How Liberals Tried to Kill the Dream of Single-Payer

[KamaAina]

https://newrepublic.com/article/131251/liberals-tried-kill-dream-single-payer

Around the time that the insurgent campaign of Bernie Sanders hit its stride, a chorus of liberal pundits and economists began to coalesce around a decidedly grim message for the 60 million people in America who remain either uninsured or underinsured: Give up on your pipe dream.

Single-payer, Paul Krugman wrote in one of a series of posts in January, “isn’t a political possibility,” and is in fact “just a distraction from the real issues.” Last week in the American Prospect, sociologist Paul Starr went further in describing single-payer as a “hopeless crusade for a proposal that will go down to defeat again, as it has every time it has come up before.” And in an earlier article, he argued that even if single-payer was possible, other priorities should take precedence. Hillary Clinton is on the record agreeing with such sentiments: As she put it, single-payer “will never, ever come to pass.”...

Their essential arguments are twofold: Single-payer reform is politically impossible on the one hand, and economically infeasible on the other. However, they are very wrong on both counts. The first argument rests on a severely impoverished political vision, the second on inexcusably flawed economic and policy assumptions. Though the Sanders campaign is facing increasingly daunting obstacles to the Democratic nomination, the American health care question is not going anywhere. These criticisms therefore require greater dissection and contestation—before they congeal as the conventional wisdom. ...

To proceed, however, from an admission of these facts to an acceptance that the cause should be abandoned is to concede the contest before the first shot has been fired. This is something the Democratic Party has excelled at—with disastrous consequences—for decades. Conservatives, in contrast, have been far more willing to adopt ambitious, long-range political goals, even when contemporaneous political forces are arrayed against them.

[Kip Humphrey]

1. ALTERNATE HEADLINE: How 3rd-Way Republicrats discarded their liberal masks.

[stillwaiting]

2. Liberals really should be in quotes.

Or else they should be referred to as classical liberals. NOT U.S. American liberals. They aren't that. At all.

[Doctor_J]

3. These people are not liberals. They can continue to call themselves Democrats I guess,

but they are lying if they call themselves liberals

[nichomachus]

4. Richard Nixon proposed a healthcare plan

that was far better than anything the Democrats have proposed. Democrats killed it.

[Maedhros]

6. That's because both Parties treat the issue merely as a political football.

Democrats couldn't let Nixon pass a healthcare law, because then Republicans would get credit for it.

The primary value of the ACA was that it was Obama's flagship legislation, something to point back at and say "Democrats did THIS!" The secondary priority was making sure insurance companies maintained their place at the feeding trough. It's actual effectiveness at increasing access to care and making care more affordable were very distant third- and fourth-priorities.

[HughBeaumont]

9. "making sure insurance companies maintained their place at the feeding trough"

+1,000.

It was never about giving the hoi polloi even a crumb-speck of relief. "Qualify" doesn't mean "can afford".

The LieberDems made sure of that.

[Maedhros]

10. In an alternate reality in which Romney was elected President

and passed the exact same legislation, Democrats would be universally and harshly critical of it.

[HughBeaumont]

5. If we're not able to recognize health care as a due human right . . .

. . . and if we aren't willing to exact the political will and serious discussion to get this going . . .

. . . then are we no better than the opposition or just going along to get along?

[Maedhros]

7. Democratic leaders ARE going along to get along.

The question is, will the rank-and-file follow suit or hold them accountable?

[Blue_Tires]

8. Gaffney must have a very selective memory

otherwise he would remember how much opposition there was the last time around, and that was with a Dem-controlled senate...