Sanders: Single Payer Never Had A Chance

[ProSense]

Sanders: Single Payer Never Had A Chance

Sanders: Single Payer Never Had A Chance

Evan McMorris-Santoro

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) reminded the progressive media gathered on Capitol Hill today that single-payer health care reform was dead before it started in the Senate.

"It would have had 8 or 10 votes and that's it," he said, addressing a topic central in the minds of many who the bloggers and left wing talk show hosts gathered for the 4th annual Senate Democratic Progressive Media Summit in Washington reach everyday.

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Single-payer aside, Sanders chalks up the difficulty Democrats have had passing health care to a mistaken belief about party unity when reform efforts kicked off.

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Sanders said he thinks Democrats have 50 votes in the Senate to pass a bill "certainly to include a public option." It was a bit of good news for progressives, who have turned their attention to using reconciliation in the Senate to bolster a reform bill with the addition of a public option.

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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[ProSense]

2. When did Bernie Sanders ever say that? n/t

[karynnj]

6. Link please - I think you are conflating public option with single payer

What Sanders says here is what many of us have said was likely to be the case based on comments many Democrats had made.

[IndianaGreen]

10. Public option was the Medicare buy-in. Medicare is a single payer system.

[karynnj]

19. Medicare buy-in was only for people over 55

and it was only one of several options.

[IndianaGreen]

20. HR676 was the Medicare for all bill--the single payer bill that was kept off the table

In Obama's multi-dimensional chess game, a player's opening move is to surrender his Queen.

[karynnj]

29. That never had the votes in the Senate and you have not produced a

quote from Sanders saying it did.

[Spazito]

13. oh...my...

:popcorn:

[IndianaGreen]

3. Sherrod Brown: Obama 'wasn't going to fight for it..'

Sanders:

'I think the mistake was made after the election -- that we forget about the grassroots in this country, we forget about the trade unions and we say to them, 'Well, when we campaigned we (were) telling you we were opposed to McCain's tax on health care benefits, but now we have changed our mind.'"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/10/sanders-obama-has-tragica_n_493845.html

[ProSense]

5. Actually, it's up to Sens. Brown, Sanders and the others to vote on the bill.

I'm sure President Obama will sign it. The good news is that it looks like the votes for a public option are materializing.

[saracat]

12. Ugh. If Obama promoted it we would have more support quickly. And Brown said the

Senate didn't push it BECAUSE Obama didn't promote it.The question is WHY? Even now he doesn't promote the Public Option. Is there anything you think the President should so other than sign bills? Part of his job is to use the bully pulpit to benefit the people and he refuse to do it for the Public Option. Oddly the much maligned House and Senate are finally picking up the slack.


"Alongside Sanders, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) acknowledged that the president's commitments, specifically in regard to health care reform, had come up short. Discussing the idea of Medicare expansion, he said that the Senate didn't have the will to pursue such a policy because "the president wasn't going to fight for it."

"I know that a lot of you are discouraged about what has happened in the last year," Brown said. "Discouraged that the conservative, moderate wing of the Democratic Party too often seems to holds sway over both caucuses."

[karynnj]

8. McCain's tax is NOT in the bill

McCain would have eliminated the exclusion of money spent for health insurance from taxation. That would meant that everyone would have been taxed on the amount the company spent effectively at their marginal rate (or more) as it would have been income on top of current taxable income.

[IndianaGreen]

9. Obama's tax is on the bill

The President merely delayed its implementation until after he leaves office, assuming he serves two terms.

[karynnj]

18. yes, but that is not McCain's tax and it is wrong to conflate two different things -

no matter who does it. I get the idea - the similarity is that both allow taxing health care premiums paid by the employer, but it is not truw that they are the same thing.

[IndianaGreen]

22. A tax is a tax--the American people know when Uncle Sam is taking money from their wallets

This tax will hit the working class very hard.

