Chelsea Clinton: Sanders wants to dismantle Obamacare

[Adam Griffin]

There's that nasty Clinton spirit we all know and love!

Everybody knew that at the first glimpse of possible vulnerability, she and her allies would revert to their 2008 and prior style of nasty attacks, lies and slander; that the "mature" and "respectable" primary process we have known for the entirety of the campaign thus far would be thrown out the window.

I just hope Bernie doesn't get a spray-on tan or a little bit of sun between now and the end of the primary: Hillary will probably start all of that nasty dog-whistling she became so famous for in 2008 and that all of Black America conveniently forgot about over the past eight years!

It's really hilarious, though, because she never learns...once she starts getting mean and nasty due to sagging poll numbers, she becomes even more unlikable, which makes her poll numbers fall even more, which precipitates even more attacks, and so forth...

[Lief 🗽]

Ah yeah, Bernie is allowed to spend MONTHS calling Hillary Clinton corrupt, owned by Wall Street, etc. but the minute Clinton criticizes one of Sanders' policies suddenly she's NASTY and a LIAR. Come on dude. Sanders' has been running a "mean and nasty" campaign for months now.

[Figueira]

I don't mean this in a rude or crass way, but good lord she is not exactly a looker. Not that she had the best genetics to work with but.....yikes.

This is a terrible comment even by Atlas standards.

[ProgressiveCanadian]

Ah yeah, Bernie is allowed to spend MONTHS calling Hillary Clinton corrupt, owned by Wall Street, etc. but the minute Clinton criticizes one of Sanders' policies suddenly she's NASTY and a LIAR. Come on dude. Sanders' has been running a "mean and nasty" campaign for months now.

She is corrupt and owned by wallstreet so he was really just telling the truth.

[Lief 🗽]

Ah yeah, Bernie is allowed to spend MONTHS calling Hillary Clinton corrupt, owned by Wall Street, etc. but the minute Clinton criticizes one of Sanders' policies suddenly she's NASTY and a LIAR. Come on dude. Sanders' has been running a "mean and nasty" campaign for months now.

She is corrupt and owned by wallstreet so he was really just telling the truth.

dude seriously how old are you? 13?

[NeverAgain]

Ah yeah, Bernie is allowed to spend MONTHS calling Hillary Clinton corrupt, owned by Wall Street, etc. but the minute Clinton criticizes one of Sanders' policies suddenly she's NASTY and a LIAR. Come on dude. Sanders' has been running a "mean and nasty" campaign for months now.

To be fair, they have been criticizing each other for a while now... This isn't the first, and I don't assume it will be the last.

[ProgressiveCanadian]

Ah yeah, Bernie is allowed to spend MONTHS calling Hillary Clinton corrupt, owned by Wall Street, etc. but the minute Clinton criticizes one of Sanders' policies suddenly she's NASTY and a LIAR. Come on dude. Sanders' has been running a "mean and nasty" campaign for months now.

She is corrupt and owned by wallstreet so he was really just telling the truth.

dude seriously how old are you? 13?

No defense so you call me a 13 year old. Well played.

[Maxwell]

She's not wrong - Bernie doesn't seem to want to build on any of the accomplishments of the last 8 years, and seems content on conceding the idea that Obamacare is a failure.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

You can just smell the desperation from the Clintons.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

This is not untrue, because Sanders wants single payer. It's a moot point, though, because it would never get through Congress.

Well regardless, he'd either keep it or replace it with something better.

[7,052,770]

If we ever got single payer in America, it would almost certainly be a half-assed version of Canada's system, which is pretty half-assed already.

Canada's health care system was barely ahead of the US before the ACA by WHO rankings. Give it a few more years for the Obamarage to fade and Republicans to move on from intentionally sabotaging it, and we'll pass Canada in the rankings and never look back. Who needs single payer when Obama has given us something better?

[ProgressiveCanadian]

If we ever got single payer in America, it would almost certainly be a half-assed version of Canada's system, which is pretty half-assed already.

