Is Tuition-free College or Single-payer Healthcare better for Dems to focus on?

[Bojack Horseman]

I'm weary of another 2009 health care summer where people would be convinced the Democrats are trying to kill their grandparents if we try to do universal health care and more major Congressional losses.

Yes, I'm sure that whoever the Democratic President after 2020 is will miraculously avoid midterm losses if they don't go forward with single-payer.

I'm pretty sure that if not for health care, we would have only lost maybe 20 seats instead of 63 in 2010 and thus kept the House.

[Dr Oz Lost Party!]

To be honest, both should be the top priorities. They need single payer to get the rust belt back and they need tuition to appeal to the younger generation.

[publicunofficial]

I'm weary of another 2009 health care summer where people would be convinced the Democrats are trying to kill their grandparents if we try to do universal health care and more major Congressional losses.

Yes, I'm sure that whoever the Democratic President after 2020 is will miraculously avoid midterm losses if they don't go forward with single-payer.

I'm pretty sure that if not for health care, we would have only lost maybe 20 seats instead of 63 in 2010 and thus kept the House.

So what should Obama have done with his majority in Congress?

[UncleSam]

Definitely single-payer healthcare. Free college is a loser for one simple readon: the primary beneficiaries cannot vote. It sounds dumb and biased but people vote in their own self interest, so healthcare is clearly the winner here.

I would caution the assumption that health insurance = health care, however. Many, many people cannot afford healthcare even with 'insurance', as the deductibles and premiums are so high that in many cases the responsible thing to do is to not get health insurance.

The problem with healthcare is one of cost, and that is what Dems should pitch. The free market will do very little to regulate the cost of medical care because they have little leverage over hospitals and physicians in negotiations due to the Medicaid system. If we got Medicare for all, we could couple that with a limit on costs tied to global procedure costs that could tackle the heart of the problem and this actually potentially decrease taxes in comparison to the failures of ObamaCare.

[AN63093]

From a strategic standpoint, probably college.

Those most in need for health care are the elderly, who both have Medicare and also tend to vote GOP.  The poor, to the extent they vote at all, may be Medicaid eligible.  So what core demographic do the Dems appeal to by pushing universal health care?

Maybe middle-class people in their 30s who don't have insurance through their employer and are having trouble affording Obamacare premiums?  I would suspect that a more important issue to these people, particularly the ones that are likely to go out and vote, is college... since this is the group most likely to be burdened by student loan debt.  I think this is an issue that could excite this element of the base much more than health care does.  For this group, college debt is something they are actually dealing with in the here and now, where health care is something more nebulous that they may deal with at some point in the future (the fact that many people are choosing to just pay the tax penalty instead of signing up for Obamacare is proof of this).

Additionally, the issue has the advantage of not having a clear opposition group, in the way that health care does with the insurance industry.  So there is less chance that politicians get scared of biting the hand that feeds them.  Sure, maybe some university administrators would scoff at the idea, but it'd be hard for them to really push it without appearing to be out of touch and two-faced with student activists.. and they're more likely to be sensitive to those groups than say, the health insurance industry is.

[TrumpBritt24]

Single Payer. Far more Americans are interested in the idea of Single Payer healthcare as compared to Tuition-free College. While both are valuable to the progressive cause, it's best to focus on the idea which could have the biggest potential umbrella to gather supporters, in my opinion.

[Santander]

As I have said numerous times before:

The four OECD countries with a higher percentage of college degree holders than the US are Canada, Japan, Israel and South Korea. All of them charge tuition fees at public colleges and none of them have student loan programs as expansive as the ones in the US. Abolishing tuition does not increase access or achievement, and only leads to "education inflation", excessive spending and high dropout rates.

Tuition-free college is a canard just as much as public option health insurance.

I will at least give single-payer socialized medicine credit for being a coherent way of organizing the healthcare system, unlike the anti-intellectual public option.

[mileslunn]

I would say neither, both seem like the type of issues that could scare away moderates.  While single payer health care and to a lesser extent free college may sound appealing, funding either will involve raising taxes and pretty much anything that involves raising taxes on the middle class is DOA.  I am not sure the argument your tax hike will be less than what you pay in insurance now will work.  Never mind even if you only ask the richest to pay more, the GOP will spin it as hitting all Americans not just the rich.  If you don't mention how it will be funded, the GOP will make a scare tactic.

