Democratic Primaries
In reply to the discussion: Unless the "public option" is free or inexpensive it's snake oil.. and dangerous snake oil at that. [View all]ehrnst
(32,640 posts)replicate what they have in TWO YEARS - as Sanders claims it can be done as a POTUS candidate, going from a baked in system that is 18% of the GDP.
His 2016 plan, which claimed it could be done in 8 years was analyzed by an independent health policy think tank, and they didn't agree with the claims in the plan, and determined that taxpayers would pay more, and delivery of care disrupted more than the plan claimed. The think tank was promptly falsely smeared and discredited by Sanders spokespersons, and therefore shortly afterwards,
by his supporters.
Those countries started from scratch generations ago, and their systems grew up with technology as it became more expensive. There was no insurance system to retrofit.
Canada didn't go federally single payer until all the provinces did individually - which took nearly 20 years. Then a very liberal PM was elected in the 60's, and they added a federal layer to what was there. It's still mostly run at the province level, and does not include nearly the perks that Sanders' platinum plan does.
Australia's nearly went under, but they changed it. Their plan is far easier and cheaper to administer with 89% of their population concentrated in a few urban areas, making it more efficient to deliver to more people with fewer facilities. The US is 80% rural. Australia's 10.45% rural population doesn't get very good health care.
It's easy to 'sell "Medicare for All" because that implies that the system is already in place - and you just expand it. The onboarding of hundreds of millions in two years would overwhelm the current infrastructure, and the economic displacement and cost cutting would impact other areas of the economy.
The transfer of billions of dollars from a variety of sources to reroute them to other sources won't happen quickly either.
But during a campaign, it's easy to promise things, and get into a promise competition with opponents.
primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden