It's political suicide for Republicans. Left leaning Democrats like Bernie are all for it.
It seems to me that the problem is that everyone wants a federal solution to healthcare and the United States is generally structured to limit federal power.
Fire departments are funded locally generally speaking, it didn't take a federal mandate to create them. If you think medical services should be provided to people as a civic service, go convince your local government to do it.
https://stateofreform.com/featured/2023/05/california-seeks-...
We'll probably end up with a public option of some kind that will somewhat function like health insurance but who knows.
I'm an American living and Germany and sadly, my GP who is also a personal friend of mine, will be shutting down their practice at the end of the year because their small practice simply isn't financially sustainable. They will instead start treating the prison population, which apparently pays more / is more consistent.
So I can also imagine how doctors in your state would feel if suddenly their rates are dramatically capped by the state.
I'm not aware of any public health care systems where medical care services are as expensive as in the United States, but perhaps it's possible to maintain relatively similar doctor pay as currently exists AND provide socialized health care benefits. I really don't know enough about this topic and the financials of American (non-public) health insurance companies to comment accurately on whether that would be feasible.
The public option would be the best in a vacuum, but if its truly affordable, we will still attract uninsured and under-insured people who come here when they get sick.
Primary care reimbursement rates also need to be raised and we need more preventative treatments that insurance is required to pay for.
* Medical-school debt is not a thing here. * Prices are low. * I know doctors who can't make a sustainable income to keep their small practices open.
Somewhat puzzlingly, for a handful of services, there can a medium length delay in getting an appointment because of how busy the doctors are.
This is definitely all much better than the situation is in Canada, where the typical person struggled even to get a GP, and friends with cancer would be forced to wait a life-imperiling year to get a routine scan that be the difference between life and death.
But in many ways California already has it if you qualify based on income (Medi-Cal / Medicaid).
It actually works well which is why it won’t be made available to everyone. Stock prices and profit margins would drop too much.
Also most people that actually do move would likely have jobs with taxable wages that helps to subsidize things.
The real risk population is maybe the homeless sick that migrate. But those tend to be in a different category entirely (e.g mental illness, addiction, trafficking etc.)
(This is the same reason the ACA had the individual mandate, and why said mandate's striking down is likely to result in the ACA's failure or needing significant amending soon.)
States seem to apply residency consideration all the time to college tuition and taxes, among others. Why would equal protection be an issue here?
Austin, TX can't implement this on its own without state support, but cities don't have any federal constitutional rights apart from their containing states, so that's too bad
Because you're either going to have to pick some fairly short period of time - a year or less - which won't be that much of an obstacle to folks seeking healthcare (especially if private healthcare remains available in that interim period), or you'll run afoul of Zobel v. Williams if you try to make a permanent or long-lived distinction.
Then you get a situation where the wealthy, even (and sometimes especially) the diehard leftists who voted for the situation, turn up their nose at what’s shown up in their backyard, and fuck off from California to Colorado or Texas. This reduces the tax resource pool, stressing the residents and businesses that can’t afford to leave further. This creates resentment.
Coupled with the overly dramatic and personal shitshow that is local politics, frankly I see local initiatives as a fantastic way to fail tens of thousands of times.
Fixes have to take place at least at the state level, and even that is less than ideal, because expenses have to be spread out (especially in regards to the wealthiest 1% that pay a huge chunk of income tax, and are not equally distributed across local towns) without creating an attractive hotspots for tax resource competition.
https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-skelton-income-t...
Note: this article is from 2019, which is obviously pre-Covid. I still think it’s too early to predict any trend on post-Covid migrations (which would really be captured and 2022-2023 and 2023-2024, assuming you started planning to leave mid-pandemic 2021-2022)
California had its largest tax surplus in the history of a state ever the 2022 fiscal year.
Also for a more up to date perspective on migration and money: https://calmatters.org/commentary/2022/08/california-is-leak...
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/San-Francisco-migrati...
Regardless, this still supports my point that state level healthcare while far more durable than local gov, still can’t compare to national level stability.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/03/01/1-generation...
