Friday, August 24, 2018

Meagan Day — Medicare for All and Free College Tuition Are Wildly Popular Policies

Seventy percent of Americans said they support a single-payer or Medicare for All health insurance system — including 85 percent of registered Democrats and 52 percent of registered Republicans. Compare these numbers to 2014, when only 21 percent of Americans thought we should have a single-payer system.
The number of Americans who want to eliminate the private insurance industry and replace it with a single universal public program has more than tripled in just four years.…
Similarly, according to the Reuters poll, 79 percent of Democrats and 41 percent of Republicans say they support tuition-free college, amounting to 60 percent overall. It’s hard to find earlier polling data on this subject because it wasn’t even a widely discussed political topic prior to Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign — despite the fact that college tuition has more than doubled in the last 30 years, and the student debt crisis has consequently spiraled out of control.
Sanders’s campaign put the idea on the map. Hillary Clinton responded to this pressure from her left by drafting a watered-down version of Bernie’s universal proposal. But the cat was out of the bag, despite establishment Democrats’ best efforts to shove it back in. Now a majority of Americans believe that we should have free public education....
Jacobin
Medicare for All and Free College Tuition Are Wildly Popular Policies
Meagan Day

3 comments:

Andrew Anderson said...

Since we have socialism for the rich and the banks, then why not socialism for everyone else?

Isn't that the way the system is supposed to work? The public's credit for BOTH private AND public gain? Except somehow the socialism for the rich and the banks is ignored while its intended public purpose is forgotten?

So much then for corrupt means to advance noble ends?

Konrad said...

“The number of Americans who want to eliminate the private insurance industry and replace it with a single universal public program has more than tripled in just four years…”

With Universal Medicare we would still have the private insurance industry, with rich people as their clients.

As the November mid-term elections approach, and neoliberal Democrats realize they have no chance of making any gains, they may start pushing for Universal Medicare. Their rhetoric will be lies. They had their chance to enact Universal Medicare when they controlled the White House plus the U.S. Congress (2007 – 2011), but they checkmated it.

Leading Democrats only push for progressive reforms when they know that such reforms have no chance of ever passing.

Junior Democrats who really do what Universal Medicare are politically checkmated.

Noah Way said...

The Democratic platform: get rid of Trump and war for profit.

That's all, folks.