Democrats open to single-payer health insurance, a party leader says

[Auburn85 425]

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/democrats-open-single-payer-health-insurance-party-leader/story?id=48791105

 

The Democratic Party will consider proposing a single-payer health insurance system, Sen.Chuck Schumer of New York said.

“We’re going to look at broader things [for the nation’s health care system.] Single-payer is one of them,” Schumer said to ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos on “This Week” Sunday.

The top Democrat in the Senate added that single-payer is among a number of health insurance options.

“Many things are on the table,” Schumer said. “Medicare for people above 55 is on the table. A buy-in to Medicare is on the table. Buy-in to Medicaid is on the table.”

The Senate's Republican leadership may hold a vote this week to start debate on its health care bill, but Schumer said he doesn’t believe the GOP plan, which he said is “rotten to the core,” will pass.

Schumer, the Senate minority leader, also previewed his party’s new economic agenda, dubbed “A Better Deal,” which he said will be rolled out Monday.

“This is sharp, bold, and will appeal to both the old Obama coalition and the Democratic voters who deserted us for Trump,” the New York senator said.

According to the most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, only 37 percent of Americans say the Democratic Party “stands for something," while 52 percent believe that the party stands only for opposing President Trump.

Schumer told Stephanopoulos that the Democrats made a mistake in the 2016 presidential election of not making clear what they represent.

“The number one thing we did wrong is we didn’t tell people what we stood for,” the senator said. “When you lose an election, you look yourself in the mirror and say, 'What did we do wrong?'”

The party's new economic agenda is an effort to set out a plan for the country that is not "left or right" but for everyone, he said.

The economic plan is “just the beginning,” Schumer said. “Week after week, month after month, we're going to roll out specific pieces here that are quite different than the Democratic Party you heard in the past.”

 

 

[DKW 86 7,172]

Maybe someone out there is listening.

[TexasTiger 11,612]

Should be interesting. They need to learn to be relentless in their messaging.

[TitanTiger 18,841]

Was this ever in doubt?  This reads to me about like a headline that says, "Republicans open to tax cuts."

[homersapien 10,932]

Interesting perspective:

http://www.alternet.org/democrats-are-still-chasing-rural-white-voters-and-its-strategy-doomed-fail

Democrats Are Still Chasing Rural White Voters, and It’s a Strategy Doomed to Fail

Instead of chasing down white voters who are committed to culture war, Democrats need to energize their base.

 

.........The percentage of Republicans who want to see Obamacare repealed is declining. Over three-quarters of Republicans demanded repeal a year ago, but now fewer than 60 percent support the Republican plan to do so.

This rapid shift makes sense if one views conservative politics through a culture-war lens. The problem for Republicans with Obamacare wasn’t that it offended some sense of fiscal conservatism. It’s that it was President Obama’s signature legislative achievement, and many white conservatives hated Obama because — simply by being black and intelligent and urbane and a Democrat — reminded them of the declining cultural dominance of conservative Christian whites like themselves. Electing Trump has allowed this group of voters to believe they are culturally ascendant again — and repealing Obamacare, which was always mostly about sticking it to the liberals, has lot much of its salience as an issue.

These voters aren’t really moved by policy. Hell, 41 percent of Republican voters actually want a single-payer system. The issue isn’t with Democratic policy, but with Democrats, who are perceived as snooty, educated, racially diverse city-dwellers, and therefore hated. Even if Democratic politicians tried to abandon “identity politics” entirely, it wouldn’t matter. Conservative voters can see, with their own two eyes, that the nation is changing culturally. They will continue to use the Republican Party as a cudgel to beat up the people that threaten them.

This recent New Yorker article about Trump country is a sobering reminder of these dynamics. No one seems to believe that the problem with the Democrats is that they aren’t doing enough to raise wages. Instead, there’s an inchoate anger over cultural changes that largely fall outside either party’s control. It’s telling that the media was the “enemy” Trump was best able to whip up rage against among crowds in rural areas.  Journalists are the Fox News-assigned symbol of the cosmopolitanism that the Trump-voting masses see as a threat to their cultural dominance.