Canada's health care system was barely ahead of the US before the ACA by WHO rankings. Give it a few more years for the Obamarage to fade and Republicans to move on from intentionally sabotaging it, and we'll pass Canada in the rankings and never look back. Who needs single payer when Obama has given us something better?

Single payer is going farther and giving more people coverage. Obamacare is the half assed law the dealt with some of the problem. Also no the Canadian system will be ahead for a while if the US doesn't do more to help people get coverage.

[RFayette]

This is a stupid attack.  A better attack would be that Sanders's plan raises government spending and will require middle-class tax hikes and deprives people of a choice of insurer.  Of course, most Dems would favor single-payer anyways, but those would at least make a degree of sense.

[Adam Griffin]

She's not wrong - Bernie doesn't seem to want to build on any of the accomplishments of the last 8 years, and seems content on conceding the idea that Obamacare is a failure.

Uh, it is. Assuming you ignore the fact that it was a colossal political misstep (Democrats are now legislatively locked out of governing for a generation in large part due to the controversy of it, fueled by the fact that it was such a damn private sector-inspired Frankenstein monster that it couldn't be explained properly to the public), there is still the fact that it has left at least two out of three of the previously uninsured without insurance and that the cost of healthcare is higher than ever ("you're only being price-gouged at two times the rate of inflation instead of three times the rate of inflation - you're welcome!"). I would be absolutely fine with losing our ability to govern for 30 years if we had actually fixed the problem. Instead, we put a bandage on a tumor because our party is filled with cowards who think a half-ass solution will only generate half as much outrage and misunderstanding.

It's disingenuous to criticize Sanders for wanting a Medicaid-for-all program that "leaves it up to the states" while defending Obamacare, when Obamacare itself was designed to vest its biggest and most tangible changes with respect to lowering the rate of uninsured in the states as well. From working within the existing parameters of Medicaid and Medicare, to signing off on state-based healthcare exchanges, Obamacare's real-world, specific mechanics were very much state-based. Sure, some loose parameters are governed by federal requirements, but those were never designed to be the bulk of the benefit in terms of lowering the rate of uninsured.

It's also worth noting that we'll never really know how much of an impact Obamacare had on lowering the rate of uninsured, because a) it was passed and implemented during a time in which many millions of people lost their jobs, and b) the rate of uninsured from 2010-2014 almost certainly increased solely because employers were scared and unsure of providing additional insurance options with such a large and misunderstood piece of legislation coming down the pipeline. There are also studies that suggest roughly half of those uninsured in 2009 but who are insured today obtained insurance through employer-sponsored healthcare plans. This means that in net terms, the bill likely added just a few million people to the rolls who didn't have health insurance prior and who had also been chronically without health insurance. The numbers that claim "15 to 20 million people" are very misleading when you break down how each group obtained insurance, whether or not they had insurance at some point in the recent past, and so forth.

Flawed as all get-out, doesn't address the bulk of the long-term cost problems, pushes even more public and private money into private insurance companies' pockets, merely shifts around where the actual costs regarding healthcare are paid by consumers, left potentially tens of millions of people without insurance because of its shoddy design and insistence upon state boundaries, and if this were 25 years ago, the bulk of Democrats in this thread defending this garbage as the harbinger of real progress would have been attacking this private-sector, pro-GOP idea exactly for what it is.

[MM876]

Ah yeah, Bernie is allowed to spend MONTHS calling Hillary Clinton corrupt, owned by Wall Street, etc. but the minute Clinton criticizes one of Sanders' policies suddenly she's NASTY and a LIAR. Come on dude. Sanders' has been running a "mean and nasty" campaign for months now.

Sanders has been railing against corruption and Wall Street influence. He implied that perhaps Clinton had a bit too much corporate influence, but little else. If you look over the past few months it was the news and the people saying that about Hillary, but not Bernie.

[PPT Spiral]

I don't mean this in a rude or crass way, but good lord she is not exactly a looker. Not that she had the best genetics to work with but.....yikes.