Better to instead focus on improving and expanding Obamacare while for college having the government fund low income individuals who cannot afford to go there, but not for middle and upper income.

[darklordoftech]

If we can afford to keep raising the legal to age to drop out of high school, we can afford taxpayer-funded college. However, the thought of not being able to get healthcare scares me far more than the thought of having to drop out of college (in fact, I would drop out of college if my parents let me).

[Famous Mortimer]

Everyone needs healthcare to live.

College is basically worthless and making it free decreases its value even more.

[darklordoftech]

high school in America could (and should) be an experience where youth come out of it with some kind of tangible employment skill.

An "I followed the law" diploma won't impress anyone.

[publicunofficial]

I would say neither, both seem like the type of issues that could scare away moderates.  While single payer health care and to a lesser extent free college may sound appealing, funding either will involve raising taxes and pretty much anything that involves raising taxes on the middle class is DOA.  I am not sure the argument your tax hike will be less than what you pay in insurance now will work.  Never mind even if you only ask the richest to pay more, the GOP will spin it as hitting all Americans not just the rich.  If you don't mention how it will be funded, the GOP will make a scare tactic.

Better to instead focus on improving and expanding Obamacare while for college having the government fund low income individuals who cannot afford to go there, but not for middle and upper income.

The status quo is awesome, I agree. Very comfortable.

[RINO Tom]

Not sure it REALLY matters, as empty promises tend to excite voters ... but the healthcare one might be an even more exciting empty promise, so I'll go with that one.

[Santander]

Not sure it REALLY matters, as empty promises tend to excite voters ... but the healthcare one might be an even more exciting empty promise, so I'll go with that one.

Yes, people not dying in the streets is such an empty promise.

[RINO Tom]

Not sure it REALLY matters, as empty promises tend to excite voters ... but the healthcare one might be an even more exciting empty promise, so I'll go with that one.

Yes, people not dying in the streets is such an empty promise.

LOL, I know you fetishize the idea of giving moral-high-ground responses to my post (when you're in the mood to be a Democrat, of course ... gotta be the right day of the week!) and expose my evil Country Club Republican worldview to the world, but here's the bottom line, friend:

They aren't going to get it done, so yes, it is a very empty promise.

[ElectionsGuy]

They'd be smarter to do single-payer healthcare, that more broadly affects everyone. Focusing too much on free college would seem narrow and generate some generational divide along the lines of 'those entitled millenials' and the rest of it.

Both are disasters but yeah take the least bad option.

[Blackacre]

Neither.

I'm serious. Neither should be the main focus of the party. Free college is a losing issue electorally, and on healthcare, well, I'd rather not repeat the 2009-2010 debacle next time we get a trifecta. We should improve on the foundation laid in Obamacare, (or use that AmeriCare thing that Vox talks about sometimes) adding further medicaid expansions and the public option and other fixes, and move on to other issues.

If it were up to me, we'd focus on trust-busting and infrastructure. It's high time the nation took a serious look at high-speed rail. It would create jobs, be a spending of taxpayer money that taxpayers can easily see the benefits of, it would generate economic growth in the short and long term, and would possibly even stem the great urban-rural divides we have as a nation.

edit: I bring this up because I understand the reason behind this debate. The Democratic party 1. needs to make economic appeals and 2. needs to have big ideas to run on. Voters will not get excited by incremental change, and if we're not doing single-payer, it damn well better be because we're doing something else that's worth our time. This is the best answer to that dilemma that I can come up with aside from a massive overhaul of the criminal justice system, and even that doesn't satisfy criterion 1

[publicunofficial]

Neither.

I'm serious. Neither should be the main focus of the party. Free college is a losing issue electorally, and on healthcare, well, I'd rather not repeat the 2009-2010 debacle next time we get a trifecta. We should improve on the foundation laid in Obamacare, (or use that AmeriCare thing that Vox talks about sometimes) adding further medicaid expansions and the public option and other fixes, and move on to other issues.

If it were up to me, we'd focus on trust-busting and infrastructure. It's high time the nation took a serious look at high-speed rail. It would create jobs, be a spending of taxpayer money that taxpayers can easily see the benefits of, it would generate economic growth in the short and long term, and would possibly even stem the great urban-rural divides we have as a nation.

