FOOTNOTES:

(1) A CBS analyst just treated “single payer” “Medicare for All” as a not-insane policy proposal. That’s called dragging the Overton Window left (which has been my sole criterion for success from a Sanders campaign).

(2) The “health insurance industry” is not, following Veblen, an industry; unlike health care, it creates no value; it is wholly parasitic and should not exist. “One does not improve a tapeworm; one removes it.” Pragmatically, I grant it’s not possible for anybody to answer Cordes’s question in those terms on national television, even on a Saturday night in Des Moines, but Sanders doesn’t even address it (though Clinton, in another sign of inattention or confusion, doesn’t call him on that). Somebody on the Sanders team needs to figure this out, because people will have noticed, and the question will come up again.

(3) Tactically, Sanders keeps hammering Clinton on corruption. Strategically, “these are our demands” is always a good thing to be able to say. However, at least to Sanders, the missing agency in “happen” can only be a movement outside the party structure, which he doesn’t mention here (and only mentions elsewhere). To be fair, time constraints are clearly a concern for all the candidates; CBS ran the debate well, and didn’t let them filibuster.

(4) A rhetorical question (in fact, Anacoenosis /ˌænəsiːˈnoʊsɨs/ a figure of speech in which the speaker poses a question to an audience in a way that demonstrates a common interest.). And a powerful one, especially because Clinton can’t ask or answer it. However, Sanders — and we all love Bernie, but some of us love a killer instinct, too, especially in debate — might have driven the knife home by adding something like “and this is a question I would like Secretary Clinton to answer.” (If Sanders wants to pick up a few seconds for this, he can eliminate “at the end of the day.”)

FOOTNOTES:

(1) I don’t know the Drake audience, but I’m not sure that’s the most effective appeal to students, despite the obvious villainy of Pharma. Sanders’ appeal to basic fairness probably works. It’s also, when you think about it, ridiculous that putting young adults on their parents’ health insurance policies is treated as some sort of policy triumph. Surely it’s on a par with young adults living in their parents homes because they can’t afford to move out?

(2) Presumably, then — thanks to the work of Michael Moore? — everybody in the audience knows that Canada has a health care system that guarantees health care to all, gutted the private health insurance business, and successfully bent the cost curve. So Sanders doesn’t have to unpack the detail.

(3) I’m surprised Sanders doesn’t bring in the $500 billion a year in cost savings; that’s real money, even today. This would have insulated him against any claim of reckless extravagance. In the event, Clinton made no such claim.

(4) Here Sanders adds the missing agency.

(5) Mark “I will lead” for later.

(6) As a wonkish side note, single payer advocates have gone round and round about whether “single payer” or “Medicare for All” is the right phrase. “Single payer” accurately describes the system; “Medicare for All” is a better selling point (despite its increasing infestation by neo-liberal rent seekers). Here Sanders simply yokes both phrases together. That’s probably the way to go.

FOOTNOTES:

(1) First, the policy failure is nothing other than a failure of leadership (see note (5), supra) in 1994; note how the lack of agency in “never came” airbrushes this away. It seems foolish to reproduce the failures of more than twenty years ago today. Second, I can’t help but think that “the revolution” is, in Clinton’s mind, a subconscious allusion to Ira Magaziner’s Time magazine cover, captioned “Peaceful Revolutionary,” since Clinton chose Magaziner to lead her own (butchered) health care reform effort. Third, this a sharpened version of the usual Democratic trope that this or that policy isn’t “politically feasible.” However, Democrats who make that argument can be relied upon never to have made the slightest effort to make the policy politically feasible; among such Democrats, in health care policy, Clinton.

(2) Well, no. The people who suffered or died without health care due to lack of universal coverage can be said to have scars. Clinton has the very best of health care; no scars at all.

(3) A demagogic appeal to party tribalism. Five years after ObamaCare was passed, 50% of those eligible but unenrolled have run the numbers and concluded it’s a bad deal for them (NBER). ObamaCare faces a death spiral. How is any of this defensible, especially when lives are at stake?

(4) Another demagogic appeal to party tribalism; how is ObamaCare to be “improved,” if not by making coverage universal? Clinton doesn’t say. She doesn’t even mention “my plan.”

(5) Why would passing an effective single payer Medicare for All plan be less effective than continuing to tinker with ObamaCare? FDR said: “It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.” Last I checked, FDR was also a highly effective Democratic partisan. So why can’t Clinton adopt FDR’s common sense attitude?