Seriously, “grandma’s going to be killed by Obama’s healthcare plan” (whatever his plan is, even I don’t know) wouldn’t work on “we’re just going to give medicare to everyone”.
Just sayin’.
The whole “you can’t sell single payer” is turning out to be, well, rather questionable. Because the way things are going it’s fairly clear you can’t sell some godawful hodgepodge either and all the screaming about “you’re going to take away my Medicare” indicates that a lot of the people who oppose Obamacare, love Medicare.
When you’re trying to explain something, you do so by metaphor in almost all cases. Everyone knows what Medicare is. The majority of people with Medicare are happy with it and even people without Medicare know people (usually their parents or grandparents) who have it, and whom it’s working for.
Ruling out “single payer” from the very start was an act of mind-bending incompetence on the level of disbanding Iraq’s army during the occupation of Iraq. From a policy point of view “Medicare for all” provides massive savings, and we know it works because the equivalent policies have worked for every other nation in the world who ever implemented then. From a sales point of view it’s much harder to demonize Medicare and much easier to explain it. From a negotiation point of view pre-compromising is so stupid that anyone who has spent 5 minutes in a third world bazaar or taken even a single negotiating class knows better.
The current health reform “bills” are turning into a clusterfuck of epic proportions. Scrap them, introduce Medicare for all, target Senators who won’t vote for it with bone-crushing ads which ask why they want 22,000 American to die every year who could be saved for less money than the Iraq war cost; explain with nice simple pictures how much money they receive from the insurance industry and note that they are willing to let Americans die in exchange for blood money from the medical industry.
I know it’s difficult for Democrats to play hardball since they’d have to grow a spine, but perhaps, just perhaps, it’s worth it to save lives, end 70% of all bankruptcies and make sure people who are sick get the care they need?
(Oh, and to save Obama’s presidency. )
selise
amen amen, ian.
i would LOVE to talk to conservatives and independents about hr 676 (Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act). yeah, i wouldn’t be able to persuade them all, but i bet a significant number would be.
automatic enrollment: everybody in. nobody out.
no deductibles, no copays, no coinsurance.
doctors and hospitals have to compete for your business
and we can do all this — including for the 50 million people who currently have no insurance — for the same total cost (*see note) that we are now spending because of savings (multiple billing, advertising, profits, etc). there’s a ton of evidence and detailed studies to back this up.
note: total costs are total national expenditures: federal, state, local, employer, household. under single payer the federal costs (and revenues) go up, but the others go down.
Ian Welsh
Yeah, explaing the cost thing is something that people do badly. Who cares if your taxes go up if your spending money is the same or better at the end?
Mandos
I don’t think that name games are going to fool anyone. The problem is that lots of people are quite convinced, for some strange reason, that their health care must be provided by the fr33 mark3tz. Haw. Medicare for All sounds like you’re going to scrap the private insurers.
Of course, scrapping/abolishing the private insurers is exactly what needs to be done. But too many politicians are in their narstly little pocketses.
Ian Welsh
I don’t think it’s a name game Mandos. Medicare for all is fundamentally very different from Obamacare, and it’s harder to demonize. I’m listening to a lot of the teabagger fools and they tend to LOVE their Medicare if they have it (and the number who don’t make the connection that it’s government is staggering. These people are morons inside a propaganda bubble).
The politician problem is another matter, which is why I suggest playing hardball against the fuckers.
Cujo359
I don’t understand why DC doesn’t want to extend Medicare. They could, as someone suggested on Bill Moyers’ show a couple of weeks ago, do it gradually. Start by covering those over 55, say, and then gradually move down the age groups. It seems like a natural, since Medicare has such good reviews. We’re paying for it already via payroll taxes. Just increase them. It will probably be about as much as our employers spend on insurance right now, maybe less.
Just one more thing that makes me crazy when I think about it. I should take a cue from the opposition and stop thinking.
jbaspen
“Never discount the obvious”. Winston Churchill. Of course, the real source of this pithy and relevant quip could have been Churchill’s hands -down brilliant, urbane – and gay – private secretary, Sir Edward Marsh. Sadly, Obama has as his gate-keeper that chutzpah bunny, Rahm Emmanual. The contrast between Sir Edward and Rahm-boy is well, mind-blowing. A staff of disingenous and ultimately linear thinkers. Obama and Emmanual’s “strategy” is akin to playing chess without the Queen!
Ian, you deserve the highest compliments for this missive. But, BUT, why didn’t THEY think of this strategy??
BDBlue
It also would make the Obama presidency, so far deeply disappointing on economics and civil liberties, something worth saving.
Mandos
But, BUT, why didn’t THEY think of this strategy??
