‘So That’s My Plan’: Here Is Kamala Harris’s Medicare For All Plan

19 thoughts on “‘So That’s My Plan’: Here Is Kamala Harris’s Medicare For All Plan”

1. very good ideas right up until the end. taxing “wall street” ? come on, this is a divisive and easily attacked concept. it is tooo much ‘tax the rich’– Americans really arent into that. A little, yes, but not as a normal course of business. WHY even mention how to pay. gop doesnt have to answer how it will pay for another 10years of perpetual war in asia. on a basic simple conceptual level….take a look at one’s pay stub…move the $ that goes to insurance (employee and employer) into the ‘medicare tax’ column. most companies with large plans SELF INSURE. for us that $2400/month for family of 4 plus the $2500 deductible and 10% share and co-pays and I am CERTAIN this will go a looong way to ‘paying for’ MFA. Our cost of health insurance is almost as much as our total Fed Tax liability. We ALREADY pay as much in taxes as our health care costs….so give me MFA, keep the $40 copay even, have my taxes increase by 50% and I will still be ahead.

   if any of the dems could figure out a way to present the above in twitter….I’ll believe it when i see it.

   also could any of the dems please harp/yell/etc that potus has done 0 to help people with chronic conditions reduce the rate of increase in their med costs. nothing. call him names, use exclamatory inflammatory language to point out how cruel and shallow of a person sits behind the Resolute desk.

   1. I don’t see any good ideas there. I see a lot of dangerous propaganda.Medicare for All will cover all medically necessary services, including emergency room visits … Really? All of a sudden, everyone will be able to go to ER with any trivial condition without worrying about financial consequences, and someone else (the taxpayers or wall street) will pay for it, but we will still save money, and it will not impact the quality of care. What could go wrong?!

      If they really wanted the universal coverage they could simply pay the Obamacare premiums for those not covered by employers and pay for the program by the national health tax. But this is not what they want. They want to kill off the private insurance industry and they want to rob the wall street in the process.

      For another data point: I pay $500/mo for the family of 4 with $4000 deductible. It is obviously subsidized by the employer but the whole cost of the policy is well under $2000/mo. You got yourself a raw deal, the first anonymous commentator. Personally, I’m OK paying a health tax to help uninsured working poor if they pay it too. I’m not OK with anything else. If she is nominated then I’m voting for Trump. Still hoping for Biden.

      WHY even mention how to pay? What a funny question. Why worry when we have MMT on our side.

      1. Can you explain why MMT won’t work? Be sure to read the ~30,000 words we’ve written refuting common critiques before you answer. Otherwise I’ll just point you to those articles and ask you to refute them.

         1. also (and this goes without saying), you have to be morally bankrupt to vote for Donald Trump. the man is inciting ethnic violence – quite literally. that is the worst thing one can do. at this rate, he’ll end up in The Hague.

            1. The Hague, uh? Do you want to bet on that?

               I don’t know if he does indeed incite. So far we saw none of it but we already saw antifa thugs beating peaceful demonstrators. Is it ok by you if those disgusting Trumpist pigs get beat up?

               I admit, I’d have to pinch my nose on the way to the voting booth, but unless something materially bad comes out of his twittershit, I’d prefer that to beginning of morally bankrupt socialism.

            2. “So far we saw none of it”

               Really? How about Charlottesville? Does that count? Somebody died. And the professed neo-Nazi who ran her over just got life in prison. And how about the guy who drove around in a van papered with Trump posters and mailed pipe bombs to Democrats? Does that count?

               This is just sad. There’s no reasoning with you.

         2. I actually have read much of what you published here. Nothing there was strongly convincing in either direction. I gave my explanation before: real societal problems cannot be solved by accounting tricks. If this simple argument doesn’t convince you, maybe Ken Rogoff will:

            https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/federal-reserve-modern-monetary-theory-dangers-by-kenneth-rogoff-2019-03

            1. In other words, you can’t refute them with evidence. only with assertions of “accounting tricks”. it’s not an accounting trick. as ive explained time and time again. and no, Ken cannot convince me because he hasn’t refuted MMT either. nobody has, frankly. Japan is running it right now, despite the BoJ’s contention that they’re not. you could argue that China has been running it for years too.

               your explanation holds no weight. if peanut butter starts curing cancer tomorrow, your contention that “real cancer requires real cures not peanut butter” won’t matter if peanut butter keeps working.

