How COVID, Trump, and Sanders Turned Me Against M4A.
As COVID spread through Colorado Governor Polis stepped up to deal with it — but Donald Trump didn’t make it easy. It isn’t just that he sent most of the country’s stock of n95 masks to China before COVID hit our shores. And it wasn’t just that our requests for federal assistance were largely ignored while Florida was doted on. The real kick in the pants was when we spent taxpayer money to purchase 500 ventilators for Colorado hospitals who needed them and Trump swooped in to eminent domain them out from under us for states that voted for him. He made a big production of crediting Republican Senator Cory Gardner when he gave 100 of our own ventilators back to us too.
Then I log on to facebook and I see all the Bernie fans with hot takes about how COVID “proves” we need M4A now!!!! Excuse me? You want to give the man who has become a worldwide laughingstock for his mishandling of COVID total control of our entire health care system? Not something reasonable like Pete’s Medicare For All Who Want It or Biden’s public option but literally outlawing everything else?!?! Oh No. Absolutely not. Let me be as clear as I can be here. I wouldn’t trust Donald Trump to house sit for me. I definitely don’t trust him to be in charge of my health care or the health care of my loved ones. This is the worst time imaginable to be riding Bernie’s hobby horse.
Bernie’s slogans all revolved around expanding government which becomes so much harder to do when you diminish people’s trust in it.
Now it wasn’t always like this. Up until November 2016 I was very supportive of a Scottish style national health system but I’d have happily settled for a compromise like Bernie’s M4A. But this is because prior to that point I had a basic trust in the competency and moral integrity of our leadership. Even if our President was in the other party and disagreed with me on many policy points I assumed that they would be a competent person who cared about others and wanted to do a good job by us. This is why Bush immediately reminded people that Islam is a religion of peace after 9–11. He didn’t want Muslim-Americans targeted for retaliation. This is why McCain stood up to the racists in the Republican base and told a rally that Obama is a good man who just disagrees with him on a few things. This is why both Presidents Bush and their wives told the press in 2016 that they weren’t voting for Trump. They put the American people ahead of party. I have policy disagreements with them all day long but don’t question that they care about other people, respect experts, and live in reality. I thought all Presidents would be like that.
I no longer believe this.
That trust was the foundation that my political philosophy rested on. Trump’s election destroyed it. This is one of the reasons that Bernie is deeply wrong to emulate the scorched earth, slanderous, primary tactics of the far right. The far right wants to dismantle government. Impugning the integrity of elected officials and the legitimacy of the voting process plays right into their hands. Bernie’s slogans all revolved around expanding government which becomes so much harder to do when you diminish people’s trust in it. His bullshit character attacks on Clinton weren’t just really sexist, they were also incredibly stupid in terms of long and short term progressive goals. Trump’s incompetence makes voters less receptive to Bernie’s message. Trump’s judicial appointments make that radical change he keeps preaching impossible. What kind of idiot attacks the nom and “holds their feet to the fire” before they win? If they don’t win they can’t give you anything! Duh! You have to help them win first. This is not helping. Nor is this.
I voted against Bernie in 2016 because the GOP would shred him like tissue paper and do tremendous damage to causes I care about as a side effect. At best his 40 year political track record was doing nothing while talking shit about everyone else. At worst … well … we’ll get to that. But his pretend progressivism put me in this really awkward place. How do I argue, “I totally support this policy … and here are the reasons why the man whose made himself the face of it can’t be trusted to run it competently.”? I can’t. So I had to keep quiet about all the things wrong with Bernie.
How do I argue, “I totally support this policy … and here are the reasons why the man whose made himself the face of it can’t be trusted to run it competently.”? I can’t. So I had to keep quiet about all the things wrong with Bernie.
But not anymore. I am one of the millions of Americans who has moved toward the center in response to Bernie and Trump’s rage fueled populism. Since I no longer support M4A I have no reason to hide Bernie’s shame. And it is long past time that someone held that man accountable.
How the GOP would attack Bernie/M4A if he were the nominee:
M4A would “bankrupt the nation”. — Bernie Sanders
Lets start with this clip of Bernie claiming M4A would “bankrupt the nation”. Do you want the GOP blaring this clip from every media outlet for a year? When the real progressives made the big push for Universal Health Care in the 90’s Bernie was generating a grab bag of talking points like this one attacking it. That’s his thing — smugly deriding whatever everyone else is doing as “not good enough”. Never help. Only attack. The man wouldn’t even vote for CHIP.
You know what really makes socialized medicine look bad? Veterans dying on months long wait lists to see a doctor.
But that was so long ago, you say. OK. Let’s talk 2014 and the VA Scandal. Bernie was the chair of the Senate VA committee and underfunding was leading to critical levels of care rationing. For two years veterans groups begged him to hold hearings and push for increased funding. But the VA is socialized medicine and Bernie is a rabid ideological zealot so instead of fixing the problem he accused the vets of being right wing plants telling lies to make socialized medicine look bad. You know what really makes socialized medicine look bad? Veterans dying on months long wait lists to see a doctor. Over 40 of them at a hospital in Phoenix alone. Bernie makes private health care look good.
