So essentially what you are all saying is that it comes down to fear. Abject, paranoid fear. Got it.
A candidate like Obama, a popular, barely left-leaning centrist, can campaign on "Change We Can Believe In", but that change was apparently limited in the minds of people who supported him to change that still leaves everything pretty much as flawed, wasteful, and exploitative as it was. We can't have change that actually
changes anything! It was a great campaign slogan though. Although "Status Quo We Can Believe is Change" would have been a more accurate slogan. Yes, it made some desperately needed
augmentations to healthcare as we knew it in this country, augmentations that even helped me get health insurance when it was out of my reach. But it was nothing but putting a tourniquet on a person's lacerated, blood-gushing arm and sending them home. The actual foundational problems with the American healthcare system were nowhere near fixed. It's just not going to be fixed with more little amendments here and there.
Unfortunately, though it is absolutely what is needed and called for in this situation, actual real needed change that fully addresses the horrific, the basic, foundational problem with our healthcare system is not something that most Americans are comfortable with enacting. "Better to bear those ills we have than to fly to others that we know not of", as the Bard put it. It truly seems like this is the guiding principle for too many Americans nowadays.
Americans used to be a brave people who could band together and do big, brave things. Them days are sure as hell dead and buried,
that's for sure. We've been reduced to a bunch of cowering caged mice afraid of losing what little we've been able to stuff our cheeks with that this system allowed us to have. And when someone comes along and offers to finally let us out of our cages, we instead dig ourselves deeper into the wood chippings soaked with our own pee.
Simply put, you are all
terrified by the idea of Medicare For All. As I imagine a lot of people who are living comfortably blissful, upper-middle class lives are of it. Change
is terrifying to a
lot of people like you. You got yours. You are satisfied with what you've got. You are comfortable. And you desperately want to ensure that what you have and are comfortable with never diminishes. This is actually understandable. It's sort of basic human survival instinct behavior. But sometimes that old beat up car that you've been driving for hundreds of thousands of miles and has broken down and needed constant expensive repairs and are increasing every month just needs to be scrapped and a new car bought. Yeah, that can be scary. I had
massive panic attacks the day after both of my last two care purchases. But sometimes things that need to be done simply
are scary and there's no getting around the fact that they nonetheless still need to be done. Terrifying though they may be. Get past your knee-jerk fear. Stop feeding it. Stop letting propaganda feed it. You aren't going to lose
anything.
There's a fast food commercial running right now where a guy is telling another guy about the free cake offer they have. The other guy vehemently insists,
"But I want to pay for mine!", overplaying the humorous absurdity of such a position. I can't help but think of you guys every time I see it. Of course in this case, the cake isn't
free, you are still paying for it, but it costs a fraction of what it does now and is a far larger and delicious cake. "But I want to pay more and get less!" you are all demanding. Ha ha ha, yes. Very funny absurdity indeed. Fear makes people do some pretty absurd things I suppose.
"I have that option, which I choose NOT to take." -Olde Dude
Technically no. No you don't. Not at all. The choice you are passing on, the VA, is actually full-blown socialized medicine. The government owns everything about it, including the hospitals. This is
absolutely not what Medicare For All is as Bernie is proposing it. I'm embarrassed for you that you would even make such an absurd comparison. If you don't like the way the government owned and operated VA facilities work, then you have absolutely nothing to fear from Bernie's M4A. The government is not going to own and operate the hospitals and pharmacies and doctors and nurses are not going to be government employees. Medicare For All is simply going to be taking the place of private health insurance as the entity who will be writing the checks to the hospitals, doctors, etc. Hospitals and doctors will have to get their sh*t together and stop charging fifteen bucks for an aspirin and charging patients for expensive procedures that they never needed or in many cases also never even received but their insurance was charged for. And in return they will be freed from the shackles of having to pay for entire departments full of people dedicated simply to negotiating with insurance companies and filling out mountains of forms.
The only thing there really is to fear about M4A being enacted is that the Oligarchy will f*ck it up in their attempts to destroy it and return the status quo like the GOP did with Obamacare. But we have never had a champion before like Bernie Sanders who will refuse to compromise with and placate the Oligarchy like Obama did right out of the gate. And if the people are united behind him, as I am sure they will be, the Oligarchy will fail.
"I love my insurance, which is much better than either Tricare or VA" -Olde Dude
Again you are wrong. You don't love your insurance. You love the services it provides to you have and the amount of money you are paying for them. Services that are less than what would be available to you under M4A and for a lesser amount of money than it is costing you now. Services that are less than what would be available to you under M4A and for a lesser amount of money than it is costing you now. Services that are less than what would be available to you under M4A and for a lesser amount of money than it is costing you now. Services that are less than what would be available to you under M4A and for a lesser amount of money than it is costing you now. Services that are less than what would be available to you under M4A and for a lesser amount of money than it is costing you now.
Is any of this actually getting through to you yet, Oh-Dee?
So you still aren't answering the basic question I posed when I posted this thread, Olde Dude. You're avoiding it whether you realize it or not. But I am pretty sure I have answered it for you earlier in this post.
"On NRP a person named Willow explained her reason for opposing Medicare-for-all. Her reason surprised me." -Curt
I actually have access (boy what a f*cking loaded word) to transition related services through the the ACA plan I have now. It's "covered". I looked into it last year. Through my Kaiser plan I could get the final surgery that I've never been able to afford for the last 23 years. But when you throw in all the co-pays and deductibles...
I still can't f*cking afford it! Meanwhile, Donna and I have a transgender friend, probably very similar to the gal in your example, who was homeless and now lives in Section 8 housing and is getting
the freaking works, even facial reconstruction surgery, through Medicare. Our present system is designed to f*ck over folks like Donna and myself who are in the donut hole of income between abject poverty and the middle class. Not just for transgender care but all healthcare in general. Given our ages and income, we would be paying a higher percentage of our household income on healthcare than anyone else in the country has to right now, were it not for the ACA and the subsidy we get. You are in a the high range of the inclusion zone and Willow and our friend are in the lower range of the inclusion zone.