Russell Mokhiber — Study Finds Single Payer Viable in 2018 Elections

Medicare for All is politically viable in 2018.

That’s according to a new report from Alex Panagiotopoulos and Kingston Creative.

The report is titled – Is Medicare for All Politically Viable? A Guide to 561 Congressional Candidates….

Lookin' good. JG getting play, too. Unfortunately, the Democratic Establishment that doles out funds to candidates is against it.

Counterpunch

Study Finds Single Payer Viable in 2018 Elections
Russell Mokhiber | editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter.

Zaid Jilani — Single Payer Opponents Say The Transition Process Would Be Too Difficult. But 10,000 People Do It Every Day.

Opponents of single payer health care frequently claim that such a system might be wonderful in theory, but getting there would be too disruptive. Many Americans, the argument goes, have private health insurance coverage and the transition to a government plan would be jarring.

“Half of America gets their health insurance coverage on the job,” American Hospital Association lobbyist and former Connecticut Democratic congressman Bruce Morrison told The Intercept last month. Single payer would replace coverage for some 150 million people, he noted. “If you just leaped to Medicare for All, you would totally disrupt the expectations of all those people. And that would not be a good idea.”

But roughly 10,000 Americans make that transition every single day. We call them seniors who are enrolling in Medicare for the first time....

“If you just leaped to Medicare for All, you would totally disrupt the expectations of all those people. And that would not be a good idea,” has to be one of the moronic statements I have ever encountered. Just about everyone would be delighted based on the experience of those already on Medicare that "graduated" from the private insurance market.

The Intercept
Single Payer Opponents Say The Transition Process Would Be Too Difficult. But 10,000 People Do It Every Day.
Zaid Jilani

Sarah Kliff — An astonishing change in how Americans think about government-run health care

Vox
An astonishing change in how Americans think about government-run health care
Sarah Kliff

Chase Madar — The Conservative Case for Universal Healthcare

Democrats may be about to lose a core issue if they don't wake up.

The American Conservative

The Conservative Case for Universal Healthcare
Chase Madar

David Dayen — Single Payer, Meet All Payer: The Surprising State That Is Quietly Revolutionizing Health Care

Maryland.

The Intercept
Single Payer, Meet All Payer: The Surprising State That Is Quietly Revolutionizing Health Care
David Dayen

Charles Krauthammer — Conservatives Are Losing On Healthcare

“Over these past seven years people’s expectations have changed,” [Krauthammer] said. “The grounds [for healthcare debate] are all liberal grounds…It’s showing that the country is at a point where I think it believes in universal coverage.”

For those outside the US or just not paying attention Charles Krauthammer is one of the deans of American conservatism. The Daily Caller is conservative media.

The Daily Caller
Krauthammer: Conservatives Are Losing On Healthcare

Amber Athey

See also

Breitbart News
Krauthammer: ‘We’ll Be In a Single-Payer System’ In ‘Less Than Seven Years’
Ian Hanchett

Mark Weisbrot — Medicaid Saved Obamacare and Single-Payer May Be Back on the Agenda Sooner Than You Think

Some polls have shown majorities in favor of single payer health care. In the last election cycle we also went rather quickly from a widely believed politician-and-media-backed falsehood that Social Security was in serious financial trouble, to even Hillary Clinton saying that benefits needed to be expanded, not cut. That is the direction that the country is going, with Bernie Sanders, despite losing the Democratic presidential primary, being one of the most popular politicians in the country; and Trump in the doghouse with 37 percent approval....

Counterpunch
Medicaid Saved Obamacare and Single-Payer May Be Back on the Agenda Sooner Than You Think

Mark Weisbrot

Ed Dolan — Universal Healthcare Access is Coming. Stop Fighting It and Start Figuring Out How to Make It Work.

Fairly detailed analysis of the issues involved in a transition to universal access to health care in the US.

Ed Dolan's Econ Blog
Universal Healthcare Access is Coming. Stop Fighting It and Start Figuring Out How to Make It Work.
Ed Dolan

Branko Marcetic — Democrats Against Single Payer

By May 2016, Gallup polling found that more than half of Americans favored replacing Obamacare with a single-payer system, including a whole 41 percent of Republicans.

