crash — steeped in greed and conflicts of interest — the undertaxed financial firms have expected immunities and taxpayer bailouts, weaker regulation and diminished disclosures.

What Senator Warren is telling them is that the sheriff is coming to town. The Wall Streeters should not be above the law any longer.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/opinion/letters/warren-ralph-nader.html

As soon as someone talks about banks "feeling entitled" to bailouts, I know to ignore them.

The "bailout" was a loan that the banks paid back to the government, with interest.  American taxpayers profited from the bailout.

You're such a moderate hero, you're defending the BANKS? Good god, man. Get a grip.

Atlas: Hitler killed 1.5 trillion people
MacArthur: That’s not true, he killed about 30 million
Atlas: oh lawdy now he's defending Hitler!

More like

Atlas: Hitler was bad
MacArthur: Whenever someone tries to talk about Hitler being bad, I ignore them. Who cares about what Hitler did? That's in the past.

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I'm convinced that GeneralMacArthur is actually Jeff Bezos.

The fundamental issue with the very concerned billionaire defenders is that they don't actually know how much a billion dollars is. They can't conceptualize how much money that is because they're so detached from reality that they assume the gap between millionaire and billionaire is the same as the gap between millionaire and "healthily middle class". Which it is not. The former is FAR more exaggerated.

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NC had the Transgender bathroom bill; thus, making Warren the Nominee 😍

Damn, I knew I should've taken the parlay bet on "NC Transgender bathroom bill leading to Elizabeth Warren becoming the nominee"