Health care: Sanders sharpens the choice Democrats make...

[exploited]

The three great mysteries of existence:

1. The nature of consciousness, personhood and individuality;
2. The purpose of life, if any;
3. For-profit healthcare.

[Philly]

[NAB]

[Kane]

Apologies if that didn't come across correctly but that was an attempt at sarcasm...it was in response to spacemonkey after all. To wit - my employer switched to Kaiser because of cost.

[Kane]

It's not as if this is an easy proposition anyways - Americans are weird. They want healthcare but they don't want to pay for it. When you tell an average US citizen about single payer they're all for it. But when you tell them you will have to pay more in taxes it's suddenly a no go. Then you have corporate interests (Helllooo Hartford, Connecticut) and what would happen to the millions of people employed by the sector.

The ACA is bad, yes, but we've had nothing but obstruction since inception. How many amendments have passed to improve it? What's this admin been doing to it?

Etc. Etc.

https://www.kff.org/health-reform/poll- ... uary-2019/

[John Galt]

decoupling healthcare and employers would be a good thing. it's strange how many support insurance companies though, because almost anyone that has had to use the payouts from them should hate insurance companies. i pay a lot of money in premium and i still paid like 3k for an ER visit last year

the very presence of healthcare companies distort everything about costs though. doctors don't post how much services cost unlike literally everything else that does so. why? because of negotiated rates with providers. then they have arbitrary high numbers for people without insurance and then they say "look at how much it's costing without insured people! they stealing all our money!!!" or whatever. if insurance companies could not negotiate rates individually it would vastly improve things. but probably the only way to improve it would be to set prices for everything. which is basically what single payer forces

[exploited]

"Who knew healthcare was so complicated?" -Kane

Seriously though, who gives a shit about those numbers? If policy-makers shy away from policy because people oppose paying more taxes, they aren't going to be proposing any policy at all. Might as well just walk away from the table entirely and let the GOP run things.

People instinctually oppose higher taxes - full stop. The same opinion-shifting likely applies to virtually any important policy you can talk about.

Unfortunately for Democrats, they decided to nominate Hillary Clinton in 2016. As the worst campaign organizer in modern history, as well as one of the single worst political strategists that has ever held high office in the United States, and the most innately dislikable person alive today, Clinton immediately adopted GOP talking points. This will provide tons of ammunition for the right-wing. I can already see the political messaging on the major news networks: "The Democrat's last Presidential nominee, who once famously advocated for single payer insurance, admitted the numbers don't add up, and that Americans will be worse off under that arrangement." That was utter and outright bullshit, but it will be persuasive for the low-information voters responsible for her nomination.

Basically, this is yet another example of Centrist Democrats being totally incompetent at anything to do with politicking. You are making a f**k sales pitch here - you are selling a product, and products cost money, so the goal is to use persuasion to convince the potential buyer of the value and utility of that product. Any asshole knows that buying stuff costs money - no salesmen worth their salt is ever going to say "you shouldn't buy my product because it will cost you money." No, they talk about the benefits, and typically that involves saving money over the long-term, increasing productivity to offset the costs, etc. I mean, Jesus, this is basic f**k marketing.

[Kane]

[exploited]

Jesus Hank Christ, Kane... that is impressively stupid.

What is the point of having power if you aren't going to exercise that power in pursuit of things you want?

"WE WANT TO GET REELECTED SO THAT WE CAN HAVE POWER THAT WE WON'T USE BECAUSE WE WANT TO GET REELECTED."

Stop voting.

[Kane]