Sanders Has It Right: Majority of Americans Want 'Medicare for All' System

[kaleckim]

Don't they know that the "progressive" Democratic Party "leaders" have said that single payer will never happen and that it's too expensive, even though it's much cheaper everywhere it's been implemented than our system? At least their top donors largely applaud that.

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/05/16/sanders-has-it-right-majority-americans-want-medicare-all-system

"Gallup survey results highlight 'broad, national longing for a more humane health care system that treats health care as a human right'"

Bernie Sanders' call to replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) with a single-payer healthcare system is a policy that a strong majority of Americans agree with, according to a new Gallup survey released on Monday.

Fifty-eight percent of all U.S. adults favor replacing the ACA with a federally-funded healthcare program, such as Sanders' Medicare for All.

This is compared with 48 percent who prefer to keeping Obama's healthcare system in place, a policy which has been a cornerstone of Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton's campaign platform.

...However, Gallup found that those who favor both a federally run national healthcare system and the ACA, when given a choice, "come down on the side of the Sanders-type proposal."

"The general idea of a single payer system seems to play well with the majority of Americans," Gallup states, which is something both Clinton and the presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump "will need to keep in mind as they debate healthcare in the months to come."

[CrowCityDem]

1. Yes, but that number drops quite a bit when the cost to them is included in the question.

[HerbChestnut]

5. Only when presented to them in a misleading manner

Like saying it will cost $15trillion over 10 years without mentioning they won't be paying for private insurance, which ends up *saving* everyone money. Yeah, the number does drop when presented that way. The Republicans have been doing it for years, and now Hillary supporters have latched on to it. Anything for the win!

[NorthCarolina]

6. Hillary camp hearsay. -nt-

[CrowCityDem]

9. Look at this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511972216

That polling shows American's don't like the actual details of a single-payer plan. What a shock!

[NorthCarolina]

10. Sorry,

but I don't accept that poll as valid reflection of reality on the ground.

[CrowCityDem]

11. Denying evidence. Sounds like a conservative. Lol!

[NorthCarolina]

12. Denying an obvious push-poll is wise whether you are

a liberal OR a conservative. Lol!

[kaleckim]

15. You make an argument against single payer

then call the other person the conservative. LOL! Perfect example of a Clinton supporter.

Do Americans like paying far more than every other country per capita and as a percentage of GDP for health care? Do they like dying young? Do they like the waste in the system (far more than in Medicare, Medicaid and universal systems in other countries), having far worse outcomes, and going into bankrupcty more than any other reason as a result of health care (a majority of those that do actually have private insurance)?

What exactly does your party stand for?

[kaleckim]

14. What nonsense

what do you mean? Yes, public spending would go up, but as we know from every other country and with studies on the matter, that is more than offset by REDUCTIONS IN PRIVATE SPENDING!

Amazing that this has to be explained to "Democrats". It isn't like this isn't common knowledge by now by people even on the barely left.

[blm]

2. I know THIS American does.

This was my tied for my number one of reasons for supporting Sanders in NC.

[still_one]

3. Do they realize that their are premiums for Medicare? Drug plan is extra,

and a supplemental plan is extra because Medicare A/B does not cover everything?

[CrowCityDem]

7. Of course they don't, because Bernie is either sloppy or lying in his terminology.

[still_one]

8. I agree

[kaleckim]

16. Sorry to butt in the conversation between two center-right Democrats

but he is in favor of a single payer system, the thing that works in every other developed country in the world. The thing that your corrupt candidate was in favor of (rhetorically at least) before she got massive amounts of money from drug and insurance companies. The system your party used to favor, and many Democrats in decades past fought for.

In Colorado they are trying to pass a single payer type of bill, and there are many Democrats working to undermine it, and they have close ties to the insurance industry. That is what the party has become, you are what the party has become.

