Bernie Voted for Obamacare. That Didn't Make Him a Sellout.

[babylonsister]

Bernie Voted for Obamacare. That Didn’t Make Him a Sellout.
by Harold Meyerson
November 19, 2019


One of the oddities of the ongoing Democratic debate about how the United States can get to universal health coverage—an achievement every other nation has somehow managed to pull off—is that no one ever asks the presidential candidates about their fallback positions. But if American history has any lessons to offer, it’s that major social and economic reforms always get enacted piecemeal, over time. And so when questioning the current crop of presidential aspirants as to the plans they’ll put forward, we also need to know their criteria for accepting or rejecting the halfway-house health coverage policies likely to emerge from Congress.

Social Security, for instance, was first enacted in 1935, but in order to get it through Congress, FDR had to accept the limitations that Southern senators and congressmen (all white) put on it. Same story with the federal minimum wage, first enacted in 1938, which pointedly excluded agricultural and domestic (and for a time, even retail) workers from the list of beneficiaries.

In the 1940s, when Harry Truman proposed national health insurance, paid for by federal tax dollars, it sank like a stone. A decade and a half later, Lyndon Johnson got half a loaf—Medicare and Medicaid, federally paid health coverage for seniors and the poor—through Congress. As you’ve doubtless noticed, we’ve made some progress toward getting the other half, but we’re still working on it.

Given the lack of anything like consensual support—not just in the nation, but in the Democratic Party itself—for Medicare for All, how should supporters of Medicare for All (like myself) respond? The most sensible course is to push for the most we can get, which, if we have a Democratic president and Congress in 2021, should be along the lines of taxpayer-supported Medicare for anyone over 50 or under 26, raising the income threshold for eligibility for those between 26 and 50, allowing individuals still not eligible to buy into the plan, and allowing employers to buy in for their employees as well. Such a plan would mark a massive expansion of the public responsibility for Americans’ health care; it would be, in André Gorz’s phrase, a non-reformist reform.

If that was the most that a President Bernie Sanders could get out of Congress, would he accept it? Given that he voted to establish the Affordable Care Act and voted repeatedly against Republican efforts to repeal it, of course he would. Would Elizabeth Warren accept it? The timetable she unveiled last week actually featured an initial plan fairly close to the one I just outlined.

more...

https://prospect.org/blogs/tap/bernie-voted-for-obamacare-medicare-for-all/

[JonLP24]

1. I consider Bernie's proposals to be a starting point in negotiations

He was saving Obama care when the Republicans were trying to get rid of it & he worked out a deal with McCain when the Republicans wanted to privatize the VA.

I don't expect all his proposals to pass but I'm confident he would work to get the best deal. He'll know when to draw the line if he had to veto Republican policies for example.

[ritapria]

2. A lot of us don't believe Elizabeth can get a second bite of the Apple

We want her to go for MFA soon after Inauguration Day because the GOP is likely to gain 20 House seats in the 2022 midterms..