>for the general public the messaging was that warren was
>going to raise taxes. she is going to make you lose your
>private insurance. she was going to tear down murrica
>
>murrica loves to chose to pay more for less!
>

Well, the correct framing of this issue is Bernie proposes to raise taxes on anybody earning more than $29k/yr, and Warren was pressured to either endorse that approach or commit to not burdening taxpayers. She (smartly) chose the latter. Private health insurance abolition is just a feature of the proposed single-payer system as a whole, not Warren-specific.

And Bernie and Warren aren't proposing paying less for more, what? It's more for more! Lol. That 'M4A is cheaper' trope is just sloppy health economics out of the left-wing. Nobody is actually going to feel that $2T drop in National Health Expenditure; it's an economy-wide metric. Just like you probably don't notice GDP fluctuation in your everyday life. But you know what people would notice? An extra 20%+ or whatever it would end up being coming off their paychecks. You said uptop that your current personal health spending accounts for ~5% of your annual income. 20%+ is more than 5% lol.


>an informed comparison would be to discuss what is actually
>covered and what the cost would be for people.
>
>pete would hint that his option was to give you all the
>benefits of M4A but still leave a choice for those who love to
>pay insurance companies more for less. instead of a flavor of
>medicare he really is only offering a whiff. i dont think
>people would really support that if they understood it.
>

Well if you read through his policy there's no insinuation about fully expanded benefits tho. Actual Medicare doesn't even cover all the perks Bernie's proposing, so it's not that Pete is offering a "whiff" as you put it... it's pretty standard coverage (ACA essential benefits at gold-level/80% actuarial value). It's that Bernie is proposing in excess. Maybe Pete just decided a life-or-death perk (free/no-copay generic drugs) was the most impactful use of budgeted funds? I dunno. But in that UI analysis you shared a while back, they ran the numbers for Reform 8 (M4A) and then went so far as proposing Reform 7 ("single-payer lite") because scaling back on benefits (eg. dental, vision, hearing, long-term care etc) could help shave another $1T from the federal spending the proposal needs in a year. $1T that neither Bernie's or Warren's financing has been able to cover.


>because of the effective fear
>campaign i would be okay with a public option that actually
>offered much more than any being proposed outside of warren if
>it means we get something done versus we dont.
>

Pointing out real issues with single-payer as a model and/or Bernie's specific single-payer system isn't a fear campaign tho. Lol. It's just reality. Warren's transition plan/public option is still mad expensive and dependent on a string of legislative miracles to fund it. No sense in denying that.

But knowing that you favor expansion of benefits (eg. dental,vision, hearing, etc), what you said here made me just think that perhaps the healthcare plan that should have appealed to you most was Kamala's then??? Because she also sought expanded benefits, no income-based premiums for anyone making <$100k; but then she went a little further than Pete on private insurer controls (they could stay in business but more tightly regulated i.e adapt and become part of Medicare system a la Medicare Advantage), while avoiding some of the more contentious funding sources proposed by Bernie and Warren (eg. the wealth taxes, 77% estate tax, comprehensive immigration reform, big defense cut,etc). That said, in terms of Congress, the public option with the best prospects for actually getting universal healthcare access legislated within a presidential term is still and has always been Pete's. Kamala's plan called for a 10y transition, even longer than Warren's, and was similarly more cumbersome than his too.


>theres no question that the GOP will attack equally any of the
>dems proposals as socialist, and hurting the american people.
>not sure why were caving to them already.


I actually agree with you on this. It's why I hate how abusive the tactics of the far-left have gotten. But I know, for example, that because you really like Warren you didn't like how Pete challenged her on single-payer. In my view tho, that is "precisely" the type of friction we should see between candidates in a primary: civil, productive, and about the issues. Done correctly, everybody wins.

Yes she suffered in the polls, but that's more because Sanders' healthcare proposal was just poorly designed from jump. In the big picture tho, her plan enabled her to 1) make a critical distinction between herself and Bernie (no taxes on lower and middle class to bankroll the system) and 2) give skeptics (like me lol) a more substantive single-payer plan to try to change our minds and/or stand up against the public option proposals. Tbh I think her initial openness to both single-payer AND public option was a perfectly tenable position (I think she was quoted recently saying something along the lines of "I'll sign anything that helps"). It would have distinguished her MUCH earlier from both Bernie and the public option candidates, while allowing her to lead on a commitment to not raise taxes for anyone except the wealthy. But she crumbled a bit trying to appease too many folks, especially the far-left who will never be 100% satisfied with anyone other than Bernie. Imho Warren's at her strongest when she's propelled by her own convictions, not his. I wish she'd stand tall in her center-left progressive accountable-capitalism glory lol, she would have destroyed this primary.