I was the speaker at a Democratic Club that lives in a very Red area in Houston Texas. Many of the members are centrists. My goal was to illustrate to them why centrism will not win 2020. What better way to illustrate that than with Medicare for All.
It is important that we manage ourselves into Medicare for All or we will parachute in with equipment failure. Health care increasing in price at a faster rate than inflation and wage growth is unsustainable. These companies will milk the gravy train until they can no more. It would be ironic if the switch occurs under a Republican.
One of the attendees told me that while they support Medicare For All, her priority was to remove Donald Trump and as such is a centrist. Her belief is that centrist policies will win the White House. Unfortunately, that is coalescing to a well designed false narrative.
Sitting in that room was a couple of millennials high up in the party. Interestingly, they agreed that given their condition, no health care, high student debt, a centrist position is no different than a Trump position. The difference between poverty and abject poverty isn’t worth the effort to reward any party that cares little about their future, one that is immoral, the other timid.
Polls already make it clear that Americans want Medicare for All and other Progressive policies. The only way to win on a centrist agenda is to pull those numbers down.
The plutocrats are using two arguments against Medicare for All. The first is that it will cost so much that your taxes will go up. The second is that you will lose your private insurance. Both statements are true with some very important caveats.
In short, taxes will go up but you will no longer pay any health insurance premiums and every American will have medical coverage from birth to death. You will be left with more money in your pocket because in addition to no insurance premiums you won’t have deductible, co-pays, in and out of network costs etc.
The original idea is to get rid of health insurance companies. They do not provide healthcare, they restrict healthcare to make passive shareholders a profit and overpaid executives an undeserved large salary.
We can pay for healthcare with more equitable taxation. Currently, every American indirectly through rent or directly from owning a home and/or a car pays wealth taxes. Our wealth takes various forms, real estate property, stocks, bonds, etc. A small percentage of Americans own most of the wealth in this country.
The rich get a huge implicit welfare check because their assets are held in forms they’ve paid politicians to keep un-taxed or under-taxed. That is yet another reason why the wealth disparity is ever expanding. They get preferential treatment as they extract more from all.
For those who believe it is about wealth envy, one would have to first have a modicum of respect for the manner in which the super wealthy amassed their fortune. Anyone who wishes to understand real economics and not what they teach in business schools would immediately understand that the wealth of most of the super rich is made on the backs of others.
Their wealth is the money they decided not to pay their employees or those working for them to accumulate said riches. For that reason, it should be taxed at a higher rate than the common person’s earned wages. Unearned capital gains and income does not warrant preferential tax treatment.
So again, is the money there? Yes and a lot more to do all of the things we need to do to fix infrastructure, education, and more.
There are two important stories that one must watch. The first is that H.R. 676, the number assigned for Medicare for All every year, is no longer. They are working on a new Medicare for All bill that may include private insurance companies who extract large profits for paying a bill. The second is that a Nancy Pelosi aide has told insurance executives not to worry about Democrats pushing “Medicare for All.“
Here is a warning from this activist in the field. Millennials are the largest voting block in the country. A large percentage of them are in dire straits. The country has the money to give us all health care if we do the right thing, stop welfare for the rich. When people feel like they have nothing to lose they don’t vote or they penalize. Millennials will not accept betrayal.