(On the CNN town hall.)

EDIT: just noticed a lot of similar discussion has already been had in posts 377, 380, 384...


Seemed like a case-in-point of how so many of the Sanders 2016 promises went unchallenged in the press, and that if they become litmus tests for progressive candidates (which they pretty clearly will), they'll be a huge drag on the eventual nominee.

Tapper pointed out that M4A would mean the end of private health insurance. She basically said "yeah."

Sounds good to me, and I'm sure to most of us around here in the bubble. But there's a reason Barack Obama had to say "If you like your plan you get to keep it." It's way too easy for Republicans to spin any change as a loss.

It would also mean hundreds of thousands of people lose their jobs. M4A is a more efficient system, and this is the downside of that. Most of the people in the health insurance industry are not CEOs, or even particularly well off. Most of the money that private insurance wastes, goes to the salaries of regular people. In an ideal world those people would quickly find new work, but obviously that's not how it happens.

Polls have shown that the apparent popularity of M4A plummets when someone points out that it would end the existing insurance system.

The response Kamala should have had ready, I think, would have been along the lines: "There would still be a place for private health insurance as a supplement if you want it. Nations like the UK still have private health insurance for people who don't feel they get enough coverage from the public system. You could still buy supplemental insurance and companies could still offer it as a perk of employment. Moreover, it would be far less expensive, because it wouldn't have to cover all the things already covered by the public plan." Then again, just as I typed that I saw a few more cans of worms threatening to open up.

It's a shame we've forgotten about the "public option" from Obamacare, which we were supposedly going to keep fighting for. That was functionally equivalent to M4A, just packaged in a way that's less disruptive and harder to make scary. But I guess it was 'establishment' or something.

The REAL answer, of course, is: "Oh don't worry. It's not a serious policy proposal. No policy proposals, from the right or the left, are serious anymore, because the country is hyperpartisan and neither party will have a 60-seat Senate supermajority in our lifetimes (certainly not the Democrats!). So while it's fun to talk about imaginary domestic policy, all we're really doing is listing ways that we'll be disappointed in a few years. Really I'm only running to be a hiring manager, to determine who staffs the federal agencies and the courts. And that's important too!" But unfortunately a campaign that admits that, will not be long for this world.