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/01/17/generat...
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2014/07/09/the-polit...
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/05/29/gen-z-mil...
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/04/28/millennia...
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/04/03/millennia...
https://archive.is/iRyQE/f34b0a039aef880774f7d7d1dac5c0f5545...
Will and work ethic are weakly necessary for success, but they are not at all sufficient for it. (not successful) -> (not work ethic) is denying the antecedent: (successful) -> (work ethic) is, if not always true, at least often true, but that doesn't imply its converse.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-rol...
People's objection to social safety nets mostly isn't their desire to keep their money. It's a perception that the people who need those safety nets are lazy bums who don't deserve help. That's a particularly common perception among hard-working professionals, whose logic is "I worked hard to get where I am, so if others worked hard, they wouldn't need help". What they miss in that analysis, of course, is that their hard work combines with talent, luck, privilege, and health, things that many people who suffer lack. As a relative newcomer to the economic elite, I find it pretty distressing to hear how wealthy people talk about the poor when I myself was homeless less than five years ago.
Well, thats not surprising but at same time not default for most people. Universities have been leaning left since at least 60's and 70's . If all the people who attended university remained influenced by those ideas over the years. Most of the people with higher income and influential positions in society would be overwhelmingly left but that has not happened. It just shows a lot of people become conservative after leaving colleges.
Obama lost the white non-college educated vote by 26 points to Romney, by the way.
I’m sorry what??
It was the complete opposite. Obama won the “high-school dropout” vote overwhelmingly. Had narrow majority amongst those who graduated and actually lost college graduate vote to Romney by 4%…
Romney also won every income bracket above 50k
Less educated people started voting for the Republicans in 2016 but not quite to the extent they voted for Obama.
Some college educated white voters shifted to the Democrats in 2020 so the gap was a bit wider so I wouldn’t say “incredibly” unless you think 3% is incredible..
It’s a different matter for postgraduates though (62-37% in 2020)
Uh what? higher educational attainment correlates with voting Democratic https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/23/education...
Universities are also not the leftist indoctrination camps that right-wingers have deluded themselves into believing they are. There are lots of conservatives on campus, especially the faculty.
It's suggested that they fear that a (small) fraction of people are lazy and parasitical and will manipulate and abuse these systems. In some ways, I'm more cynical, and believe the cause is more deeply rooted: Since these people were hazed at some point in their lives (even if they're middle class, e.g. they took a job they hated beacuse gave them decent health insurance), they believe everyone should be hazed.
It's the old chestnut: "Do this shitty pointless thing, it builds character. (subtext: I was forced to do this shitty pointless thing, so why shouldn't you younger folks be too)."
People aren't opposed to helping people who need it. They just don't understand that people need it.
I’m actually not salty about the taxes I pay (Ontario, Canada) I’m salty that I seem to get sweet FA for them compared to similar rates in Western European countries.
Seems like a problem with governance, not taxes.
Your views of the situation disregard your observations about the situation, if you're at any way aware of the data about Sanders' popularity over the last 10 years, the popularity of his policies, the fact that he was nearly President in 2016, and the fact that instead of him, a bunch of over-35s elected a wrestler game show host, it's nuts to still pretend that people generally mature into middle-of-the-road conservatism.
He was closer in 2020. But in 2020, Democratic primary voters got a very simple choice: double down on moderate neoliberalism, or try progressivism. Democratic primary voters made a very, very clear choice, and Biden wiped the floor with Sanders from the day it became a two-man race. Biden won nearly two-to-one in vote share and in delegates and won numerous states that were Sanders' base of support in 2016.
Is there a progressive wing in the Democratic Party? Yes. Is it a lot bigger than it was ten years ago? Yes. Is the fact that we've been right all along becoming more obvious by the day? Yes. But are progressives the majority of the party? No. Are we competitive in national primaries right now? No. We have simply not convinced half of the half of the country that votes Democratic that we are in the right.
