And the worst part is the establishment is going to back cutting down the already anemic relief bill.
Joe Biden backs away from a public option.
- Thread starter crimson5pheonix
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And the worst part is the establishment is going to back cutting down the already anemic relief bill.
Read my lips Jack, if you elect these two senators and give us the majority, we will get you your
Fuck Biden and The Democrats with their "we negotiate against ourselves down and then negotiate further down once we actually bring it to The Republicans". It's all a fucking Dog and Pony show. Honestly, it would not shock me in the least if fucking Wall Street and Melvin Capital gets a bailout before we see a dime of this (shit, at this point, they might just try to run out the clock and say now that the vaccine is here, we don't need to give out stimulus checks anymore)
But yeah, they're totally two different parties guys!
Actually, that's not fair. Donald Trump at least got me $1,800...
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Well here we are a few weeks later, how's the relief bill going?
jacobinmag.com
Largely the same, no mentions of actually helping people in a real way, continued subsidizing of an industry dedicated to not helping people.
But there's talk of some kind of public option from people who aren't Biden! They've struck "universal" from the language, but they say it's closely modeled on what Biden wants, which sounds about right.
Democrats Are Subsidizing Health Insurance Predators
Democrats want to pay billions to put Americans on expensive corporate health insurance plans rather than expand Medicare or create a public option. It’s a gift to a criminal private insurance industry that needs to be completely abolished.
jacobinmag.com
Largely the same, no mentions of actually helping people in a real way, continued subsidizing of an industry dedicated to not helping people.
But there's talk of some kind of public option from people who aren't Biden! They've struck "universal" from the language, but they say it's closely modeled on what Biden wants, which sounds about right.
The Democrats have said from the beginning that they want everyone to have ACCESS to health careWell here we are a few weeks later, how's the relief bill going?
Democrats Are Subsidizing Health Insurance Predators
Democrats want to pay billions to put Americans on expensive corporate health insurance plans rather than expand Medicare or create a public option. It’s a gift to a criminal private insurance industry that needs to be completely abolished.
Largely the same, no mentions of actually helping people in a real way, continued subsidizing of an industry dedicated to not helping people.
But there's talk of some kind of public option from people who aren't Biden! They've struck "universal" from the language, but they say it's closely modeled on what Biden wants, which sounds about right.
Being able to AFFORD that access however...now that's just a ridiculous idea!!!
It's absurd & grotesque that Americans have to pay for insurance in order to access healthcare in the first place.
But if 85% of premiums are covered by the government under this proposal, that's a step towards affordability, no? A 100% subsidy would obviously be preferable-- as would immediate introduction of the public option. But it seems clear that it was much less affordable to be insured before this proposal than after it.
Unless I'm missing something.
Because it's not 85% of premiums, it's an up to 85% subsidy on COBRA, which only helps people who A) have a job that offered health insurance that B) they lost recently and C) signed up for COBRA and it's ridiculous ass expense. Because all COBRA is is an extension on employer health care plans, but you, the out-of-work consumer, has to pay both your premium and the premium your employer had paid while you were working. And further, the new subsidies don't cover deductibles or co-pays, so even if it lets you afford to be insured and make politicians look good at how many people are insured, it won't actually let you afford that insurance, so it's functionally the same as being uninsured.
But what people who don't qualify for COBRA get out of this bill is...
NOTHING! confetti and noise makers
EDIT: For reference, the only figure I could find for COBRA enrollment came from 2017 and it was ~130,000 people. It could be 10 times higher now because of COVID (which is supremely generous), and it would mean a subsidy would only reach at most 1.3 million people. This is how useless a measure funding COBRA is.
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Crimson already answered the direct question but now it's once again time for "Tippy's Soapbox"!
This is the kind of shit The Democrats constantly pull and why I've said that I will never vote for anyone that doesn't put their full support behind M4A (or a similar program). As you stated, them covering 85% of deductibles for the couple hundred (or maybe thousands or maybe even tens of thousands, I'm not going to pretend to know the exact numbers COBRA has) is better than nothing but that's all they're going to do. They're going to hold these crumbs up as proof that you HAVE to vote for them because it's better than nothing!
Fuck that
We can either fix the shitastic medical care system that America has or we can keep throwing band-aids on a gunshot wound and going "Well it's better than nothing I guess".
Ahhhh, right-- so it only actually provides for a relatively small number of people, excluding those who didn't already have workplace-provided insurance or those who didn't buy into COBRA. I'd missed that. Then yeah, it's plainly hugely insufficient.
It's not entirely true to say those outside of COBRA don't get anything, though; the bill has various other provisions like the increase in unemployment benefit, the increase in minimum wage, & the pretty large increase in child tax credit (and expansion of eligibility for the latter).