[karynnj]

30. It is still not McCain's tax and it is highly unlikely to hit the working class hard

The fact is most Americans "work". If you mean something like the bottom third (in terms of income), it might hit none of them. At the beginning it will hit less than 4% of policies.

[TheWraith]

4. Yep. He's correct.

There's not much percentage starting with a bargaining position even your own side won't support.

[IndianaGreen]

7. particularly when the President puts single payer off the table from the gitgo

and instructs the Democrats in Congress to vote against the importation of cheaper drugs from Canada in order to protect the profits of Big Pharma.

The American working class never had a chance with this President!

[Cali_Democrat]

11. Lets say Obama did put single payer on the table...

would we have been able to get 50 votes? Sanders says single payer would have had 8 or 10 votes. You think Obama would have bumped that number up to 50 if he put it on the table? You've gotta be kidding me.

That's why Obama never put it on the table in the first place. It never had the votes.

[IndianaGreen]

15. People know and understand Medicare

giving people the option to buy into Medicare would have been a great success. Run against your own Congress if need be, and put "New Dealers" to replace the "Wall Streeters."

They ruling class has been waging class war on us since Reagan. It is time to wage some class war on them!

[Cali_Democrat]

16. It's not the people Obama had to convince, it's the Senators. n/t

[saracat]

17. That isn't what Brown said. Of course the President was working on that bipartisanship thing with th...

GOP senators and is apparently still willing to serve up a junk bill in a desperate hope they may "like" him and vote for it. The Senators seem to be stepping up to the plate without the support of the WH for the PO. If we get a PO, it will be in spite of the WH not because of it.

[vaberella]

41. If we get a P.O. it would be because the President signed off on it supprting the measure. n/t

[saracat]

48. But not because he wanted it or promoted it.Which he doesn't and hasn't.

[andym]

14. I was dissapointed single payer was off the table during the primaries

because if the candidates couldn't sell it then to Democrats, how could they sell it later to everyone else?

Besides the obvious malevolent corporate interests, I presumed the biggest hurdle was creating the largest government program ever in the post-Reagan world. At a minimum of 2 trillion (for direct costs according to the CA Nurses 2009 study), it would be almost as big as the existent current budget (around 3 trillion last year). Of course, HR676 requires new taxes and even though it would save a fortune (in indirect costs) and greatly stimulate the economy (according to the same CA Nurses' study), I presumed that Congress did not have the courage to create new/raise taxes.

I think the best path at the moment, is to allow the Medicare buy-in for all proposed by Rep. Grayson. Essentially sets up a framework for government-based single-payer without the taxes etc.

[Fire1]

21. Absolutely Senator! Not a snowball's chance in hell!! Great

minds think alike.:hi:

[O is 44]

23. The problem is in the Senate, love Sanders though

[Rosa Luxemburg]

31. The Senate is entrenched in special interests and needs cleaning

[Oregone]

24. "It would have had 8 or 10 votes and that's it"

Its pitiful the Democratic Party of supposed liberals is THAT right-wing. Whats the point?



FDR and Truman are probably crying in their graves. How. fucking. sad.



And people think its their job to attack progressives. Sad

[Jennicut]

26. Well, the whole damn poltical spectrum shifted to the far right. We are not even back to the middle

yet. It shifted with Reagan and co.
Some here are hating on Dennis K. I get where he is coming from, I just disagree with his tactics at times.
It IS sad. But I don't think the Dem party will ever go back to being all that liberal. After all, everyone in Congress is owned and it will be even worse in this year's election after the Supreme Court ruling.

[Oregone]

27. So whats the point?

If everyone wants to wake up and stop pretending the Democrats are a liberal party representing the voice of the people and workers, what is the point?

Only 1/6th of the Democratic Senate members would vote for egalitarian health reform?

Why continue?

[Jennicut]

34. Because the Dems are the only thing holding back the country from being totally right wing.

I am a realist and don't delude myself that there is any other answer except that.

[Oregone]

35. If 5/6th are not interested in liberal legislation, 5/6th who control the reigns, explain how...

that holds anything back from being right wing?