            2. Correct, I cannot refute it with evidence. What kind of evidence might that be?

      2. I’m curious: What happens to your healthcare coverage if you retire, change jobs, or are unemployed?

2. Fyi. I live in “bad socialist Europe.” When my son was born, it cost me EUR 400 (USD 500) and my wife spent 3 days in hospital. It cost our society EUR 4000 (USD 5000). This I paid for in higher taxes, but then I also received f very high quality education for my children, a safe environment, a clean environment and subsidized dental. When my nephew in the USA’s son was born, he paid USD 24000 and his wife was allowed to spend one night in hospital. No free education, relatively unsafe. You guys have to cut the lobbying and pandering to big corporations.

   1. Another data point for you, actually two b/c I have two kids. In both cases we paid a token deductible $100 or $200 and nothing else. My wife was allowed to stay another night in the hospital after birth but she chose to leave on the next day. It’s not really fun being there.

      I also have high quality education for my children, and safe and clean environment. The school education was also “free”, i.e. paid out of my taxes just as the case is with you. The only real difference is college tuition. And it’s a big one. However, nobody is forced to go to private colleges. In-state tuition in state schools is not that bad.

      And thank for your advice. OK if I give you my advice about how you guys need to handle your affairs?

      1. in-state tuition is not free. and it puts some people in massive debt, which in turn weighs on household formation and, ultimately, the broader economy. everybody with any sense knows that. just like everybody who is being honest with themselves knows that a system where 3 people control more wealth than the bottom half of the population is a broken system, irrespective of whether a lot of those people in the bottom half have things ok. you’re fond of contending that it doesn’t matter how bad inequality is as long as you’re doing ok or as long as there’s a middle class that can still have a Honda Accord. well, sorry, but Elizabeth Warren doesn’t agree with you. and neither does AOC. or Bernie Sanders. it’s not ok that wealth is as unevenly distributed as it is. in fact, it’s patently ridiculous that anybody has $130 billion. that doesn’t make any rational sense at all. it’s wholly silly. in fact, it would be giggle-worthy if it weren’t so damn egregious considering how many people are poor in America.

         1. My friend’s son graduated from Rutgers U in NJ (the best state school) last year. His parents paid $8K/yr. If you want to describe it as “massive debt” then, ok, it’s a free country.but it doesn’t make it true. I suppose it could be made “free” accept almost nothing is ever free and in this case the family would have to pay taxes to cover these expenses. Why is this better?

            Yes, it doesn’t matter how bad inequality is as long as you’re doing ok. (I do appreciate that you paid attention.) And it doesn’t matter what Elizabeth Warren and her fellow socialists think. None of them have any idea of a great society without inequality while I spent half of my life there. But you and them should (before it is too late) visit Cuba and N. Korea to get a taste.

            Of course, $130B is a ridiculous amount of money. Even $13B is.It is an arguably unfortunate byproduct of system which allows the middle glass to have decent lives. The alternative is to make everyone poor, and it’s a much worse one.

            1. “The alternative is to make everyone poor, and it’s a much worse one”

               As ever, this is an absurd strawman. As is this: “But you and them should (before it is too late) visit Cuba and N. Korea to get a taste”.

               That is propaganda, and I’ve warned you about spreading it here before. Since you did not heed that warning and continue to spread propaganda (you have habitually spread these kind of blatant falsehoods on at least a half-dozen occasions over the past two weeks despite our repeated warnings), you are now suspended from commenting until such a time as you can restrain yourself from implicitly suggesting that other commenters want to turn the US into “Cuba and North Korea”. Previously, you made the same assertions with regard to other commenters and Venezuela.

               As is clearly stated in our “About” page, Heisenberg Report is a no propaganda zone.

3. Bryanb you didnot mention the healthcare slavery that is pushed on US citzens to keep them from moving to better jobs.

   1. You are reading some crappy socialist propaganda, my anonymous friend. If your new job offers health insurance and better wages then it’s a better job and there is nothing that can be done to stop you from going there. By way of personal example, I’m on my job #7 now and nobody ever tried to enslave me.

4. 1.) If Trump somehow wound up in The Hague, the United States has reserved for itself the right to invade The Netherlands to get him out through the American Service Members Protection Act.

   2.) There is a Japan-sized hole in every economic theory that does not at least incorporate some M.M.T. Otherwise you have to ascribe it to voodoo.

5. My problem with Harris’ plan is that she isn’t directly addressing the fact that most people get their health insurance through their employer and that they are happy with that.

   We all know that the employer is paying a lot for that health insurance……but that has to be explained and employers might need to give employees subsidies to buy into a single payer system…..or raise their wages to make up for not providing it.

   I can already hear Pubs and Trump claiming that Harris is going to take away your employer provided health care.