This is what I’m on about:
Stranahan is being obtuse. Even with a public option, this is the way the bill would STILL work. As I’ve argued myself blue in the face to explain already, the middle class would still pay for single-payer in the form of taxes, and a greater rate than the poor. That’s how redistributive systems work.
You might add a surtax on the wealthy, but not if Congress is forced to speed up and pass the Senate bill as-is. Lefty bill-killers cheering for Brown today should bear that fact in mind.
I’m sympathetic to the desire for a non-corporate alternative. I was always in favor of a public option for this very reason, among others, and I will actively promote the issue if this bill passes. But it makes no sense to complain about insurance companies getting subsidized because the vast majority of Americans were always going to depend on employers anyway.
This is the central fact of life in the debate at hand. It would still be true even with a public option; short of a leap to single-payer (for which, again, there was not a snowball’s chance in hell), we were never going to get away from the presence of corporations in health insurance — at any point. This video is essentially a complaint that the current employer-based system won’t disappear, which it was not going to do anyway.
“Forcing” everyone to buy healthcare means that everyone is covered, which I had thought was the big progressive goal…but apparently it’s something else. Maybe other people are okay with 45,000 dead Americans every year, but I’m not.
I reiterate: few recipients will give a damn who they buy it from. They, or their employers, will shop for the lowest price in an exchange. The corporate entities in question will be forced to spend 85 cents of every dollar on medical losses. Exactly which part of this is the sellout?