Are you Andrew Cuomo?

[Blackacre]

Neither.

I'm serious. Neither should be the main focus of the party. Free college is a losing issue electorally, and on healthcare, well, I'd rather not repeat the 2009-2010 debacle next time we get a trifecta. We should improve on the foundation laid in Obamacare, (or use that AmeriCare thing that Vox talks about sometimes) adding further medicaid expansions and the public option and other fixes, and move on to other issues.

If it were up to me, we'd focus on trust-busting and infrastructure. It's high time the nation took a serious look at high-speed rail. It would create jobs, be a spending of taxpayer money that taxpayers can easily see the benefits of, it would generate economic growth in the short and long term, and would possibly even stem the great urban-rural divides we have as a nation.

Are you Andrew Cuomo?

No, I am not Andrew Cuomo. Does Cuomo support high speed rail?

[TheLeftwardTide]

Tuition-free college would be much easier to do. Single-payer healthcare would be better, however.

Yep, single-payer. To everyone wanting to draw parallels between Obamacare, the reason that Obamacare was unpopular was because of the individual mandate.

The individual mandate was actually more-or-less the center-right alternative to the public option or single-payer healthcare, pushed by Nixon in the 70s and the Heritage Foundation in the 90s. It polled terribly. Don't get me wrong, Obamacare is definitely better than what we had before, but our healthcare system is still a joke.

Medicare-for-all is polling at 64% approval at the moment, having no such polling disadvantage. The difficulty in getting single-payer passed comes from turning a polling advantage into a political one. There are several problems with Medicare-for-all; a Medicare reform (an actual reform, not a right-wing budget-cut/privatization ploy) would have to be packaged with it.

Tuition-free college will have better and better political investments. As time goes on, non-educated jobs will become drastically more and more scarce because of automation, and the student loan problem will have been felt by more than just the younger generation, so it will soon be a very popular proposal.

[Technocracy Timmy]

Free college isn't something that resonates with a lot of working class people the way it does with young people.

Investing in skills to help retool our workforce with better community college and technical school grants is an easier sell. I'd rather pay for that than some ditzy 100,000 philosophy major who ends up working at Starbucks afterwards.

[choclatechip45]

Tuition-free college would be much easier to do. Single-payer healthcare would be better, however.

Yep, single-payer. To everyone wanting to draw parallels between Obamacare, the reason that Obamacare was unpopular was because of the individual mandate.

The individual mandate was actually more-or-less the center-right alternative to the public option or single-payer healthcare, pushed by Nixon in the 70s and the Heritage Foundation in the 90s. It polled terribly. Don't get me wrong, Obamacare is definitely better than what we had before, but our healthcare system is still a joke.

Medicare-for-all is polling at 64% approval at the moment, having no such polling disadvantage. The difficulty in getting single-payer passed comes from turning a polling advantage into a political one. There are several problems with Medicare-for-all; a Medicare reform (an actual reform, not a right-wing budget-cut/privatization ploy) would have to be packaged with it.

Tuition-free college will have better and better political investments. As time goes on, non-educated jobs will become drastically more and more scarce because of automation, and the student loan problem will have been felt by more than just the younger generation, so it will soon be a very popular proposal.

I think forcing people to buy healthcare from the government and having people give up their employers plan will be pretty unpopular. I believe health care is a right, but a lot of people don't. It's insane, but people want the choice to buy sh**tty health care insurance. I find it interesting that everyone wants to repeat the same mistakes the democrats passing the ACA and the republicans have made this year and currently making. I think the best option right now is to push for a public option.

[The_Texas_Libertarian]

Healthcare would be easier.  The backlash to a tuition-free University proposal would fierce.  People aren't going to want to pay for some stuck up know it all teenager to get a degree in check your privilege studies or social justice warrior gender studies.

[Adam Griffin]

Tuition-free college is "better" in the sense that it won't sink Democratic fortunes for a generation when tens of millions of people suddenly are paying thousands of dollars more for healthcare each year through taxes than they were paying prior.

Single-payer is "better" in the sense that it would have positives that impact every American (roughly two-thirds of Millennials 25-34 are not college graduates, and making it free likely wouldn't change that overall figure - even if it did, it wouldn't necessarily produce massive gains for those who'd benefit).

[Blue3]

Thoughts now?