So, what is Kamala Harris's actual position on healthcare? I ask, because this is a big deal for me. This is one of my TOP policy priorities. It makes it in my main purity test as its own metric, up there with UBI. This is because healthcare is my #2 priority...behind UBI. Now, do I expect Harris to give me a UBI? Well, it would be nice if she experiments with cash grants, expanding the child tax credit again or implementing her LIFT act, but I ain't expecting anything resembling a full UBI proposal out of the Harris administration. But healthcare? Mmmm, that's the thing. Ideally, I like single payer, but given the cost, in recent years, I have become more flexible and amenable to a public option.
All I really know is that healthcare as it stands is broken, the ACA, for all of the good it did, was always a flawed compromise, it's always been a pretty crappy approach to healthcare, and for all of its successes, it's always been a bit of a failure to me. it failed to bring down costs, it failed to expand coverage universally, it failed to make healthcare affordable, despite its name. Sure, it solved a few of the problems involving things like preexisting conditions, but it's always been like this crappy centrist liberal approach to universal healthcare that never actually solved the core issues with it.
Liberals, especially democrats, tend to have horrible instincts at times. They push crappy watered down bills that barely do anything, and then wonder why people dont like them, and then decide the problem was they tried in the first place and that the answer is to move further right. Even worse, many of them are too focused on the legacies of past presidents, and not on the needs of the many. When Johnson passed the war on poverty, many became anti UBI, not because UBI wasnt better, but because they didn't want to admit they pushed this mediocre compromise that was flawed in its implementation, and they didn't wanna be upstaged by something better. Like a program that worked. So to preserve the legacies of past presidents we're just supposed to suffer the flaws of their mediocre plans forever I guess. And now democrats are stuck in this mindset with obamacare. Is Obamacare the end all be all of healthcare? if it was, we wouldnt be debating it. But will democrats insist that rather than push a public option or single payer, that the answer is to push modifications to the affordable care act and double down on a flawed approach because they'd rather not make Obama feel bad? Of course! That's what Biden did, and that's what strategists are pushing with Harris too.
Harris is currently a rorschach test. Centrists see a centrist, progressives see a progressive, and we really don't know what we're gonna get. Some people are like, is she gonna turn from her radical past on healthcare? (Of supporting a public option she called single payer because she was trying to bait bernie people who didn't know better), and I'm like, what radical past? her idea is the compromise. It was a public option that could be later expanded to be single payer. it was basically a variation of medicare extra for all. I mean, it was basically just Biden's plan on steroids. But now the centrists are like, OH NO, THIS IS RADICAL, WE CAN'T HAVE THIS! Why not? IT WONT BE ELECTABLE? Why not? BECAUSE CENTRISTS! F centrists, I say! I'm so fricking sick of being taken for granted by democrats as a voter, because im on the left flank of the party. And normally, when centrists pull this crap, I'll go green. I don't care. F them. If they're more sensitive to centrists because centrists will condition their vote over healthcare, then I'LL condition MY vote over healthcare. of course I cant do that this election because Donald Trump is a fricking mental case and the fate of democracy itself is in the balance, but normally? yeah, that's the game I'd play. I don't care. F centrists. As I said, I dont wanna be in the same coalition as these romney conservative types.
All that said, Kamala Harris is a candidate who currently appeals to both sides. And in a sense, we're gonna have to play a game of tug of war policy wise. You remember the talk of holding Biden's feet to the fire? We progressives are gonna have to do that to her in office. Because the centrists are very obviously trying to pull her right. We need to pull her back left. Because she has decent ideas. But if she abandons decent ideas to appeal to centrists, she's gonna be a disappointment. And it really seems the donor class and the centrists are pushing her hard right on healthcare, for "electability" reasons. I say no, let freak flag fly. You might actually win over some less loyal MAGA voters if you do that. it's the centrists who tend to suck all enthusiasm out of the room, and elections are won by enthusiasm. We have the ball, run with it.
Honestly, I hope Harris does the right thing, stands for her past 2020 ideas, and runs with them. because if anything Biden was a total failure on, it's been healthcare reform. he's made fixes around the edges, but we need comprehensive change to actually fix the system. A universal public option is actually the least we can do to solve the problems with healthcare. That IS the compromise for me. I WAS pro single payer. You can talk me down to a universal public option, but no, any less than that is just lame and not fixing the problem. We wont need to have this conversation every fricking election if we solve the problem in the first place. We solve the problem by going big, not just building on Obamacare. Because Obamacare was a flawed liberal plan that didn't go far enough and tried to solve the problem in some weird complex way that didn't fix the core issues with healthcare. We NEED some sort of government plan for healthcare anyone can enroll into and then pay in accordance with their income if we want to solve the healthcare crisis. Otherwise you're putting more band aids on a flawed system. That's all I'm gonna say.
No comments:
Post a Comment