So the Democrats get millions of people on board with saving The Affordable Care Act. They get hospitals, nurses, doctors, even insurance companies! to join them, in a massive, passionate, brilliant effort to stop Paul Ryan from destroying Medicaid and from throwing 24 million off insurance . Bravo! Amazing.
But for Bernie Sanders and Michael Moore, this is the time to send the message: “The ACA still sucks; inadequate; imperfect. We were only kidding about saving it. This is the time to dump the ACA, and embrace single-payer insurance.”
Think about that. We just won a major battle, but Sanders and Moore want us to send out the message that we were fighting for something that wasn’t worth the fight. And the fact that we got the ACA’s original opponents to fight for/with us—that should be sniffed at.
But Sanders and Moore are wrong. Now is the time to offer Medicaid [at the ACA subsidy levels for those 4x above poverty level] for anyone who WANTS it. Anyone, rich or poor. Optional. And in return, Democrats loosen the mandates for employers and self-employed.
THAT is the next move. That is how we step-by-step move the nation toward single-payer/universal coverage. It took Canada over 20 years to get there. But this is how they did it, once the insurance companies threw in the towel.
If we follow Sanders/Moore’s lead, we lose the PR battle, the initiative, we risk losing the war for another generation. Our ‘enemies’ have become our allies—for now. Don’t throw that away.
The Democratic response to trump’s ‘let it collapse’ strategy, is to offer Medicaid for ‘whoever wants it’—the public option. No co-pays. Simple message, simple product.
As they say, the Perfect is the enemy of the Good. If you weren’t aware, that epigram is a cautionary tale warning us not to overplay our hand. Only a fool would fail to heed that warning.
