Bernie Sanders Won't Support House Democrats' Plan to Strengthen Obamacare (2019)

[TomCADem]

You know Bernie's commercial praising Democrats and how he was supportive of President Obama's legacy? It is classic BS. If Bernie can't get his way, he has and will side with Republicans to try to tear down benefits, because they do not go far enough. This is sort of like Trump saying that he did not support Russia election sanctions, because they were not tough enough. Like Republicans, Bernie wants the ACA to fail, so that more Americans can suffer, so that he can have a blank slate on which to build his revolution with him leading the charge. So, when Bernie attacks the healthcare system, don't forget that he turned his back on efforts to improve it.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/03/bernie-sanders-wont-back-house-democrats-obamacare-bill.html

Fears that progressives will make support for a single-payer health care system a mandatory litmus test for all Democrats became more serious on Tuesday night as Bernie Sanders refused to support, or say anything positive about, a very high-profile House Democratic bill aimed at strengthening Obamacare.

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It seems to represent a crossing of the Rubicon in which the candidate treats incremental reform as an abomination: “Right now we’re working on what I have fought for my entire life,” he said. “Healthcare is a right. It has to be comprehensive. The current system is dysfunctional. It is enormously wasteful.”

The trouble is, of course, that House Democrats from across the ideological spectrum united behind the bill Bernie is disrespecting. It was designed to exploit the Trump administration’s startling decision to threaten Obamacare yet again by supporting a judicial elimination of the entire Affordable Care Act, and was intended to sidestep differences of opinion on broader health-care reforms like Medicare for All.

In Sanders’s defense, the House bill is purely a “messaging” device that will very likely never see the light of day in the Republican-controlled Senate. But his refusal even to pay Nancy Pelosi the courtesy of positive lip service toward a bill that is central to House Democrats’ 2020 strategy will likely be taken as a sign that he and his supporters intend to go to the mat for his vision of Medicare for All and excoriate anyone who doesn’t bend the knee. Accordingly, fresh hopes that Trump had divided his own party on health-care policy while uniting Democrats appear to have been premature.

[showblue22]

1. He gets in the way of progress.

I've said this all along. He hurts the progressive cause more than helps it.

[TomCADem]

5. He Complains About ACA, But Refuses to Improve It

It is all or nothing. Yet, he expects to be President. Does he think that Congress is just going to give him all of his demands?

[Cha]

2. that's right. I remember that.

[thesquanderer]

3. Thank you for at least including this key line:

In Sanders’s defense, the House bill is purely a “messaging” device

This was a vote designed to send a message. Remember this was already after Sanders had begun his 2020 campaign. His message has consistently been, the best way to move forward is not to amend ACA but rather to transition to MFA. I am not surprised that he would not want to send two different, conflicting messages during his campaign.

Remember also that even when the ACA was first introduced, he was critical of it even then. But in the end, when the vote mattered, he bit the bullet and voted FOR it, recognizing that this was one of the cases where what he saw as a very imperfect bill was better than none, and that it needed all the votes it could get. (It passed the Senate with just 60 votes.)

[TomCADem]

4. Bernie's Attacks During and After ACA Helped Republicans

Indeed, everytime Bernie started pushing single payer, the Republicans were going to ride the wave and introduce another bill to repeal the ACA. There is no reason why Bernie could push for improvements to the ACA so that it could evolve toward single payer. In South Korea, their health system was not invented overnight, but took over a decade to get to where it was at. However, Bernie's calculus is that he does not want to improve it, because this will somehow take the edge off of his revolution, so it is all or nothing.

This is why I think that even if Bernie won the Presidency, we would get far less than under Biden. Bernie has not shown he can push through major pieces of legislation. Plus, to the extent that he now compromises, he will look like a liar, because he has set the bar so high. Indeed, it almost seems that he is setting himself up for failure, just he can blame the "establishment" when his ideas fail to see the light of day.

It goes back to Lyndon Johnson versus George McGovern. LBJ was hardly a revolutionary, but he knew how to pass legislation, which is why JFK added him to the ticket over the objections of the left. Yet, it is LBJ that is now considered the gold standard for passing progressive legislation. George McGovern? He just ended up alienating himself from the Democratic party, and he ended up getting destroyed by Richard Nixon.