That is the 20-squintillion dollar question. The case for a system without private insurance companies should be now self-evident. I mean, it was quite a long time ago. They are clearly not willing to make that case in any form. Even taking the 55-year-olds out of the private system, a pretty paltry thing if you ask me, is not on the table.
They weren’t willing then, and they aren’t now. Which is why I continue to wonder why people are disappointed in Obama—it should have been self-evident that no American politician would be willing to consider the real answer.
And why is that?
Ian Welsh
The obvious would be that Obama doesn’t actually want single payer, even in an ideal world, even if he says he does. The other obvious option is that the people he has surrounded himself with take it as axiomatic it’s impossible so they don’t even consider how it could be sold.
Cujo359
According to Taylor Marsh, who’s been blogging the latest Obama town hall thing, he just said he won’t support single payer. It ain’t happening. QED.
Ian Welsh
No surprise. He’s just not a liberal.
Mandos
Now the big question is, could a liberal have been elected president? And the answer, I believe, is no.
John B.
well then.
If he can’t sell us (liberals) on change we can believe in, f*ck ’em. I can’t support him agian, what with the continual erosion of civil liberties, no accountability to the Bush Cheney criminals and no domestic policy worth fighting for…sigh.
Ian Welsh
Well Mandos, who knows? It’s been a long time since anyone tried. Certainly Versailles believes that being a liberal dooms you. Me, I think whoever was nominated by the Dems would have had to work hard to lose. The fact of the matter is that polls consistently show a split: people think they’re conservative, but support largely liberal policies.
Including, by the way, single payer.
Personally, I think full fledged left wing populism would work in the US, and definitely would have worked in the last election. The counterargument against that is that the media is so corrupted that they’d find a way to take down any left wing populist (see: Scream, Dean – and he wasn’t even that left wing).
But the Republican brand was so trashed last year that I think a real liberal could have gotten in. And real liberal policies would lead to real liberal prosperity, as far as that goes, so once in I’m pretty sure reelection would be possible.
But if no liberal can be elected in the US, then the US IS going to go down, because the policies needed to fix it are liberal policies. Conservative policies will not work.
Mandos
My take on it is that the People Who Matter are still currently relatively happy with the way things are going. The financial meltdowns annoyed them, but only insofar as they had to prop up the banks briefly. As long as this is the case, Nero could have been the previous president and they would still be able to block a liberal/left-winger/what-have-you (ie, any substantial change) from becoming president. Insofar as Obama was not one such (and Hillary was not one such), they were content to let McCain get Palinned to oblivion.
Mandos
In other words, actual change will happen when the People Who Matter are *not* content with the status quo. So the real question is, how to make the People Who Matter discontent with the status quo?
masslib
What the hell does it matter what Hillary was? We don’t know what she would have done, or how the Left would have pushed her as opposed to how they coddle Obama, she isn’t President! I think the Hillary would have been as bad or worse thing is such excuse making. Obama’s President, so it doesn’t matter at all. Hold him accountable. You don’t compare him to what you think Hillary was or would have been. It’s pathetic.
The reason Obama and the Dems are not enacting single payer is because they don’t want to put the private insurers out of business. It’s not really hard to read what’s going on, unless you have your eyes closed. But, if the Left would stop worrying about Obama’s second term, and start considering their own health, their own principles, and their own pocketbooks, then who knows what the Democrats might be capable of? MLK Jr. certainly didn’t sit around and wait for LBJ to decide to pass civil rights. He didn’t look for the “politically possible” according to Congress. He fought for what he believed in and he won.
masslib
Mandos permalink
In other words, actual change will happen when the People Who Matter are *not* content with the status quo. So the real question is, how to make the People Who Matter discontent with the status quo?
Stop accepting that they matter most.
Ian Welsh
Well, or when they have their power broken. A full fledged economic collapse breaks them and makes normal people realize they have to support someone who’ll actually do something. It’s too bad it’s going to have to go that far, but so far every opportunity America has had to pull back from that scenario it has refused to do so.
Of course, when that happens, you don’t have to get an FDR. There are many worse options.
One thing though, the 2 – 10-% toppers are being dropped. The people who matter are cutting off their lackeys. The top 1% is still doing well enough, but the people just below them are taking it on the chin.
This is a long game. Obama probably won’t do what needs to be done (whether he wants to and can’t or doesn’t want to is probably largely irrelevant), the next Republican president won’t. So we’re looking at 8 to 16 years. How long before the next crisis is the other question and I’m not sure. Then there’s “how long till the big one” and again, I’m not sure (I’m pretty good at saying what will happen, not nearly so good at the timing). A lot of this is dependent on China. When they achieve internal consumer takeoff the US is in a world of hurt.
