People with health insurance may now represent the majority of debtors American hospitals struggle to collect from, according to medical billing analysts.
This marks a sea change from just a few years ago, when people with health insurance represented only about one in 10 bills hospitals considered “bad debt”, analysts said.
“We always used to consider bad debt, especially bad debt write-offs from a hospital perspective, those [patients] that have the ability to pay but don’t,” said Colleen Hall, senior vice-president for Kodiak Solutions, a billing, accounting and consulting firm that works closely with hospitals and performed the analysis.
“Now, it’s not as if these patients across the board are even able to pay, because [out-of-pocket costs are] such an astronomical amount related to what their general income might be.”
My understanding was that the plan was to baby step it in.
Start with getting everyone insured, then move on to patching things until the insurers are not part of it at all anymore, and it’s just the medicare paying for it all, and being able to negotiate prices, and directly hire doctors themselves and buy out hospitals. The end goal would be for healthcare to become a service like the post office, with every address serviced regardless of the cost.
That was the dream rather.
Democrats had about 90 days in 2009 to get it done, not knowing that it would just be 90 days.
That was the last Democratic super-majority, republicans then went hard into State legislatures in order to gerrymander the US so that a Democratic super majority of both houses could never happen again.
They also went hard on the racism, because the southern strategy worked the first time.
I get that you are making these points in good faith, but its really not our job to make excuses for the inability of democrats to get the work they are elected to do, done. They can’t keep getting apologized for on their own behalf. If these are the excuses they want to use, they need to be the ones to make them, because even these excuses demand further accountability.
Republican obstruction and wanton destruction is responsible for the lack of progress. Refusing Medicaid expansions and then overturning the individual mandate is what gutted the plan.
And sure you could jump right into single payer without any incremental change. But you’re going to put the 400,000 Americans currently working in the health insurance industry out of work, if you do that. Which is not a small consideration. (That’s per a CBO analysis of the feasibility of single payer, which does conclude it would save money, but it will require a massive work transition.)
https://www.healthaffairs.org/content/forefront/congressional-budget-office-scores-medicare-for-all-universal-coverage-less-spending
The broader point that I’m making is that incrementalism as a philosophy has resulted in us going backwards. The acceptance of it as a viable strategy when it consistently fails to yield results is a serious problem.
A majority of successful social programs in the US did so in broad sweeping reforms that dramatically changed the way people interacted with systems.
Arguing that 400k jobs in an industry that is basically parasitic to the process seems Stockholm syndrome ludicrous, and yet unsurprising, because this is about the best that branded, ‘Democrat with a capital D’ , Democrats seem to be able to come up with.
Incrementalism sounds great on paper, it fails for two primary reasons. The first is the opponents to a program have to do far less to dismantle it, so its easy to work against. The second is that it fails to create its own proof points for why something was necessary in the first place. Obamacare is a great example of this second kind of failure. We’re still utterly fucked in terms of healthcare. Most people are more fucked than they’ve ever been in terms of healthcare. We’re worse off than we were because at least in 2008, although I didn’t have healthcare, I wasn’t paying several hundred dollars a month to basically not have healthcare. Incrementalism fails to make enough of a difference in peoples lives to show them that a given project is worth investing in.
Several states have had their election laws ruled unconstitutional due to partisan gerrymandering. Republicans in several states said to the courts, “fuck you, we’re using the unconstitutional maps”. If those maps had been thrown out, 2022 would have seen the Democrats take the House.
Instead we had to sit and watch as Republicans have fucked around and hindered any attempts at actually running a functional government.
Theres always an excuse.
Somehow the Republicans are the most capable, strategic, smart, and competent players to be able to accomplish these goals.
Meanwhile Democratic strategy amounts to:
Pretending that your current and previously elected Democratic officials aren’t a major reason why things are the way that they are is to also give Republicans credit for being masters of strategy and craft.
Neither of those things is true.
Direct action will only spark a civil war.
One is likely already coming, but the side that kicks it off will be seen as the aggressor, and will likely receive less aid from the military. And whoever holds the military will be the winner.
Trump already sits in an odd place with the military. He’s liked far more than he should be among the rank and file, but also hated by the officers.
Don’t get me wrong, a lot of the rank and file hate Trump as well. Dude has earned that hate. The fucker skipped the 100 anniversary of Armistice Day because of a light rain.
Anyway, all we can do is follow the rule of law as meticulously as possible. That means a bunch of legal wrangling, and getting people to actually vote.
Here’s the thing, we don’t have to do it forever, the republican party is disintegrating. The in-fighting and lack of anything approaching an idea, that shit, wears on their base.
If Trump loses again, the republican party will not survive it.
That’s not to say that conservatism will die. Far from it, but the current batch of them will have to scramble to reinvent themselves, and during that scramble, the left will actually be able to get shit done. probably.
This statement directly contradicts almost all of the progress that has been made in this country since its foundation.
Practically nothing has come as a result of “voting correctly” and almost everything we have can be attributed directly to direct action campaigns.
The 8 hour work day, then end of slavery, womens right to vote, social welfare programs, gay rights, rights for blacks in the south.
All a result of direct action. If anything the “incrementalism” has proved to be the exact opposite.
I’m sorry, I meant direct action by say, Biden.
If the Democrats were to follow the Republican playbook, and start fighting dirty.
That would kick off the civil war, and in the bloodiest way possible. But make no mistake, the Republicans will try to start the war anyway. When they do it, the military will almost certainly not be on their side.
That’s why Tuberville was blocking military promotions. The only reason that shit stopped was because Trump is mostl likely not going to win again. Trump is too far gone into his own toxic bullshit. He has die hard fans, but has been scaring away the more moderate side of the republican party.
Thank you for the clarification. I also agree with your third point, and to some extent, this might be the Dems saving grace, being that the Republicans cant seem to protect themselves from themselves.
The Democrats + Independents had this “super majority” for a very small amount of time and that’s the only reason we even got ACA.
Americas problem is our democracy isn’t representative and too many people who should be voting choose not to.
I can blame Obama and Dems for a lot but not this and I also can’t discount all the good they’ve done.
You want better things get your friends, family, acquaintances, and neighbors to vote. Go canvas. Get an actual supermajority that stays around for at least a few years because that’s what it now takes in our polarized country.