Must be those Webb Hubbell genes.

[Virginiá]

Democrats are now legislatively locked out of governing for a generation in large part due to the controversy of it

I wouldn't say a generation, but certainly not in a real capacity until at least 2022, barring any unforeseen events that drive more voters to the party. If they had been able to wait until the end of 2010, they could have avoided the fallout that decimated them just in time for Republicans to rig the maps big-time in so many crucial states. Had they avoided that, for the House, we would probably be where we were in the early 2000s, except add a handful of seats to Republicans. Democrats had a real chance to forge a stronger Congressional majority and they blew it over the PPACA, but due to timing of that / 2011's egregious gerrymandering, clustering of Democratic voters into high-performance districts and the more equal distribution of Republican voters, Democrats are now worse off until the next redistricting, and even then, that still only makes things competitive, or basically where they should be already.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

“I believe that by the year 2000 we will have a single payer system. I don’t think it’s — I don’t even think it’s a close call politically. I think the momentum for a single payer system will sweep the country.”  - Hillary Clinton

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2014/december/hillary-clinton-1994-statement-on-single-payer

[Ebsy]

A lot of things have changed since 2000, particularly the cost of delivering healthcare. It's much more expensive now than it was then, and as we saw in Vermont, not even the most liberal states are willing to take on the burden of single payer.

[DrScholl]

Single payer is off the table at this point. It would result in a huge mandate that would extremely underfunded.

[Darthpi – Anti-Florida Activist]

It's disingenuous to criticize Sanders for wanting a Medicaid-for-all program that "leaves it up to the states" while defending Obamacare, when Obamacare itself was designed to vest its biggest and most tangible changes with respect to lowering the rate of uninsured in the states as well. From working within the existing parameters of Medicaid and Medicare, to signing off on state-based healthcare exchanges, Obamacare's real-world, specific mechanics were very much state-based. Sure, some loose parameters are governed by federal requirements, but those were never designed to be the bulk of the benefit in terms of lowering the rate of uninsured.

This is an incredibly cogent point.

[Adam Griffin]

A lot of things have changed since 2000, particularly the cost of delivering healthcare. It's much more expensive now than it was then, and as we saw in Vermont, not even the most liberal states are willing to take on the burden of single payer.

Which is why it's more important than ever that it be implemented: the primary justification for doing so is a reduction in cost. It was 13% in 2000; it's 17.5% today.

Furthermore, individual states can't reasonably implement affordable universal health care for the same reason that individual states can't reasonably implement effective gun control measures. Only when it's the law of the land within 100% of our sovereign borders can you forcibly restrict access (in the case of guns) or forcibly lower costs (in the case of healthcare) and make it feasible.

[Marokai Backbeat]

“I believe that by the year 2000 we will have a single payer system. I don’t think it’s — I don’t even think it’s a close call politically. I think the momentum for a single payer system will sweep the country.”  - Hillary Clinton

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2014/december/hillary-clinton-1994-statement-on-single-payer

Also reminder that in 2008 she went on some rambling faux-offended screed about Obama that included lines like "Since when do Democrats attack each other on universal healthcare!?"

Since now, apparently.

[Lief 🗽]

“I believe that by the year 2000 we will have a single payer system. I don’t think it’s — I don’t even think it’s a close call politically. I think the momentum for a single payer system will sweep the country.”  - Hillary Clinton

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2014/december/hillary-clinton-1994-statement-on-single-payer

Also reminder that in 2008 she went on some rambling faux-offended screed about Obama that included lines like "Since when do Democrats attack each other on universal healthcare!?"

Since now, apparently.

Huh? She's not attacking Sanders on universal healthcare. She just disagrees with him on how to achieve universal healthcare.

[Averroës Nix]

Access to insurance, whether public or private, is not access to healthcare. Neither candidate has a plan with a meaningful guarantee of care for all.  That would be a better line of attack than whatever this is supposed to be.