None of this is to say that Democrats shouldn’t embrace progressive policies. If anything, they need to be bolder and offer a more robust health care safety net (such as an option to buy into Medicaid) and a guaranteed jobs program. But doing this in hopes of winning over rural white voters is a fool’s errand. Those voters mostly aren’t voting their economic self-interest, and won’t start doing so anytime soon. Instead, they are clinging to a mythological past of Christian white dominance, and the Republicans, especially Donald Trump, are promising to restore it.......

Full article at: http://www.alternet.org/democrats-are-still-chasing-rural-white-voters-and-its-strategy-doomed-fail

 

[TitanTiger 18,841]

That was what Hillary tried to do.  She lurched left on multiple issues compared to her husband and even compared to her own previously stated positions.

[homersapien 10,932]

9 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

That was what Hillary tried to do.  She lurched left on multiple issues compared to her husband and even compared to her own previously stated positions.

Hillary was obviously the wrong candidate to pull this off considering Bill's history of moving the party to the right. 

[DKW 86 7,172]

homer, that is an opinion piece from...Salon on alternet. 

I would challenge the writer on several unsupported assertions. All politics is pocket book. Fix something and you will get credit for it.
But the worst thing you can do  is to continue to ignore the Middle Class Whites and Minorities. They are the ones that have left the Democrats and cost the Dems the HOR, the Senate, the WH, etc. Ignore what used to be the Democrat base and keep losing elections.

[homersapien 10,932]

9 minutes ago, DKW 86 said:

homer, that is an opinion piece from...Salon on alternet. 

I would challenge the writer on several unsupported assertions. All politics is pocket book. Fix something and you will get credit for it.
But the worst thing you can do  is to continue to ignore the Middle Class Whites and Minorities. They are the ones that have left the Democrats and cost the Dems the HOR, the Senate, the WH, etc. Ignore what used to be the Democrat base and keep losing elections.

Yes, you are correct!  It was an opinioin piece from Salon (on Alternet).  Congratulations for noticing the obvious.

Nevertheless, I thought it was an interesting perspective - the Democrats would be better served by trying to mobilize their natural constituency instead of trying to win over Trump supporters - which is impossible in any case.

We have had discussion on the need for the Democrats to "redefine" themselves.  For better or worse, here's a specific proposal to do just that.  I find that interesting.

(Oh, and I totally missed the part about where it suggested they should "ignore" the middle class whites and minorities.   Perhaps you are inferring too much.)

It would be useful for you to be more specific about the writers assertions you disagree with.  Maybe you misunderstood his point.

[DKW 86 7,172]

homer what cost us the election were former Obama voters that went for Trump. They can be won back. We havent lost them forever. They rejected the Dem Party because they were left out in the cold.

[homersapien 10,932]

2 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

homer what cost us the election were former Obama voters that went for Trump. They can be won back. We havent lost them forever. They rejected the Dem Party because they were left out in the cold.

The premise of the article is that these Trump supporters prioritized cultural concerns over economic policy, largely due to the way Trump positioned the issues.

Now, that may change once these voters figure out Trumps economic and domestic policies work against them, but until that happens, I don't see how Democrats can appeal to them and maintain their inherently multi-cultural and socially progressive base.

[TexasTiger 11,612]

9 hours ago, TitanTiger said:

Was this ever in doubt?  This reads to me about like a headline that says, "Republicans open to tax cuts."

Many weren't in 2009/10. Republicans have pushed tax cuts beyond all reason for decades.

[TitanTiger 18,841]

7 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

Many weren't in 2009/10. Republicans have pushed tax cuts beyond all reason for decades.

I think the vast majority were, but they were also realistic about what they could actually pass.

[TexasTiger 11,612]

27 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

I think the vast majority were, but they were also realistic about what they could actually pass.

