Bernie Sanders, Top Progressives Announce New Medicare-For-All Push

In the wake of the Republican failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act on Friday, leading figures in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party are rallying behind a single-payer health insurance and a raft of other bold reforms.

Now that efforts to eliminate the law wholesale are effectively dead, they are again arguing that the best way to improve the country’s health care system is to confront the power of corporate health care provider more directly.

“We have got to have the guts to take on the insurance companies and the drug companies and move forward toward a Medicare-for-all, single-payer program,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said on MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes” on Friday night. “And I’ll be introducing legislation shortly to do that.”

Even before the Republicans withdrew their Obamacare repeal bill, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee and a close Sanders ally, previewed this message at a rally in defense of Obamacare on Thursday....

I wouldn’t call German healthcare ‘free’....you pay roughly 7-percent of your pay, and your employer will pay an identical amount....so 14-percent of your pay is going toward the deal. Because of stagnation on wages...the average guy is making no more than 25,000 to 30,000 Euro a year. Toss in various taxes, he only takes home 50-percent of what he makes.

These lawmakers and grassroots leaders have long believed that the problems plaguing the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, are rooted in the original health care law’s attempt to accommodate, rather than gradually replace, the private, for-profit health insurance system.

I'm with Bernie on this.

And while we're at it, why should anyone or any company make any profit from selling food. Food is a necessity, just like health-care, and if healthcare must be free, then so should food and drinks.

How about free cable and free internet? Those are necessities nowadays, as democrats have defined them. So, people need to be entertained, via free TV and free movies and free internet. It's for their mental well-being.

How about free sex, with no obligations and/or consequences that might follow? Sex is a necessity for the welfare of societies worldwide, so, we're entitled to that too.

Housing? Yep! People need places to live and for shelter, so, that being one of the biggest necessities for the welfare of all people, that should be free too, or paid for by someone else.

Transportation? Who doesn't need transportation? Why should the rich be the only ones that can afford to fly or drive to anywhere anytime for whatever? It's a necessity, especially for visiting loved ones and for vacations. There are millions already receiving "free" transportation, but why should they have that kind of advantage over all the other millions?

Wealth? Nope! Nobody is better than all the others, so, everybody should be equally rich or equally poor. Different economic levels are the causes of millions of people resenting those that have the most. So, lets' get everybody to be equal at the same economic level.

So, who's going to provide the funding for all that "equality"? Government, of course. ;)

Given the basic human nature that once you institutionalize a benefit you have hell to pay if you take it away, very few politicians will want to face that hell and opt for a truly market based health system.

And given the disaster that the current system is some basic universal single payer system might be a better option.

We have something like that in education today. Adding a voucher system would add some market competition. Maybe something like that can be done with health care.

In fact Medicare already works like that - you have many Medicare Advantage plans that are like vouchers.

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WOULD BE EXEMPT?