Handwriting on the wall. Oppose single payer at your peril, New Democrats. You are out of touch and out of step.

There is also the failure to recognize the difference between the currency issuer and currency users. In the US the federal government is the issuer and states are among the users.

Most recently, as California considered instituting a state-wide single-payer system on the eve of a possible GOP repeal of Obamacare, the state’s Democratic governor Jerry Brown rubbished the idea, asking:  He compared it to solving a problem “by something that’s . . . a bigger problem,” which “makes no sense.”

“Where do you get the extra money? . . . How do you do that?” You have the federal government do it. as the currency issuer rather than putting it on the states, who are currency users and have to obtain the currency either from the federal government through transfers, or else get it from revenue or borrowing.

Jacobin
Democrats Against Single Payer
Branko Marcetic

Marcia Angell — Medicare for All should replace Obamacare

Paying for Medicare for All would require an increase in taxes — perhaps an earmarked progressive income tax for the purpose — but that increase would be offset by the elimination of premiums and out-of-pocket costs, and the slowing of inflation that stems from our market-based system. 

Angell buys into the false government as business or household analogy. Of course, a medical expert could not be expected to know the difference between an issuer of a sovereign currency like the USD and those who use the currency and must obtain it since they don't issue it.

The reality is the the federal government issues its currency and its cost of capital is zero, including interest payments if government chooses to include this even though it is not necessary operationally.

The only constraint is the availability of real resources. Public investment can augment real resources  through issuance at no cost of capital. As long as real resources are available for purchase in the currency they can be deployed. There is no affordability problem.

Issues might arise where government competes with the private sector for scarce resources. That would occur at full employment if government wishes to continue to expand services.

USA Today — Opinion
Medicare for All should replace Obamacare

Marcia Angell | corresponding member of the Faculty of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Faculty Associate in the Center for Bioethics, and former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine
ht Lambert Strether at Naked Capitalism

Russell Mokhiber — Manchin Says He’s Studying Canadian Style Single Payer

Senator Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) is looking at a Canadian style single payer system.

It’s the second time in a month that Manchin has told constituents that he’s looking at a Medicare for all system to replace an unraveling Obamneycare.…

HR 676 – the single payer bill in the House – has 65 co-sponsors. No Senator has introduced a similar bill in the Senate.

And by their reactions to single payer questions, the majority in the room wanted Manchin to sponsor a single payer bill in the Senate....

Counterpunch
Manchin Says He’s Studying Canadian Style Single Payer
Russell Mokhiber | editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter

Ellen Brown — “Ryancare” Dead on Arrival: Can We Please Now Try Single Payer?

The Canadian plan also helps Canadians live longer and healthier than Americans. . . . We need, as a nation, to reexamine the single-payer plan, as many individual states are doing. — Donald Trump, The America We Deserve (2000)

Web of Debt
“Ryancare” Dead on Arrival: Can We Please Now Try Single Payer?

Ellen Brown

Deirdre Fulton — Linking Clinton Policies to Poverty, Sanders Lays Out Plan to Help Nation's Poor

"What welfare reform did in my view was to go after some of the weakest and most vulnerable people in this country," says Bernie Sanders…

To address this scourge, Sanders called for the federal minimum wage to be lifted from $7.25 an hour to $15 an hour; proposed a youth jobs program to create 1 million jobs for young Americans; and urged support for a $1 trillion, five-year push to put 13 million Americans to work in good-paying jobs rebuilding roads, bridges and railways.…

On Wednesday, Sanders also advocated for a Medicare-for-all, single-payer healthcare system to help reduce poverty.

