Piff Perkins
Veteran
I'm all familiar with Democratic campaign slogans and promises regarding this issue. The fact is that a true legitimate expansion should have been sought from the start, not negotiated off the table in private in negotiations with private insurance companies.
People were asking for Medicaid expansion for decades. None of it has happened on anywhere near a scale that benefits most of the working class in this country. You know, the labor that funds the pockets of the government, makes the rich richer, and helps subsidized the poor. Much like education, they are the ones being royally fukked here.
"Setting the stage", "paving the path", blah blah. These are not absolutes. Like I previously mentioned, the country heard these same things 50 years ago. The Democratic Party on a Federal Level has shown time and time again that they are slave to corporate interests and this gives you faith that they will fight to make social progress on their own big business bill? I don't even know what to say to that line of thinking.
At the end of the day it was either kill the public option or no bill. I'd rather have 20mil people with healthcare under the law than 20mil without healthcare/no law. Nothing is perfect in Washington.
You're right, they've been "setting the stage" for decades. But there's no question we're closer now than ever, thanks to ACA. In many ways the law is a corporate giveaway but it's also a blatant trojan horse for single payer. The infrastructure has never been in place for single payer or a public option until now.
The goal now is to replace corporate democrats. The current republican party is fukked long term imo, I'm not worried about them. The danger is the corporate democrats, who are the ones who fought the public option and Medicare-for-all in 2009. Thankfully the senate has more outright liberals than it has had in quite some time, led by Elizabeth Warren. We need more. I don't care who the president is as long as he or she signs good, liberal legislation. And the best way to ensure that is to pay more attention to who you're sending to Washington...
No, I think given the choice between Obamacare and a Single payer system, the single payer is the way to go...
