American election
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An interesting finding is that someone claiming to be a socialist would be more acceptable as president of the USA than somebody admitting to being an atheist.
Are you sure? If you are referring to this it’s the other way round:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/254120/less-half-vote-socialist-president.aspx
So no need for us to soft-pedalling our opposition to all religion.
Also, it looks as if US soccer hooligans would chant “I’d rather be a Muslim than a Socialist”.
A lot of campaigning for socialism needed over there, then.
Yeah, you are right, ALB.
I was basing it on the vague recollection of this poll
For anybody who is interested, Anarchist Communist Group post-election summary
Those not celebrating any kind of victory are the same ones who deny tens of millions of Americans health care, if trump was re-elected, while enjoying health care themselves. How selfish can they be? How socialist is that?
Ummm…LT, who said if i am president and Medicare For All is somehow miraculously passed by Congress, and arrives for my signature in the Oval Office, i will veto it.
Bidencare is a version of Obamacare which itself was a version of Romneycare and they all leave healthcare for Americans ultimately dependent on private insurance corporations profits.
The United States has about 30 million people without health insurance now, down from about 46.5 million in 2010, when the ACA was passed.
Bidencare would cut that figure by a further 15 million to 20 million, an analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates.
20 million without any healthcare is seen by you as an achievement, LT
M4A was on the table and Biden refused it…
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-healthcare-economy-analy-idUSKBN27H19M
Okay, I no longer see the rebrands: Obana-Rommey- or who ever care… Reformism will not lead to ‘total care’. Total care is socialists caring. Reformed care is painful increments- and too little and too late.
I have a cough today- I need insurance- and how or who will assist: my funeral is tomorrow…
too little, and too late LT… too ‘f’ing late!
Each of us matter: but the current status; some of us matter. Is it me who matters- is it you… too ‘f’ing late!
Cough today. Dead tomorrow. Too poor to pay. Too late for reform. Reform is always too late…
Imagine going back to Victorian times. Kids diving in vats of acid for coal… Dead and too late… Too ‘f’ing late.
Vic to Biden, to oligarchs who say humanitarian- too FUCKING late.
Leon, do you see the centuries pass? The exploitation go through a push and a pull? Do you see that people still die from lack of care as they have no capital, no insurance, nothing?
From the mines to the precariat- people die needlessly… Bit by bit change still coagulates privilege at the upper level- is your position smug… or are you so confident that 100s of years of reform has brought a near end to the class struggle… nearly there!!! Nearly… but so many will die still, one less than infinity.
How can capital change things- reform for who! TOO FUCKING LATE.
Be safe, and be well
L.B
LB, one of our problems is the likes of LT will castigate us when we point out that so-called socialised medicine, such as NHS, isn’t.
Under both Labour and Tory, the NHS was creaking beneath the weight of under-funding, under-specialisation and under-staffing. In France, last year prior to the pandemic hospital staff embarked upon a series of strikes, not just for better pay but for improved working conditions.
The Right were right …death panels existed…it is called NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) which evaluates the cost-benefit analysis of certain medicines and certain treatments.
The Left were right too, that the pharmaceutical industry across Europe has too much influence over health-care.
Many illnesses and diseases have been reduced but others – lifestyle health problems such as obesity and diabetes and mental ill-health – have appeared and the main origin for them is capitalism. Just as we brought smallpox and measles to the New World, we are spreading the “sickness of affluence” to the undeveloped and developing world.
Alan,
I certainly blew a gasket- or is that casket!
” we are spreading the “sickness of affluence” to the undeveloped and developing world.”
… And it seems that way. It is so strife- and it impacts through the global society.
Health care, assessments over a life and its economic viability, bound today. And the notion of economic burden is commonplace. When a health decision is based on the productivity of the person, and almost cost neutral to the economy before any aid is given- we are not in the right place, and certainly reform will pay liege to the balances is seeks: balance sheets!
Benefit to who- benefit for what- and which criterion?
The capital decisions will always focus on capital first- are we viable for that hip operation, that life saving medicine. All tied up in patents, all in costly fees, all expensed. A balance sheet on who is worthy of care and who is not. Profits and liabilities.
The fact that health is an issue in public politics and elections… means reform never scratched the sides of this hungry beast.
According to John Prideaux, the US editor of the Economist, writing in today’s Times:
”Mr Biden pledged to patch up the health care law signed by Barak Obama in 2009, bringing America closer to the universal coverage that has long been the norm in other rich countries. That will not happen. His administration won’t actively undermine Obamacare, but the changes he can make will be marginal.”
He goes on to make the point that on health care the individual states “have a lot of latitude” and that, with regard to Obamacare,
”a number of Republican-leaning states took advantage of that law to cover more people (Utah, Idaho and Nebraska have all done so this year).”
