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Support drops for Medicare for All but increases for public option

Slartibartfast

Slartibartfast

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Support drops for Medicare for All but increases for public option | TheHill
Support is dropping for Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) "Medicare for All" health care plan, according to a poll released Tuesday.

The Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll found that 51 percent of those surveyed in October favored Medicare for All, a proposal in which all Americans would get their insurance from a single government plan, compared to the 53 percent who said they supported it last month.

Conversely, 47 percent of those surveyed said they opposed Medicare for All, an increase of two percentage points from September.

Support for Medicare for All has dropped 5 percentage points since April in the Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll, and opposition has grown by 8 points.

Medicare for All has been a source of contention among Democrats running for president and it is likely to come up again during Tuesday's debate in Ohio.

While Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) support the plan, former Vice President Joe Biden and other moderates oppose it, arguing it would eliminate choice for Americans who prefer private health insurance.

Biden has opted for a more moderate proposal that would create a public option to compete with private insurance companies.

The Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll found support for a public option is growing: 73 percent said they supported the proposal in October, compared to the 69 percent who said the same in September.

Independents and Republicans are more likely to support a public option than Medicare for All.
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While I would prefer a single payer system, I am still not sure it is a culturally viable option yet. A public option may be a good or bad idea, depending on how its implemented.
 
Not sure a 2-point movement on one poll is indicative of anything.
 
Airyaman said:
Not sure a 2-point movement on one poll is indicative of anything.
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The point of it, at least why I posted it, is that its important to start getting a sense of where the public is on certain campaign planks for the democrats.
 
tacomancer said:
The point of it, at least why I posted it, is that its important to start getting a sense of where the public is on certain campaign planks for the democrats.
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It will be important if/when the public gets a chance to understand what Medicare for all means. Not sure many people know what the costs are to individuals under Medicare and if that will apply to all. Will we still be able to sue doctors who would now essentially be government employees? Devil is in the details and we don't have them yet.
 
washunut said:
It will be important if/when the public gets a chance to understand what Medicare for all means. Not sure many people know what the costs are to individuals under Medicare and if that will apply to all. Will we still be able to sue doctors who would now essentially be government employees? Devil is in the details and we don't have them yet.
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I would totally agree with that. By the math, medicare for all is the best option and would mean the most prosperity for people. However, right now we have such a strong cultural knee-jerk for certain key words, that I suspect more Millennials or younger need to increase their percentage of the voting population before it becomes a reality.
 
tacomancer said:
Support drops for Medicare for All but increases for public option | TheHill

While I would prefer a single payer system, I am still not sure it is a culturally viable option yet. A public option may be a good or bad idea, depending on how its implemented.
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That (bolded above) can be used for almost any public spending program, agency or department. We have two very large and heavily subsidized public medical care insurance plans now - Medicare and Medicaid. The use of either (or both) as a public option should be fairly a simple matter to implement - define a premium structure required for the "opt in" (say 10% to 15% of gross income) and then see how much must be added from general funds (federal and/or state) to fund the balance. Of course, that will vary based on actual participation demographics - the more poor and sick among the "opt in" pool, the more heavily the costs (over user premiums) must be subsidized.
 
"the grass is always greener on the other side"... then you are standing on it and not so sure.
 
washunut said:
It will be important if/when the public gets a chance to understand what Medicare for all means. Not sure many people know what the costs are to individuals under Medicare and if that will apply to all. Will we still be able to sue doctors who would now essentially be government employees? Devil is in the details and we don't have them yet.
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Actually we do, sort of. Like most matters, the promises are many and the details are few, but that is politics. Putting meat on the bones of a campaign promise is very risky since it allows folks to question specifics about benefits and, of course, costs.

First, what does "for all" mean - does that include veterans, those seniors/disabled now getting Medicare (for some), those now getting Medicaid/Expanded Medicaid and "undocumented" immigrants? If so, then we have a very good idea about what those annual subsidized costs (per enrollee) are likely to be.

H.R.676 - 115th Congress (2017-2018): Expanded & Improved Medicare For All Act | Congress.gov | Library of Congress
 
tacomancer said:
I would totally agree with that. By the math, medicare for all is the best option and would mean the most prosperity for people. However, right now we have such a strong cultural knee-jerk for certain key words, that I suspect more Millennials or younger need to increase their percentage of the voting population before it becomes a reality.
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By the math.. medicare for all is not the best option.
 
