Putting aside survey data which shows a large majority considers the Democratic party more “trustworthy” when it comes to health care, the gop couldn’t kill the pre-existing condition laws. They tried but people who aren’t insane right wing nut jobs didn’t believe them when they said their law would be as protective,…

Um, it’s completely different. Do you not understand the difference between providers being told by a government agency “here is what we’ll pay, you can take it or leave it” vs. telling insurers and providers “this is what you can charge and this is what you can accept you’ll pay”?

Everyone would be “on” Medicare For All. Who would the doctors or hospitals see if they don’t see Medicare For All patients? Even if a portion of the current system existed, it would be massively reduced in size because employers would no longer provide part of peoples’ compensation as health care contributions…

Medicare “For All” means everyone will be on the Medicare plan. Who will the providers treat if they don’t accept Medicare patients? The tens of millions of concierge medicine patients who can pay cash at rates higher than Medicare For All rates? Or will they go practice in those other first world countries with…

That’s a legitimate issue. Employer based insurance is only “cheap” because we all subsidize it through the tax system. If the tax subsidy was removed then the cost of the insurance would shoot up and employees would become exposed to an even great amount of the actual cost.

Do you want republicans telling you what procedures can be covered by Medicare for all?

You understand under the German system, the Federal Ministry of Health “determines provider fees under substitutive, complementary, and supplementary PHI (private health insurance-me) through a specific fee schedule”, right? Do you get what that means? What do you think the chances are that providers and insurers will…

All those countries achieve multi-payer coverage using government price controls to make sure health care costs remain sustainable for the payers and individuals. At some level of government there are active controls over what two parties engaged in a private contractual agreement may charge and accept for payment.…

Of course many will oppose it. They opposed Medicare too. Have you ever heard still-an-actor Ronald Reagan’s classic anti-Medicare AMA funded LP? It was part the 1961 Operation Coffee Cup where the AMA tried to convince people Medicare was a step on the road to a Socialist Dictatorship (that’s literally what Reagan…

But why wouldn’t the organization immediately blame some outside vendor who maliciously sabotaged their great event featuring their great president? These kind of people love to feel as if they are fighting against an evil conspiracy hell bent on taking them down (and taking down America itself) by any means…

Where in MO were you working? I was in the Mid-Missouri region (Boone, Callaway, etc. In Callaway they wouldn’t let the young Black organizers from out of state go to the doorsteps by themselves without a white organizer for fear of the Black person’s safety. It’s not called “Little Dixie” for nothing) and further…

That’s a huge part of this. Wealthy, older people outside of a small number of very specific places can no longer say in public they’re voting gop because the gop understands bad people need to take their bad medicine and good people need to be incentivized to be even better which will help everyone else. i.e. we need…

This was in Missouri with a completely different system. The caregivers only received payments from the state, but otherwise there was minimal oversight once the caregiver was initially approved. There was no agency involved and no county employment. The caregivers were by law considered “employees” of their patient…

These weren’t “professional” caregivers. They were essentially family members of the disabled person “hiring” them to provide in home care. So any “association” could never be a real union because industrial action was impossible and there was no central employer with which to bargain. The idea was AFSCME could lobby…

That’s why the whole thing is frankly concerning on a 2020 election level. The gop, aided by some Very Serious people who are given lots of space to air their views in places like the NYT editorial page or on Sunday news shows, have been able to get lots of regular people to consider that maybe it’s kind of racism to …

I was an organizer with AFSCME in the mid 2000's. Not to say AFSCME was perfect because I was involved with some campaigns I didn’t agree with (like in-home caregivers faux “unions”). But others I was really passionate about like non-professional hospital workers (e.g. cleaning staff, cooks, CNA level caregivers,…

What’s actually possible?! Jesus christ, what’s actually possible with judicial nominations is whatever the party in control of the Senate want to do. We’re talking about what to do in the case of a Democratic Senate majority. Dick Durbin et. al. are already talking about bringing back fucking blue slips for god’s…

The minimum wage has existed in this country for almost 100 years. The “consequences” for this form of “price control” have been studied in enough depth with enough opportunity for the kind of “natural experiments” usually not available with empirical economics that there is nothing which could be "unintended”

Anti-minimum wage arguments are usually either facile econ-100 “but the graph! The world is exactly like the graph!“ nonsense or insane ideologically based normative claims which only make sense if you’re a hardcore randist. At least those arguments are “true” in the most simplistic kind of “all else being equal” way…

Reconstruction was way too lenient and way, way, way too short. Unfortunately it is clear that most of those in power were more interested in reconstituting the Union than punishing traitors. Let alone empowering the newly freed slaves. And the traitors were fine with reestablishing the Union without formal, legally…