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Thursday, January 14, 2016

Hey Ryan Cooper: ACA Wasn't intended to be Optional Either

In two days I bloody two Hillary hating Beltway pundits First Chris Cillizza.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2016/01/i-successfully-get-under-hillary-hating.html

Now Ryan Cooper and I engage in a Twitter war. He dismissed me as being 'unserious about healthcare' but he felt the need to respond. LOL.

I made the point though that he isn't really interested in a discussion on the finer points of single payer vs. more incremental healthcare reform through Obamacare.

He just wants to call her a liar. That's his focus:

"Hillary Clinton's dirty attack on Bernie Sanders."

"Hillary Clinton took aim at Bernie Sanders' single-payer health care plan on Monday, characterizing it as "turning over your and my health insurance to governors," specifically naming Republican Terry Branstad. It's a pretty clear reference to the many conservative states that have refused ObamaCare's Medicaid expansion — implying that Sanders would allow conservative states to opt out of his plan, and hence partially destroy all federal health insurance programs."

"This is absolutely false."

http://theweek.com/articles/598798/hillary-clintons-dirty-attack-bernie-sanders

So some very categorical language. It''s not just mistaken or partially, it's absolutely false. Except that it isn't.
In my back and forth with him on Twitter he just kept harping on this one legalistic point. She had made many arguments but Cooper focused on just the question of wether Bernie's plan turns over folks healthcare plans to GOP Governors.

He says this is absolutely not the case.

"She is referencing Sanders' single-payer bill he introduced in 2013. It would require each state to set up its own single-payer plan, and fold all existing federal health care programs, except for Veterans Affairs, into that system. While one might criticize that structure (more on this below), it is emphatically not optional. Under his plan, a federal board will oversee the system as a whole and take direct control of any state program that doesn't meet its requirements."

Ok but here's the problem. That little word 'emphatically' can't hide the fact that the ACA was emphatically not meant to be optional either. Until it was. Until the Roberts Court made it so.

What HRC is saying here is that there is a risk that this could happen with Bernie's single payer as well-ignoring the fact that it's a political impossibility for a moment which is why it makes no sense to even go here.

And you remember how much success the GOP had in demonizing even the ACA-to this day many claim it is a terrible failure.

Now hypothetically Bernie's plan would be very good for those without any healthcare. But a lot of middle class folks would see their healthcare deteriorate.

Even if we set aside the issue of a potentially unbalanced ledger, experts point out several other problems with Sanders’ simple promise of savings.

First, it’s not guaranteed that workers will have the same quality or amount of care under a Medicare-for-all system.

"Most employer-based health insurance policies currently have more comprehensive coverage than traditional Medicare, pointed out William Hsiao, a leading health economist at Harvard University who designed universal coverage systems for Vermont, China, Sweden, and South Africa, to name a few."

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/jan/13/how-much-would-bernie-sanders-health-care-plan-cos/

You would be taking current Medicare for all and sending these back to state plans-that again, could be made optional by Scott Walker or Rick Snyder.

So Bernie's plan is not Medicare for all which is a federal program.
 
P.S. It's clear Cooper is yet another Hillary Basher in the Beltway press which he gives away here:

"Naturally, Clinton wants to preserve ObamaCare: "I don't want to rip it up and start over," she said at the same event. But she is talking out of both sides of her mouth. On the one hand she doesn't want to dismantle the program whose signature weakness is a result of decentralization; on the other, she attacks Sanders' proposal for being insufficiently centralized. It's doubly hypocritical given her support for her husband's welfare reform, which granted the program en masse to the states, most of which destroyed it."

"In any case, it's obvious what's happening here. Clinton has been flagging in the polls of late, and as usual she's turned to fighting dirty."

It's not as contradictory as Cooper says. Under Bernie's plan you'd be taking Medicare which is currently a federal centralized program and decentarlizing it to the whims of the Roberts Court.

But the second sentence gives lie to his claim to being a serious policy wonk above politics.

He has an axe to grind with Hillary and has had for years just like Chris Cillizza.

P.S.S. It seems to be my moment. Now I just got into a discussion with Stephen A. Smith of ESPN where we disagreed on the Giants hiring Ben McAdoo. I think it's a great choice. 

Stephen A is arguing that the Giants have missed the playoffs six of seven years which is not the point. McAdoo was hired to put Eli right and he did that. The win-loss record of the team is on the head coach and the GM.
Wow. I'm arguing with some big names.

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