If universal healthcare is such a good idea, I don't understand why they have to keep relabeling it, or why all the firmly Democrat states don't already have it.
 
Tlrmln said:
If universal healthcare is such a good idea, I don't understand why they have to keep relabeling it, or why all the firmly Democrat states don't already have it.
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That's just a marketing issue and its something Democrats have been historically bad at, but seem to be getting better by using the best ideas (in terms of how to market an idea) the Republicans have been using for years. Ultimately the problem is that the US population got hit in the head over and over during the cold war that certain words are bad, which is why you see the most resistance to this idea among older voters. It's also why you now see people like AOC who were subjected to that kind of environment as a child.

Personally, I think its going to take at least another 10 years to wait for demographics changes before this can be implemented.
 
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Tlrmln said:
If universal healthcare is such a good idea, I don't understand why they have to keep relabeling it, or why all the firmly Democrat states don't already have it.
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Mitt Romney implemented it in Massachusettes as governor- quite successfully. And he is not a Democrat.

Labels matter in how people accept or reject certain things. If you tell a kid that French fries are a vegetable, they will be less likely to eat them. America has certain allergic reactions to the word "socialism", likely a legacy of the cold war. So you have to find other ways to describe such things.
 
tacomancer said:
Support drops for Medicare for All but increases for public option | TheHill

While I would prefer a single payer system, I am still not sure it is a culturally viable option yet. A public option may be a good or bad idea, depending on how its implemented.
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Big problem for Warren is she can't explain how to pay for Medicare for all. It's cost prohibitive that's why. She states middle class cost will go down. What cost? Where is the benefit to my family if while my HC cost are suppose to go down, but my taxes go up? Government is the only winner here

-VySky
 
VySky said:
Big problem for Warren is she can't explain how to pay for Medicare for all. It's cost prohibitive that's why. She states middle class cost will go down. What cost? Where is the benefit to my family if while my HC cost are suppose to go down, but my taxes go up? Government is the only winner here

-VySky
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She should clarify that.
 
ataraxia said:
Social democracy works fine in all modern developed economies around the world.
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then move there. I ve been there.. lived there for a time. I like the Good ol USA. Where I have more opportunity and more freedom.

You can move there if that's what you like.
 
jaeger19 said:
then move there. I ve been there.. lived there for a time. I like the Good ol USA. Where I have more opportunity and more freedom.

You can move there if that's what you like.
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That’s not an argument. Your original point was that socialism had a bad track record. I was pointing out no other developed economy in the world leaves its citizens with no safety nets.

We have freedom here alright- freedom of the jungle.
 
VySky said:
Big problem for Warren is she can't explain how to pay for Medicare for all. It's cost prohibitive that's why. She states middle class cost will go down. What cost? Where is the benefit to my family if while my HC cost are suppose to go down, but my taxes go up? Government is the only winner here

-VySky
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Yes, of course details are lacking, and that is a problem. But most models show that the taxes would be far less than current insurance premiums.
 
VySky said:
Big problem for Warren is she can't explain how to pay for Medicare for all.
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It's pretty simple. You take all the money we're spending on Medicare and Medicaid, and you confiscate all the money corporations are currently spending on private health insurance, and turn our entire healthcare industry into a giant government-run system.
 
ataraxia said:
Mitt Romney implemented it in Massachusettes as governor- quite successfully. And he is not a Democrat.

Labels matter in how people accept or reject certain things. If you tell a kid that French fries are a vegetable, they will be less likely to eat them. America has certain allergic reactions to the word "socialism", likely a legacy of the cold war. So you have to find other ways to describe such things.
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Well, then if it's working so well in MA, there's not reason to do it at the federal level, is there? Each state can decide what it wants.
 
Tlrmln said:
Well, then if it's working so well in MA, there's not reason to do it at the federal level, is there? Each state can decide what it wants.
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We can’t have states in our nation which refuse to protect the basic human rights of their citizens. This is not acceptable in any civilized nation. It’s barbaric, stupid, and much more expensive than it has to be. The consequences effect us all. No one lives like this.

Health care in the US: Why universal health care never happened — Quartz
 
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