They couldn't even find enough support for a public option you buy into. There's been a significant shift. 

[TitanTiger 18,841]

1 hour ago, TexasTiger said:

They couldn't even find enough support for a public option you buy into. There's been a significant shift. 

If you say so.  I think the vast majority of Democrats would have jumped at single payer long ago if they believed they could pull it off.

[TexasTiger 11,612]

1 hour ago, TitanTiger said:

If you say so.  I think the vast majority of Democrats would have jumped at single payer long ago if they believed they could pull it off.

Voters, yes. Elected leaders? Not strong support in 2010 debate among Dem Senators.

[homersapien 10,932]

3 hours ago, TitanTiger said:

If you say so.  I think the vast majority of Democrats would have jumped at single payer long ago if they believed they could pull it off.

If so, it's to their credit.

[TitanTiger 18,841]

11 hours ago, TexasTiger said:

Voters, yes. Elected leaders? Not strong support in 2010 debate among Dem Senators.

I'm just not sure I buy that.  I think the support was there, but the belief such a thing had a chance to get through Congress was not.

[TitanTiger 18,841]

10 hours ago, homersapien said:

If so, it's to their credit.

I don't have a problem with it (I'm in favor of universal health care, of which single payer is just one option to get there), I'm just saying what I believe was the case at the time.  They supported the half measures of the ACA because they thought it was the best they could get through Congress. 

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

Eventually we will end up with a single-payer system, whether it's all public or a public/private solution like so many other major countries have.  Besides baby boomers, millennials are now the second largest voting bloc in the country and their world view is shaped much differently than older generations, particularly when it comes to accepting ideas and practices that work elsewhere.  The most essential thing though is that younger generations see health care as a basic human right, not a privilege, and that will eventually be the tipping point.

[TexasTiger 11,612]

11 hours ago, TitanTiger said:

I'm just not sure I buy that.  I think the support was there, but the belief such a thing had a chance to get through Congress was not.

The Dems controlled Congress and lacked the support to get it through Congress.

[DKW 86 7,172]

10 hours ago, TexasTiger said:

The Dems controlled Congress and lacked the support to get it through Congress.

The Dems had the HOR and the Senate and the WH. They had all the power they needed and bought the rest in some of the most crooked deals in the nation's history. Louisiana Purchase, Cornhusker Kickback, etc. They had everything for them and nothing holding them back but money from pharma and insurance.

[I_M4_AU 7,002]

16 minutes ago, DKW 86 said:

The Dems had the HOR and the Senate and the WH. They had all the power they needed and bought the rest in some of the most crooked deals in the nation's history. Louisiana Purchase, Cornhusker Kickback, etc. They had everything for them and nothing holding them back but money from pharma and insurance.

Having said this, do you believe Obamacare has protected the profits of pharmaceutical and insurance companies at the detriment of the American people?  Having posted a single quarter of revenues of United Health Care and knowing that profits for this company have not been less than 23% in the last 5 years, it appears that no matter what polical party is in charge, one has to disregard what is said and follow the money. JMO, I could be wrong.

[DKW 86 7,172]

10 hours ago, I_M4_AU said:

Having said this, do you believe Obamacare has protected the profits of pharmaceutical and insurance companies at the detriment of the American people?  Having posted a single quarter of revenues of United Health Care and knowing that profits for this company have not been less than 23% in the last 5 years, it appears that no matter what polical party is in charge, one has to disregard what is said and follow the money. JMO, I could be wrong.

I like it. I have a long time friend, 40 years plus. He runs a very very Liberal, almost Alt Left Radio Network. He appears on MSNBC infrequently. His private view of politics in America... "We have the Left and Right Hand of the Party of Money." He and I think it may all come down to Money & Power, Power &  Money.

[Auburn85 425]

From October 2007:

Starting at about 2:10, Krugman talks about how he believes when a public option competes with private insurance, it ultimately kills off the private insurance. Thus, paving the way for single payer.