Regarding Health Care Plans, It Is Not Up to the President.

[MineralMan]

Each of our Democratic candidates for the presidential nomination has ideas about how to make healthcare more available and affordable. Those ideas, however, are not necessarily how changes will be implemented. All a President can do is push for a plan.

Any changes must be made by Congress. That's how such things work in this country. So, whoever is elected as President cannot unilaterally dictate how health care will be changed. That's the problem with Trump as President. He thinks he is in a country with a unitary executive who can do whatever he wants. Democrats don't believe in such a thing.

So, the plans of the current candidates are interesting, but more or less irrelevant to how health care will be changed. Those changes will come from Congress. Look to your House representatives and Senators if you want to have a particular kind of healthcare system. They are the ones who will create, not the President.

The U.S. Government works as it works. Wishful thinking will not change how it works. So, the details of a candidate's health care proposal are essentially meaningless in terms of what will finally be put into place. It is a mistake to focus too closely on those individual plans. What finally emerges will be something with different details.

[IronLionZion]

1. 2010 was an interesting year after we got the ACA

lots of DUers were claiming it wasn't liberal enough because there was no public option and they wanted single payer/MFA so they cheered on the shellacking at the polls that year as lots of red state moderate Dems in congress lost to rabid tea party extremists.

Lot of DUers wanted to punish Obama and teach him a lesson

[bluewater]

2. You are minimizing President Obama's vision and leadership on heathcare

The healthcare plans of current candidates are more than "interesting", just as President Obama's plans for the Affordable Care Act were more than "interesting".

Presidential vison and leadership is indispensable on complex issues like healthcare. Attempts to minimize that importance is shortsighted and counter productive to Democratic efforts to make life better for all Americans.

Leadership matters. Vision matters.

[Uncle Joe]

5. +1

[MineralMan]

8. No, I am not. What we got was less than it could have been,

due to Congress. Had Obama gotten everything he wanted, we would have a much better system.

A President's vision of how things should be is rarely how things turn out. Many DUers have openly said that ACA was only a half-measure. One even called Obama a terrible name over his misunderstanding of how the system worked. President Obama's healthcare reforms are criticized here all the time.

Now, in 2019, we are back to the same bickering over several candidates' "vision" for healthcare. In the end, the system we get will depend on what Congress is willing to turn into law. That's how it always is. Some insist that it must be Medicare for All or nothing. Others suggest that there is a path to universal healthcare via the ACA. We fight constantly over that.

In the end, it will take another decade or two to create a real universal healthcare system, and Congress will be the body that slows things down the most. It's not about the Presidential nominee. It is about Congress, so we need to focus at least as much attention on the legislative branch as on the executive branch.

[bluewater]

9. Again, you diminish the importance of Presidential leadership and vision.

There is not much else to say.

[elleng]

3. Yes, THANK YOU,

it's a waste of time and anguish to spend time on 'discussing' candidates's plans, gets us nowhere, but gives fodder to repugs.

[Voltaire2]

4. Well that is superficial, but thanks for

explaining how our government doesn’t actually work.

So the ACA had nothing to do with Obama?

[bluewater]

6. What is the intent of saying our candidates' healthcare plans are meaningless?

To demotivate Democratic voters? To diminish turn out? Well, that seems like it could be the result.

I don't get the point of saying that our 2020 candidates' healthcare plans don't really matter much.

They matter to me and, I'd bet, a lot of other people struggling to pay for healthcare.



Our Democratic 2020 candidates' healthcare plans are vital to voter turnout and to differentiate our party from Trump and the rthugs.

[melman]

7. "the details of a candidate's health care proposal are essentially meaningless"