The ACA was based off RomneyCare — a successful effort from Massachusetts. Bernie’s M4A, otoh, was modeled after Green Mountain Care. A failed effort that Bernie contributed to in Vermont. Bernie lead the charge to get it passed — and then it went broke when the Governor attempted to implement it. Bernie as the nominee would make pointing at Green Mountain Care and saying, “It didn’t work last time he tried it, why do it again?” an easy win for the GOP. And the people attacking Bernie would be right. The way Bernie wants to do this is dumb.
Part of why it is dumb is that Bernie is a life long enthusiast for fake medicine. He lead the charge to legalize naturopathy in Vermont for example. Naturopaths claim that you can cure cancer by injecting people with colloidal silver. This is not true. You can, however, give them metal poisoning and turn them blue or kill them. From acupuncture to homeopathy Bernie’s never met a quack that couldn’t sell him some snake oil. He even aggressively peddled it in his 30’s. Writing with particular attention about his theories that cancer was caused by insufficient sex. I’m not joking. These sorts of things would be embarrassing for a 16 year old to write. For a 30 year old it’s horrifying. In his Vermont Freeman articles he calls teachers “bitches” and blames them for giving men cancer by “crushing their spirits” as boys. He advocates unassisted childbirth and suggests eating your placenta afterwards. He declares 13 years old to be “the time nature set forth for childbearing”. What kind of 30 year old man sexualizes 13 year old girls?
Normal people ignore the GOP when they try to accuse Biden of molesting children as that is obviously bullshit. Average voters wouldn’t ignore those sorts of attacks on Bernie because Bernie’s own pen betrays him. And his aging hippy faith healing advocacy is a hard “Nope” when trying to earn public trust to run our health care.
Then of course there is Bernie’s tire fire of a bill itself. I’ve never seen stupider suggestions for how to move to Single Payer. For starters, it isn’t even Single Payer!! It’s 50 payer. He delegates management to the states creating 50 separate administrative centers. This is a partial rip off of what Canada does and it’s problems are a lot worse for us than they are for Canada’s 10 provinces. With Berniecare you can’t get non-emergency care outside of your home state. In order for a state to take responsibility for you you have to physically live there most of the time. This leaves migrant and undocumented laborers completely outside the system. It also occasionally screws over retired Canadians who spend to much time vacationing out of province. As we are to the south of Canada and have orders of magnitude more farm land we also have orders of magnitude more migrant laborers. Roughly 11 million people — half of whom currently purchase private insurance under the ACA. Bernie insists on outlawing private insurance so he would strip coverage from over 5 million people who currently have it while giving them nothing in return. Hard pass on that.
Then of course there is Bernie’s tire fire of a bill itself. I’ve never seen a stupider suggestion for how to move to Single Payer.
And that’s just for starters. The bill is like a stupidity fractal with mind melting wtf at every layer of magnification. When you zoom in real close you find things like voting bodies with 6 members and no mention of what happens when there is a tie. At the middle level you see State governors given power over reimbursement rates in their states even though we know that red state governors use this power to sabotage Medicaid by setting rates to low for physicians to live on. If you think they wouldn’t do the same thing to sabotage Berniecare then you clearly haven’t been paying attention to politics. When you zoom out for a high level view you find broken funding mechanisms that automatically starve this beast to death. Why would anyone put no limits on defunding the program, no requirement to increase funding annually, but caps the amount funding can increase to the prior year’s increase in GDP? You know what doesn’t increase GDP? A pandemic. You know what shoots health spend through the roof? A pandemic. What kind of moron chains health funding to GDP growth? He outlaws every other form of coverage and then replaces it with a plan covered in self-destruct buttons and a timer so that if somehow nobody pushes a self destruct button it’ll still eventually blow itself up. And he fooled 13 million American’s into thinking he’s qualified to be President of the United States when he isn’t even qualified to be a Senator.
You know what doesn’t increase GDP? A pandemic. You know what shoots health spend through the roof? A pandemic. What kind of moron chains health funding to GDP growth?
Republican politicians openly talk about “starving the beast”. Cuts to vital programs are unpopular so they just don’t increase funding to keep pace with inflation and population growth. Then when the program starts failing they argue for it’s abolishment on the grounds that it wastes money and doesn’t work. Bernie has been an elected official for four decades. He should know they do this. But instead of writing a bill defensively to prevent starving with things like automatic funding increases he wrote it to automatically starve itself by periodically being unable to increase annual funding in economic downturns. Only — again — he does this after outlawing every other form of insurance so that when Berniecare starves we are all SOL.
He is that fucking stupid.
You know what the really horrifying thing is?
He’s even worse on climate policy.