ALB,
It is little bits of change- bits that can be observed by the admass in media statements- seeming big! the announcements being advertised would cost more than the actual spend (allegorically speaking)
Marginal.
It may cover a little more. And what about pre-existing condition exclusions?
It will take 5oo years (I sound like I am reading from a novel by Ken McLeod Stone Canal): and then perhaps it will cover most…
More on what individual states can do to expand those covered by subsidised health insurance:
https://ballotpedia.org/Healthcare_on_the_ballot
I didn’t know that this was possible but this is one thing where the USA is more formally democratic than many other countries. Of course voting for something is one thing, getting it implemented is another in the context of capitalism and its profit priorities.
You’ve got to love the latest argument from these pseudo socialists: scrap ObamaCare b/c it had nothing to offer. How rich, coming from privileged folks who don’t rely on it.
The ACA is not perfect, but everyone benefits from ObamaCare in one way or another.
Many Americans who did not have coverage before the law got access to quality affordable health insurance through either the federal marketplace, their State’s health insurance marketplace, or the expansion of Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) starting in 2014.
Then, starting in 2016, the employer mandate expanded access to work-based coverage to full-time workers who weren’t already offered health benefits. That didn’t mean there was 100% coverage, but that did mean that everyone had access in theory under the law (in practice many states rejected Medicaid expansion and so millions went without coverage).
Meanwhile, for the Americans who already had health insurance, the benefits, rights, and protections offered under their current plan generally increased (and in some cases they got access to cost assistance too).
Today, 9 in 10 Americans have health insurance, thanks to the ACA. 39 million Obamacare and Medicare beneficiaries have access to a series of preventive medical services for free. After the ACA was passed, health care prices rose at the slowest rate in 50 years. 129 million US citizens suffer from a pre-existing health condition, for which they could have been denied coverage before the ACA. Before the ACA policy was enacted, preventive medical services like flu shots, birth control, or yearly medical check-ups were not universally provided by insurance companies. Yearly check-ups and other preventive measures are a huge coup, granted their essentially in ensuring that life-threatening conditions are caught early, thus improving survival rates.
Before the ACA over 60% of bankruptcies in the U.S. were medical-related and almost 3/4 went bankrupt despite having insurance. By 2014 the elimination of both lifetime and annual limits protected Americans from going bankrupt by allowing them to continue treatment as long as they need it, not just until their dollar limit was reached.
Obama’s initial proposal included universal health care, but congress rejected this proposal, preferring one based on America’s health insurance model. So how is this Obama’s fault? I’d also like to know how many here would still have health care if the ACA was cancelled.
So are you proposing that Sanders and AOC should stop demanding M4A and that they should not be exposing how Bidencare falls short.
Because that is what you are saying, LT. Give Biden a free ride.
You are too happy to accept half-measures. Some would accuse you of political cowardice because you are asking us to let Biden get away with every compromise and concession that he feels he has to make.
Biden’s pro-corporate plan is for more subsidies in the ACA in order to make it profitable for insurance companies to provide affordable coverage. He proposes to cap premiums, but it means little when insurers can simply increase deductibles or co-payments, instead.
Under a public option, private companies can create insurance plans targeted to healthy and young populations. They WOULD appear to be more cost effective because they will ONLY apply during the low-cost lifetime of the patient. Once a patient becomes chronically ill, Insurance companies can raise premiums so that it becomes impossible to afford them, and then people will move to the public option.
Because the public option will be biased towards less healthy people, its costs will be higher, and it will give the appearance that the public option is less cost-effective than the private option. This in turn, can be used as evidence that the government is ill suited to provide healthcare, thus reducing the widespread support of an universal healthcare coverage.
The public option would have no co-payments for primary care, but Biden’s plan is silent on other out-of-pocket expenses. And any public option will inevitably be burdened with the sickest and costliest patients. Only a single-payer system can contain costs by controlling drug prices and reining in administrative overhead. Despite promises to do so, Biden’s plan offers no way to end what’s called surprise billing.
It is NOT universal coverage. All M4A is wanting is the already existing Veteran Administration health system extended to everybody.
It is shameful someone is willing to support a cop-out
Glen Greenwald expresses what some of on this forum have been saying and what LT has been in denial about
“There is nothing done by the Trump administration that can be rationally characterized as a radical aberration, some dramatic break, from U.S. tradition. Quite the contrary: none of Trump’s actions and policies are in some new universe of savagery, lawlessness, or radicalism when compared to those who preceded him in power…When it comes to lawlessness and authoritarianism, what are the actions and policies of the Trump administration that compete with, let alone dramatically surpass, these radical seizures of unchecked power by the administrations which preceded him?”
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/no-matter-the-liberal-metric-chosen
And Greenwald directly addresses an earlier point made by LT
“Indeed, Trump was able to campaign on, and then implement, escalated bombing campaigns that killed large numbers of civilians because the bipartisan framework had been laid over the prior two presidencies that empowered that.”
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