Mandos
Masslib: it has no relevance what you or I believe or accept. It is simply the case that some people have more of a say, no matter how you scream or shout. As long as they have the means, they have the means. That’s pretty much been the lesson of the past 20 years.
The reason why I brought up Hillary was that she was the other alternative (D) candidate.
MLK Jr. existed in a world where people were actually concerned about the threat of underclass uprisings. The current structure of mass media has, for the time being, ablated said threat. Right now, it’s increasingly clear that Dem politicians can completely ignore you, and in fact pay more attention to the right wing screamy talk show listeners.
Mandos
Yes, this is the most optimistic factor to me. The 98th percentile handmaidens, if they finally perceive their interests to be threatened, have the power to pull the rug out from the 99th percentile.
I agree that what Obama actually believes is not relevant.
I guess re China the correct move, if the People Who Matter Whether You Believe It Or Not weren’t so invested in having bank profit awesomeness, would be to one way or another destroy the value of Chinese investment in the USA before Chinese internal demand can take off…
Cujo359
Now the big question is, could a liberal have been elected president?
I think a liberal could have been elected, given the conditions in November, 2008. Until the banking crisis hit, it was neck-and-neck between Obama and McCain. That’s when the lead opened up. It’s also when a number of other Democratic candidates took leads. Howard Dean probably could have been elected President. Heck, John Dean probably could have.
The trick was getting nominated. Of the liberals in the Democratic field, Edwards was pretty much taken out of the race even before he managed to take himself out. Dodd and Kucinich never had a chance. That’s the problem, as much as anything.
How it will be next time around is anyone’s guess, but I suspect there’s not going to be a liberal President again in my lifetime. The GOP will get the job back in 2016, and the Dems will lose the Congress before that. Perhaps change will come to the Democratic Party after that. I don’t know. All I know is that only failure prompts re-examining one’s basic assumptions; success never does.
Jim
Until the people that matter most (those that can’t live without health care, jobs, food, housing, basic needs), become conscious and fight as a class with leadership that is uncompromising, we will continue to try and organize the vacillating “middle class” and nothing will change.
Oh damn the uncouth reality of the working class. Those fat, “stupid”, beer drinking, white workers. The fascist love them and will build a base with them.
If progressives want to win this war, we had better get in the trenches and organize the people that really matter.
Mandos
Yes, precisely. That was the intent of my reference to Hillary Clinton—of the candidates, the only ones rendered viable by the Ruling Class/Those With An Actual Say were the ones least likely to do anything about the problem.
This suggests that…
…Those Who Have A Say have actually examined these assumptions, and are not in this to win, but instead to make sure that a steady status quo is maintained. As the Republican apparatus because unsuitable for status quo maintenance, so the Democratic apparatus was prepped. In this situation, no amount of learning or failure can overcome that barrier.
In which case,
the reason why it has been difficult to organize this group is that a social dynamic has been set up in which civil rights, migrant workers rights, feminism, gay rights, etc have been set up in opposition to the cultural interests of this group. Then we’re back to the “What’s The Matter With Kansas” business—how to organize this group without throwing the other groups under the bus. Could we have elected a black president when also trying the organize this lumpenproletariat you propose?
Jim
Mandos: We have a black Democratic President, a majority in the Congress, a majority of the population favoring a national health plan…and still it is not happening. Why? More and more workers are losing their jobs, their homes, their medical coverage; and yet the right wing is organizing them; the progressives are not organizing them. Why?
Maybe getting Obama elected was part of the old FDR doctrine: working in and through the Democratic Party. Progressives are stuck working within the electoral arena because we have boxed ourselves in. We think we have no where else to go but to reform capitalism by reforming the Democratic Party. I believe we have an outdated strategy.
The opposition is not boxed in. They are prepared to move as far right as possible to protect their corporate interests. They are not afraid to organize the working class to meet their ends. The irony is that the working classes interests are more in line with progressives’ then the corporations’.
Progressives have to switch strategies and begin to organize the working class around their interests and to convince them they are part of a class whose interests can’t be met by siding with any party that is tied to corporate interest. If we are to get what we want, we need an independent voice who fights for the working class and all the other interests you mentioned. This independent voice needs to organize creatively and tirelessly as if our survival depends on it.
John B.
good points Jim. We should not denigrate the working class and those that shower after work. Organize them (us) and that is half the battle.
Mandos
Well, maybe they are not organizable. Many people suspect that it’s *because* we have a black Democratic President that they are not organized. That was the point of my previous post on this thread.
Note that many of your arguments were hashed out by Ralph Nader back in 2K with the “non-voter tour” and all that.