Part of that is our serious problem with the black vote - it's very hard to win a Democratic primary without it - but it goes well beyond that. Republicans have very successfully painted us as a bunch of frothing-at-the-mouth fools who want to waste all your money sending men to leer at your daughters in locker rooms, and we need strategies to convince people otherwise. We need to play politics. What that looks like, we can debate, but we have so far failed to win the game of rhetoric even though we are, objectively, right.
Also because the Democratic primaries were objectively and transparently rigged.
IIRC wasn’t Sanders polling better against Trump than Clinton? Then again most conceivable candidates probably would have…
That's largely because both the 2016 and 2020 generals, and the 2016 and 2020 primaries, were highly split along racial and educational lines. Black voters voted overwhelmingly for moderates in primaries and Democrats in the generals in all three contests, while white voters tended towards the more radical candidates in both primaries and the general (although the Bernie -> Trump vote gets exaggerated, it certainly existed, and his massive upset in Michigan foreshadowed Clinton's weakness there).
> Also because the Democratic primaries were objectively and transparently rigged.
Well, in terms of delegates, sure. But Bernie didn't win the vote, either. Clinton beat him by 12 points, not all that much different from the margin Biden was beating him in '20 prior to him dropping out.
> IIRC wasn’t Sanders polling better against Trump than Clinton? Then again most conceivable candidates probably would have…
The polling was a wash, ish, between the two. But of course the polling was also wrong in undersampling critical demographic groups that probably preferred Sanders to Clinton (although I'll note that Clinton won the primary in Pennsylvania, which she ultimately and decisively lost).
With the benefit of hindsight, maybe Democrats would have done a lot of things differently. (I certainly would have - I was so frustrated after Bernie lost that I ultimately voted third-party, although I might not have had I lived in a competitive state.) But certainly conventional wisdom at the time for virtually anyone in the know was that Trump was very unlikely to win, even as his popularity endured through things it never should have, and I don't necessarily blame them for mis-reading an electorate whose simmering frustration was suddenly at a boil.
My point being that Bernie being right does not mean he was, even with the benefit of hindsight, the correct electoral choice, nor does it mean there's some silent majority of Democrats who want progressive action but aren't voting for it.
Fix roads, improve access to mental health, etc., etc.? Sure. Raise my taxes (I moved to the US from a country where I was taxed at a higher rate than now.
Make empty promises, divert to pork, enrich the 0.1%, increase military spending? No, don't raise my taxes.
The "real" Republican party, consisting of younger voters, is by-and-large populist. Majority of them are pro-gay (though, anti-trans), pro legalization of weed, pro gun, and pro free healthcare.
The problem is that the real Republican party consists of 80 year old neoliberal sacks of garbage. These are the people making the laws. The Democrats are not different. It may seem to be a cliche that "both parties are the same" but when you observe effected policy vs proposed policy both parties fall along the neoliberal line almost perfectly. What we have a neoliberal gerontocracy. Not a democracy.
This is why internally there's a struggle for the R's to keep young voters. The same problem D's are having. While the D's are blowing their own foot off going too far off to the left socially, the R's are blowing their own foot off sticking to their dogmatic 1960s neoliberal policies.
It's far more complicated than left/right dynamics. Its absurd to me how much misinformation CNN/Fox/MSNBC/NPR put out about this. If anyone on the left actually wandered to their nearest blue collar bar and asked people what they thought on "the issues" you'd probably find they are more "liberal" than you were let on by your favorite misinformation artist.
Bernie Sanders identifies as a Democratic Socialist. You can, of course, call him whatever you want, but it won't make him identify himself differently.
Yes, and lots of people do.
People who aren’t accepted by other Democrats as part of the team don’t end up with large blocks of convention delegates and a major role in shaping the rules going forward due to that.
> they don't limit it to card carrying Democrats
No such thing exists, unless you are talking about people who pay membership fees to the DNC, but that's a pretty narrow definition.
Odds Republicans would ever do something like this with the current party are nil, a large part of republican donors are big businesses that would never back anything that empowers workers.
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/17/902626429/wall-streets-big-mo...
Till we all realize that both parties are the problem and stop calling the party we don’t support the boogey man, we will be stuck in this hamster wheel of absurdity.