[IndianaGreen]

36. so they renew PATRIOT and expand the war into other countries

How does that qualify as "the only thing holding back the country from being totally right wing?"

[Jennicut]

37. You don't think someone like Cheney would be even worse?

Fine, if Obama is right wing to you, then Cheney is even further then that. That is the point I will make. I never ever saw Obama as a progressive. Center-right, maybe.
The differences may be slight, but there are a few. The Supreme Court is the major one.
The two party system is going to eventually collapse anyway, as the two parties become more and more alike. Eventually, by then, there will be no point.

[Oregone]

38. Maybe they just put their own spin on a predetermined course of actions to pacify their base

With the 50%+ that elect them being pandered to with the language, tones and motifs that helped the candidate get elected, it staves off any sort of rejection of the system by the people


Whoever wins gets to play to the majority with their own bag of unique tricks. Each election cycle, people percieve change and chill

[IndianaGreen]

39. Republicans and Democrats represent different factions of the ruling class

One faction believes in social Darwinism of the sort spoused by Ayn Rand, the other faction is just as greedy as the former, but thinks that there ought to be symbolic gestures to the proles.

[Oregone]

42. Whats worse? An unsustainable social disaster or perpetual bondage disguised as liberty?

[IndianaGreen]

43. There is a better path

but to get there, we are going to "fight for the concept, and for the absolute need of a revolutionary working class party in the ranks of workers."

[quaker bill]

44. I think what Sanders means

is that it "never had a chance". I think he is using the word never correctly. "On the table" or "off the table", it never had a chance. "Fought for" or "not fought for", it never had a chance.

There is a great deal of distance between support of single payer and being right-wing. The right-wing wants to end employer based group insurance as a benefit, because anything remotely collective like "group insurance", even when purchased by corporations from corporations, because the word "group" seems socialist. The right-wing is suggesting folks leave churches that preach "social justice" in any sense, because this is "socialism". The probably don't even like agricultural co-ops, and have worked to restrict credit unions (because they are "unions" and therefore "socialist"). They oppose regulation of the bankers, wall street swindlers, and insurance companies, as "socialist".

I think your understanding of what currently qualifies as right-wing needs some adjustment to reality.

[Oregone]

46. Rejecting an egalitarian social service so that private industry can profit at the people's expense....

Is right wing. Sorry you don't see it like the rest of the world.

[dflprincess]

25. I've often though if all the politicians who said something like

"Single payer would be great but it can't pass" or it's "not feasible" had acutally supported single payer we would have come closer to it or at least gotten a bill that was more than an insurance company bail out.

[Oregone]

28. Maybe thats just called paying lip service

Maybe thats called being a politician

Maybe the days of having politicians that actually care about the people are completely over.

[ibegurpard]

32. Who cares if it never had a chance?

If enough key people were standing their ground and making noise about it and getting it into the public arena FROM THE START then maybe we would have actually ended up with compromises we could live with.
Taking it off the table to begin with and starting with a weak compromise that was the first thing to go means you end up with something that NO ONE likes even though they may end up supporting it.

[ProSense]

40. Typical

"If enough key people were standing their ground and making noise about it and getting it into the public arena FROM THE START"

Who were you expecting to do this?

Why weren't the people who were pushing it more successful?

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

49. You don't go from 8 votes to 51.

It just doesn't happen, and it's not a negotiating starting point if everyone knows it.

[jeanpalmer]

33. It didn't lose on its merits

it didn't have a chance because we have a bunch of corporatists like Obama who sold out to the insurance industry. We need new people.

[Mass]

45. But not including it in the debates made sure the bill would be skewed toward conservative Democrats

[pundaint]

47. Yogi Berra said "90% of short putts don't go in."

The management of this whole process was a short putt at the most optimistic.

[SoxFan]

50. DINO! INSURANCE INDUSTRY STOOGE! CORPORATIST! CONSERVADEM!