Common Dreams
Linking Clinton Policies to Poverty, Sanders Lays Out Plan to Help Nation's Poor
Deirdre Fulton, staff writer

Gerald Friedman Responds to Kenneth Thorpe on Single-Payer

A distinguished professor and Chair of the Department of Health Policy & Management, in the Rollins School of Public Health of Emory University, Kenneth Thorpe has been one of the leading figures in the analysis of health care finance in the United States. From 1993-95, he was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health Policy in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in charge of coordinating financial estimates and program impacts of President Clinton’s health care reform proposal. Since leaving the Clinton White House, he has written widely about the economic advantages of a single payer system to finance health care. (See footnote 1.)

Thorpe’s expertise and reputation have added weight and authority to his attack on Senator Sanders’ program for Medicare-for-All. (See footnote 2.) This makes it all the more important that his analysis receive the type of scrutiny due a serious policy proposal. Unfortunately, Kenneth Thorpe does not provide enough documentation to make an explicit comparison between his estimates and those provided in detail by the Sanders campaign. He lists his projected Federal spending per year, he fails to explain how he calculated these numbers. While this failure makes it impossible to consider his claims on a point by point basis, it is possible to extract enough from his statement to conclude that his analysis is so deeply flawed that it implies some clearly unrealistic assumptions.…

Dollars & Sense

Gerald Friedman Responds to Kenneth Thorpe on Single-Payer

Gerald Friedman | Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Steve Randy Waldman — There’s nothing smart in surrendering bargaining power for policy details

While we are taking lessons from the ugly compromises FDR accepted in order to get Social Security passed, we might also consider other events. FDR, you probably don’t recall because it has oddly been erased from conversational history, pursued almost as an idée fixe a cap on incomes of $25,000 (call it $360K in today’s money). The idea was as divisive then as it would be today, and despite dogged efforts, the proposal did not succeed. But, as Sam Pizzigati reminds us.…

You always want to start negotiating from the strongest position. Count on counter-parties to do so.

Interfluidity
There’s nothing smart in surrendering bargaining power for policy details
Steve Randy Waldman

Beverly Mann — Why Do So Many Wealthy Democrats Think The Only Money That Matters To The Hoi Polloi Is The Money They Must Pay To The Government?

Sanders got it right last night. This is the Republican mantra. And it’s no longer selling so well.

Angry Bear
Why Do So Many Wealthy Democrats Think The Only Money That Matters To The Hoi Polloi Is The Money They Must Pay To The Government?
Beverly Mann

Robert Waldman —Commentary on Commentary on Sanders’s Single Payer National Health Insurance Proposal

Takes on Ezra Klein.

Angry Bear
Commentary on Commentary on Sanders’s Single Payer National Health Insurance Proposal
Robert Waldman

Kevin Drum — Bernie Sanders Releases Outline of Universal Health Care Plan—And It's Pretty Good

Stephanie knows something about health care. We can assume she had some input.

Health Care Reform, Universal Coverage and Financial “Basics” A Functional Finance Perspective — August 2008
Alla Semenova and Stephanie Kelton

An Introduction to the Health Care Crisis in America: How Did We Get Here? — September 2007
Stephanie Kelton | Associate Professor of Economics, University of Missouri-Kansas City

Mother Jones
Bernie Sanders Releases Outline of Universal Health Care Plan—And It's Pretty Good
Kevin Drum

Jeffrey Hutton — Indonesia launches world’s largest health insurance system

Indonesia is planning to phase-in the world’s largest single-payer health care insurance program between now and 2019. Under the new system, the government is committed to providing universal health care to its 247 million citizens, though employers and wealthier citizens are obliged to pay their own premiums.

"Indonesia goes socialist!" Or, US goes third world?

Christian Science Monitor
Indonesia launches world’s largest health insurance system
Jeffrey Hutton, Contributor

National defense is supported by a "single payer" system. Why can't health care be that way?

National defense, i.e. the military, is a single payer system. We seem to have no problem with that. The government pays and private firms make the tanks, bombs, planes and ships.

Why can't we make national health care, for everybody, a single payer system? We can, it's just a matter of priorities.

A healthy citizenry is an invaluable asset, just like national defense is. We could have both; there is no shortage of dollars.

Does the government require citizens to buy "defense insurance?" No, it just pays for everyone's defense.