OK, but this is predicated on the assumption that they won't pursue the public option at all because they're not doing so in this bill, right?
True but every time they've said they're going to fight for a public option, it's always the first thing immediately cut when there's even the slightest amount of pushback on it so I never expect it to be done anyway.
As an aside though, I am of the mind that a Public Option is an absolute waste of time; I've looked at what Obamacare costs and the coverage for someone like me who wouldn't qualify for any help on it. The deductible and Max out of pocket was absolutely fucking ridiculously high (I thought my deductible of $2,000 and $5,000 max out of pocket was crazy through my employer but that has NOTHING on the deductibles/MOOP Obamacare has AND Obamacare cost about double what I currently pay for).
This goes right back to my first point earlier in this thread; Democrats seem very interested in making sure everyone has ACCESS to health insurance but no real care in whether people can actually AFFORD it. Obamacare is basically only useful for you if you get some huge "Fuck you" medical bill like you got crushed by a bus or some shit (and that would assume that the hospital they brought your unconscious and crushed body to accepts your insurance plan) and that's about it.
So like the broken record that I am; M4A (or something similar) or GTFO politicians
But that's not healthcare is it, the focus of this thread. While there are good things in the bill, they don't relate to healthcare, and several of those things are on the chopping block. Most noticeably, the minimum wage increase is being fought and the White House isn't trying particularly hard to keep it. In fact they're trying harder to keep Neera Tanden now that she's going down in flames than they are the minimum wage hike.
Yes, this is the bill where you would start that. The whole talk of one step at a time starts here. And as we've now seen, as per my original updated post, the public option has now lost the "universal" tag.
The democrat party as a whole remains untrustworthy.
Yeah guys vote Blue in 2024. Public healthcare will soon follow.
We can start laying the groundwork in 2024 to allow a limited access public option test run to be implemented in 2028, assuming we win again.
That's fair enough, but this is the first time it's ever been included in an election manifesto, isn't it?
D'you mean you've looked into what the costs are for you currently under the ACA? The ACA essentially just made use of the existing private options; why would you use that to estimate how much you'd have to pay under a public option?
In a Covid relief bill?
The healthcare reform is likely to face extensive fighting and a lengthy slog through the legislative process. If it's tied to the Covid relief bill, that means the Covid relief bill gets delayed, perhaps by months.
They should draft and introduce it as soon as possible, but not tie it onto Covid relief and thus deny people access to emergency funding for months-on-end.
Yes. Actually. This is the time to, say, expand medicare/medicaid to cover everyone so nobody has to worry about getting sick during a pandemic. It in fact could have been the action taken instead of subsidizing COBRA, because that's the purpose behind subsidizing COBRA except that subsidizing COBRA doesn't actually do that and instead lobs more money to the industry that doesn't want to see any sort of public option, let alone universal coverage.
Covering healthcare during a pandemic is what you would call "relief". There's no reason to carry water for people who would hate you if you were American. We need leftist solutions, not centrist ones.
My government last year announced they would look into setting up a commission to consider implementing a living wage. That was an actual announcement that was made.
I mean, yeah, if its passage was going to be quick, that'd be wonderful.
But nobody should be under any illusions that it can pass congress quickly. It's going to be an arduous and lengthy process without question. You tie it to Covid relief, nobody gets Covid relief for months at the very least.
And doing so doesn't even speed the passage of the healthcare bill, when they can just be introduced separately and exist in congress at the same time.
I don't really care what The Democrats say. I trust them to stick to their word about as much as I trust Lying Richie The Lying Liar whose pants became on fire due to all of his lying. Democrats talk the talk but they never walk the walk so until this is actually on the table as something they might actually fight for, I couldn't care less about their talk. Because we've seen this episode countless times; they say they want a public option, it meets the smallest amount of resistance, it gets cut. See you next time, same Bat Place, same Bat Channel.
Because we have zero information on what the Public Option would actually mean and do and they want to add the Public Option to Obamacare (to be fair to them, they probably can't have specific information on what it would actually entail because they wouldn't know that until they actually tried to pass it instead of just talking about it in the abstract).
Maybe the costs and the details would be different if they ever actually tried to pass the stupid thing instead of constantly saying NEXT time we'll look at adding it but right now, that's the only information I would have access to in order to see what the public option might look like.
Carry that water. I'll be like you and just give up ahead of time, there's no point in asking for anything, I'll be like you, the good centrist that asks for nothing. With any luck, I'll be dead soon and you won't have to argue with me anymore.
Also I missed this.
Obama in 2008 promised a public healthcare plan, and then scrapped it himself. None of this is new or novel, except that it's happening during COVID.
After that commission, I'll presume they'll make another commission to examine and study their findings to see if they can be implemented in any way, shape, or form.