[CrowCityDem]

18. Single payer works, but his plan doesn't add up. There are other ways than Bernie's.

[-none]

4. Single Payer, Universal Health Care.

Controlled at the Federal level. If the states have any control, many states will use that control to try to destroy Single Payer.
Without the profit margins of the many private health insurance companies, how can it not be cheaper.

[Whimsey]

13. Well if Bernie had voted for Hillarycare back in the 90's . . .

Perhaps we would have transitioned to single payer for all by now.

Don't think that thinking democrats do not realize that getting any kind of government endorsement of a medical insurance for all as a constitutional right was only the first step. The supreme court did that with ACA.

Nobody in their right mind runs on a platform of single payer. Too many interests against it. But once you are in the driving seat you are looking out for the best interest of the nation.

I have always been a proponent of single-payer and a Hillary supporter. I thought the ACA was unworkable, and it has been godly expensive for those of us who are self-employed and in the individual policy market. Our premiums have doubled to $1000 a month with a $10,000 deductible for two adults. I have tolerated it because I knew this first step would be so onerous and expensive that the country will cry out for single payer. But Clinton and Obama laid the groundwork. Bernie has done nothing. He just wants to skim the cream.

[kaleckim]

17. What did Hillarycare

have to do with single payer? Nothing what so ever, that horrible mess of a bill was (like the ACA), written by the industry itself. How many people that helped to craft the ACA either worked in that industry, or have since left for that industry.

Right now in Illinois, they expanded Medicaid. Great right? Well, they expanded it by making it into a Hillary like managed care. In other words, "Medicaid" has been expanded by privatizing it, which means that publicly funded private insurance has been expanded, and the government has decided to call it Medicaid.

[Whimsey]

19. Perhaps if you had read my whole post

instead of just the first line, you would have gotten my point, which is not so different than yours.

So why did Bernie vote for the ACA? Because after 20 years he realized it was the best first step he could get. So now we keep taking steps. Revolutions just create counterrevolutions.

I've lived in Illinois my whole life, except the two I lived in NY after my birth. That's fifty eight years now. And I managed low-income housing for 30 of those years.

I disagree with your characterization of the expansion of Medicaid. For the same people it covered before the expansion it works the same. For those who did not qualify for coverage under the then existing program -- too young, no minor children, not disabled, it was expanded with Medicaid money to be used in the insurance marketplace. So the federal government money is paying the premium for the low income persons coverage got expanded to. Those of us who had our own private insurance, not through a job, have paid in large part for the expansion because our premiums have doubled and we do not qualify for a subsidy. I know very well how the system works.

My friend's son got private insurance when he turned 26. Months later he was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia. Thank god under ACA the insurance company could not cut him off his insurance. It is one of the things we are paying for.

And for what it's worth, single-payer will be paid for by taxes one way or another. It should be a more efficient system, but only if the government caps doctors and drug fees. Look at the stupid expansion of drug coverage under medicare - the govt was denied the right to negotiate drug costs with pharmaceutical companies by the republicans. Stupid.

[BernieforPres2016]

20. Obamacare is on the way to extinction regardless of who is elected

The cost of plans in my state (NC) have been skyrocketing the last 2-3 years and it appears that next year there will be one provider - Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina. They are the company whose policies have been going up by most. The rate of annual increases in the monthly premiums combined with high deductibles are unsustainable, even with subsidies. From what I have read it is the same in many other states.

Obama had the opportunity to push for a single payer plan but chose to get in bed with the health insurance companies. Hillary has made it clear that the most she will do with healthcare is tinker around the edges. She is more concerned with her financial contributors from health care, including the insurers and big pharma, than she is about average people.

If Trump has any brains, he will say that Obamacare is a disaster that must be replaced, but everybody needs to be insured and we can't go back to preexisting conditions, so it is time to go to a single payer plan. Imagine Hillary trying to tell Trump we can't afford a single payer healthcare plan like every other advanced industrial nation in the world. If Trump runs to the left of Hillary on health care and trade, she is going to be in big trouble.