Why Is Health Care Reform Absent This Election?
Why Is Health Care Reform Absent This Election?
Despite polling consistently showing that voters are deeply concerned about medical care and its costs, neither Donald Trump nor Kamala Harris is offering a sweeping vision of health care reform.
Its because the discussion around Health Care is still focused on Obamacare. Republicans want to blow it up, and worry about what to replace it with later. Democrats have their hands full simply trying to save what they have. Going further will have to wait until half the country doesn't want to replace it with concepts of a plan.
Democrats have their hands full simply trying to save
what they havedemocracy
It hasn't been a major talking point but Harris does want to expand Medicare to include home healthcare.
Which would be huge. Right now Medicare doesn't cover long-term care at all, and programs that do, push people into facilities that cost more per day than in-home care. And it's a huge stress for the younger generations that get stuck taking care of their wrinklies. With the population lump getting older, this is becoming more important every year.
I've heard multiple sources call this "huge" but to me it just sounds like "the building is on fire but we promised to try to use an eye dropper to put out no more than 1/15th of a square inch of the fire."
priorities.
- dump trump, keep the white house
- keep and build majority in senate to 60+
- get and maintain house majority
- start doing good stuff
- build those congressional majorities to 2/3rds+
- maintain the white house
- build and keep control of 38+ state legislatures
- do the big stuff (amendments)
- never let republicans be in charge again
Promoting policies people care about is how you do most of those things. You don't "win elections" by just wanting it.
I wish the Democrats understood that
I was so disappointed when Kamala came out strong for Medicare For All and then pretty much immediately caved and walked it back.
I have a strong suspicion that there is enormous pressure from the business world to keep the healthcare system the way it is. I'd bet almost anything that the instant healthcare is no longer tied to employment there is going to be a mass exodus of people from their jobs, and an absolute explosion of people starting their own businesses. I mean, I've had about half a dozen good scalable business ideas waiting and ready to go for years now, and the only reason I haven't pursued them is because it would probably mean giving up my health insurance. I can't possibly be alone in that.
And I bet if we got socialized health care, a lot of the problems we have right now with suppressed wages and poor working conditions would suddenly have a way of working themselves out.
I agree with most of what you say, and holy shit it would be absolutely amazing if we un-tethered health insurance from employment, but I also know that M4A is dead on arrival until you get a 55+ seat majority in the Senate. I think that's the reality Harris sees at this point, and [baseless opinion forthcoming] I think she (and others) had more flexibility arguing in favor of it in the 2020 primary because they had reason to believe that the pandemic health scare might potentially swing a sizeable Dem majority into Congress the same way the GFC did in 2008. Once that didn't happen, I think the reality of our situation settled in and they started to grapple with the fact that Obamacare is about as far out on a limb as they're going to get in the short term.
Concepts of a plan
ITT: excuses