Donald Trump is making Medicare-for-all inevitable

[babylonsister]

https://www.vox.com/2018/8/3/17641560/medicare-for-all-trump

Donald Trump is making Medicare-for-all inevitable
A market-based solution can’t work if Republicans won’t let it.
By Matthew Yglesias@[e-mail] Aug 3, 2018, 9:00am EDT


Medicare-for-all — a government-run insurance program that everyone is either covered by or at least eligible for — is unequivocally the future of progressive health care policy.

True, there are many unanswered questions about what “Medicare-for-all” really means, how much it would really cost, how you would finance it, and, critically, how you would transition from point A to point B while restructuring the health care system. But whether the Democratic Party should pursue it is no longer in doubt.

That’s in part thanks to the work of activists and organizers who’ve been working in the single-payer trenches for years.

But it’s also thanks to the Trump administration, which, having failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, has undertaken a nearly unprecedented campaign of regulatory malfeasance that aims to prevent it from functioning and minimize the number of people on whom it bestows comprehensive health coverage.

Republicans are, of course, entitled to act like this if they want to. But their determination carries a powerful lesson for Democrats. If they believe that universal health insurance is a moral imperative — as they have since at least Franklin Roosevelt’s time — then only a very heavy-handed government program is going to get the job done.

snip//

The simple fact is that though they don’t like to admit it, they just disagree with the moral premise that the government has an obligation to ensure that people get the health care they need. And that’s going to mean doing it the old-fashioned way — by enrolling as many people as possible, including, ultimately, everyone in government programs that keep operating unless Congress actually repeals them.

The notion of a compromise strategy that would allow Democrats to achieve their basic goals while being flexible and industry-friendly with the means was appealing on a number of levels, but it depended fundamentally on the notion that Republicans would treat such a compromise as stable. The reality is they won’t, so Democrats will have to choose — either abandon a generations-long principle (which isn’t going to happen) or move forward into the single-payer future.

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

1. Didn't one Republican say that when she attended a Democratic rally she was shocked

to hear that people wanted their children to have healthcare and an education?

Ghastly!

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. He's also responsible for some states going on their own to fight anti-environmental decisions.

Am glad to see Trump admin. has a lot of lawsuits against his policies.

Read yesterday 22 states banded together to fight him against the car emission standards being lowered.