On tying your shoes together before the race

Sometimes I must wonder about the sanity or intelligence of the Democratic party leaders.

How is it possible for a political party to give the American people such great benefits as Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, poverty aids — and still lose elections to the GOP, a party that wants only to benefit the very rich?

Massive liberal ignorance has led to unnecessary taxation and unnecessary limitations on the very gifts it provides. Here is a perfect example:

Kamala Harris Just Showed Why Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All Plan Won’t Work

By Peter Suderman, Jan 30, 2019

Transitioning to a fully government-run system would require eliminating private health insurance for nearly 180 million Americans.

In its traditional form, a single-payer health care system would effectively outlaw private health insurance as we know it.

The Medicare for All plan backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), for example, would end today’s private health insurance market in a period of four years, forcing nearly 180 million Americans off of their existing plans in the process.

Why in heaven’s name would anyone want to “force” American’s to give up their current health care plans? Original Medicare doesn’t force anyone to give up their current healthcare plans and accept Medicare. Why would Medicare-for-All do that?

I understand the motive behind Obamacare forcing people to give up their current private plan. The motive is based on ignorance, but I understand it.

The ignorance is the false belief that the federal government can run short of its own sovereign currency, so healthy people must be forced to accept — and pay for — Obamacare — so the federal government won’t go broke. Yes, it’s a financial impossibility, but that’s the belief.

But that ignorance about our government’s Monetary Sovereignty (i.e. the federal government’s unlimited ability to pay for anything, even if not a single dollar in federal taxes is collected) does not need to hamper Medicare-for-All, which presumably would be free to all.

And even if Medicare-for-All weren’t free to everyone, wouldn’t allowing everyone to pay for their own private health insurance, if they wished to, cut the cost to the federal government?

To the plan’s most ardent backers, this is an objectively positive development. After Sen. Kamala Harris, who supports the Sanders plan, said at a presidential town hall Monday night that she favors eliminating all private health insurance, even for people who like their plans, a policy staffer for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tweeted, “Yes, we’re going to get rid of the entire health insurance industry. That’s a feature, not a bug.”

But as Harris appears to have discovered, most people don’t see it that way. There is even resistance within her own party. In the 24 hours following her remarks, a number of prominent Democrats distanced themselves from the idea, including Sens. Dick Durbin (Illinois), Tim Kaine (Virginia), and even Harris’ fellow senator from California, Dianne Feinstein, with Feinstein saying, “Well, I’m not there.”

Harris, it seems, is not quite there anymore either; or if she is, she is also somewhere else. Last night, she gently moderated her position, with a spokesperson telling CNN that she is open to other policy paths, although she continues to support a single-payer plan that would end private health insurance as well.

It is not exactly a walkback, but it is a tacit acknowledgment of the resistance to her initial remarks. She continues to support a plan that would make today’s private health insurance plans illegal while forcing most everyone onto a government-run insurance system. But she supports alternatives as well, presumably ideas like creating a government-run insurance plan that would be sold alongside private plans, or allowing more people to buy into the existing Medicare system, or something like it.

Only a Democrat could promote what would be a good plan, then intentionally shackle it with unnecessary criteria.

In other words, she also supports plans that are not full-fledged single-payer, the entire point of which is to replace all existing insurance with, yes, a single government-run health coverage plan.

No, replacing all existing insurance with a single government-run health coverage plan is not the entire point. The entire point is to provide health care insurance to everyone who wants it — free for those who prefer the government’s free version.

Why would anyone believe it’s necessary to destroy private insurance? ‘Tis a mystery.

What Harris encountered was the obstacle that has bedeviled health care reformers on both the left and the right for decades: Although public satisfaction with the health care system writ large is often fairly low, polls consistently find that a majority of people like their own health insurance plans and doctors, and they recoil from plans that would cause them to lose their existing coverage arrangements.

That dynamic is what helped kill a planned health care overhaul under President Bill Clinton, and it is why President Barack Obama sold the Affordable Care Act on the false promise that it would not cause anyone to lose their existing health insurance coverage or doctor.

It is also one of the reasons that the Republican effort to repeal Obamacare failed, and it remains a major impediment to overhauling Medicare. Similarly, recent surveys find that Medicare for All is only popular until people are told that it would eliminate private health insurance.

So, for heaven’s sake, give the people what they want.  Those who want free, comprehensive Medicare coverage get it. Those who want to pay for private insurance get it.

Now if only the politicians and writers like Peter Suderman would “get it.”

When it comes to health care, the public really, really, really does not like disruption. But the entire point of single-payer, which is to say the entire point of Sanders-style Medicare for All, is disruption on a massive scale.

“Disruption on a massive scale” is the entire point of Medicare-for-All???? That is the dopiest thing you’ll ever hear. Was the entire point of original Medicare “disruption on a massive scale,” or was it simply to provide health care insurance?

Thank goodness the Kamala Harises and Peter Sudermans of the world weren’t around when original Medicare was created, or it wouldn’t exist, today.

All of the other problems—the massive increase in federal spending, the administrative complexity, the job loss, and the medical provider reimbursement cuts—are in some sense secondary.

The incredible unpopularity of any plan that openly proposes to upend current coverage for tens of millions of people is a political barrier no one has managed to overcome. That is why Democrats have typically avoided advertising that their plans would do so, and why some are attempting to brand ideas that are not full-fledged single payer as Medicare for All.

O.K., Kamala and Peter, here’s a thought for you: Offer free, federally funded, comprehensive, no deductible, unlimited Medicare, including drug and long-term coverage, to every American who wants it. Period.

Those Americans, who would rather pay for health care insurance from a private company, can do so.

Is that so difficult to understand? What is the necessity of tying your shoes together before the race, Democrats?

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

Monetary Sovereignty

Twitter: @rodgermitchell

Search #monetarysovereigntyFacebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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The single most important problems in economics involve the excessive income/wealth/power Gaps between the have-mores and the have-less.

Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics.

Implementation of The Ten Steps To Prosperity can narrow the Gaps:

Ten Steps To Prosperity:

1. Eliminate FICA

2. Federally funded medicare — parts a, b & d, plus long-term care — for everyone

3. Provide a monthly economic bonus to every man, woman and child in America (similar to social security for all)

4. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone

5. Salary for attending school

6. Eliminate federal taxes on business

7. Increase the standard income tax deduction, annually. 

8. Tax the very rich (the “.1%) more, with higher progressive tax rates on all forms of income.

9. Federal ownership of all banks

10. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99.9% 

The Ten Steps will grow the economy, and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and you.

MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY