Convince me that Kamala Harries will be a great president

[Josie]

Not "Well, she'll certainly be better than Trump!"

Tell me what she believes and how she'll govern that will be a positive for the country.

 

[bongsaway]

Not "Well, she'll certainly be better than Trump!"

Tell me what she believes and how she'll govern that will be a positive for the country.

I'll try to make it easier for both of us. Don't vote for her.

 

[Barnacle]

Not "Well, she'll certainly be better than Trump!"

Tell me what she believes and how she'll govern that will be a positive for the country.

Kamala is not running for president ... not yet anyway. Hence her non-existent platform (except for being a Bernie copycat).

She is "running" to fill her financial war chest for a later time.

Liberals will be hard-pressed to give you a reasonable answer ... (grin)

 

[Hawkeye10]

Paglia noticed her, thats a good sign:

I had high hopes for Kamala Harris, but she missed a huge opportunity to play a moderating, statesmanlike role and has already imprinted an image of herself as a ruthless inquisitor that will make it hard for her to pull voters across party lines.

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/12/camille-paglia-hillary-wants-trump-to-win-again/

 

[Mr Person]

If she gets her way, she'll send the deficit even further through the roof. That is, unless she changes her plan or WaPo got it wrong.


She wants to move to single-payer (apparently banning private insurance, which doesn't really seem to make sense to me unless perhaps the worry is some complex impact on the rates government can negotiate with health care providers), but she does not want to raise taxes to pay for it. No, she wants to hand out more tax credits. Idiotic.

Yeah, a properly run single-payer system saves money overall, but that's because even though you're paying a lot more in taxes, you're paying a whole lot more less to insurers. You still need to raise the damn taxes, even if it's more efficient. I can't believe it would be so efficient as to cover all the new spending. I admit I haven't really gone digging for economic analyses (that is, by actual Ph.D economists who work in that field) of whether the plan is workable.



No thanks. I want someone closer to the center than her. Someone who the far left can tolerate and the center-left will like.

 

[noonereal]

Not "Well, she'll certainly be better than Trump!"

Tell me what she believes and how she'll govern that will be a positive for the country.

I vote for anyone but TRump.

I still can't believe how he fooled me into thinking he was a reasoned adult alternative to the DC swamp creature.

 

[poweRob]

Kamala is not running for president ... not yet anyway. Hence her non-existent platform (except for being a Bernie copycat).

She is "running" to fill her financial war chest for a later time.

Liberals will be hard-pressed to give you a reasonable answer ... (grin)

Your reason was good enough if she's like Bernie.

 

[Jetboogieman]

If she gets her way, she'll send the deficit even further through the roof. That is, unless she changes her plan or WaPo got it wrong.


She wants to move to single-payer (apparently banning private insurance, which doesn't really seem to make sense to me unless perhaps the worry is some complex impact on the rates government can negotiate with health care providers), but she does not want to raise taxes to pay for it. No, she wants to hand out more tax credits. Idiotic.

Yeah, a properly run single-payer system saves money overall, but that's because even though you're paying a lot more in taxes, you're paying a whole lot more less to insurers. You still need to raise the damn taxes, even if it's more efficient. I can't believe it would be so efficient as to cover all the new spending. I admit I haven't really gone digging for economic analyses (that is, by actual Ph.D economists who work in that field) of whether the plan is workable.



No thanks. I want someone closer to the center than her. Someone who the far left can tolerate and the center-left will like.

Well the thing is, UHC is clearly superior, but I have said in the past, I do not know how you can retroactively fix the US system to be one, it just doesn't seem possible because of the way its structured between all the different states, insurance providers, networks, it just doesn't seem feasible.

Unless you nationalized the entire industry, from top to bottom, which is not possible, would never fly, I just don't see how you can do it, because how else are you also supposed to fix the entire cost structure without killing every point of service provider?

 

[btthegreat]

There is a lengthy process by which we learn the strengths, weaknesses, and views of these candidates. It takes the better part of a year and we have not even gotten to the starting gate Only a fool decides to jump in this early unless they have a thorough understanding of her actual record in office and have had a prior opportunity to vet her. I am no fool. I will take my time before I opine on any candidate other than Clinton, Biden, or Sanders because they have already been vetted, watched, and monitored.

If she is still hanging around after new Hampshire, I will start to research her and her opponents. After Super Tuesday, I will do so in earnest. Waste of my time any earlier.

 

[pragmatic]

I'll try to make it easier for both of us. Don't vote for her.

Sweet. See a great potential campaign slogan here.

"If you have any questions...Don't vote for me!!"


I like it. KAMALA for 2020!!

 

[JMR]

Not "Well, she'll certainly be better than Trump!"

Tell me what she believes and how she'll govern that will be a positive for the country.

Since she's about 7 days into her candidacy, I think I will reserve judgement for a bit. Do you have enough evidence at this time to discount her?

 

[Amelia]

Not "Well, she'll certainly be better than Trump!"

Tell me what she believes and how she'll govern that will be a positive for the country.

Why? Is there a greater than 2% chance that you'd vote for someone who has a realistic chance of winning the Democratic nomination?

 

[poweRob]

If she gets her way, she'll send the deficit even further through the roof. That is, unless she changes her plan or WaPo got it wrong.


She wants to move to single-payer (apparently banning private insurance, which doesn't really seem to make sense to me unless perhaps the worry is some complex impact on the rates government can negotiate with health care providers), but she does not want to raise taxes to pay for it. No, she wants to hand out more tax credits. Idiotic.

Yeah, a properly run single-payer system saves money overall, but that's because even though you're paying a lot more in taxes, you're paying a whole lot more less to insurers. You still need to raise the damn taxes, even if it's more efficient. I can't believe it would be so efficient as to cover all the new spending. I admit I haven't really gone digging for economic analyses (that is, by actual Ph.D economists who work in that field) of whether the plan is workable.

No thanks. I want someone closer to the center than her. Someone who the far left can tolerate and the center-left will like.

If she's for that tax credit crap I'm not on board with her.

 

[Mr Person]

Well the thing is, UHC is clearly superior, but I have said in the past, I do not know how you can retroactively fix the US system to be one, it just doesn't seem possible because of the way its structured between all the different states, insurance providers, networks, it just doesn't seem feasible.

Unless you nationalized the entire industry, from top to bottom, which is not possible, would never fly, I just don't see how you can do it, because how else are you also supposed to fix the entire cost structure without killing every point of service provider?

I don't think I follow. We already do this for a good number of patients through Medicare. The main change is just that government is negotiating prices with providers and paying them for care. Obviously, they'd have to pay enough for providers to exist. I don't think it requires nationalizing the medical profession, if that's what you meant.

Bear in mind, Obamacare is fine in terms of the power to do it, as has ruled SCOTUS. I don't remember if an argument was made that it wasn't allowable under the Supremacy Clause, but I have to imagine it would be made if none of the anti-Obamacare plaintiffs made it and I would have heard about it at some point. And Obamacare overrode various state regulations on insurance. So passing legislation that simply overrode all inconsistent state laws shouldn't be an issue.


Maybe I'm woefully ignorant, but I can't believe the countries that currently have UHC had, in the past, gone from a no healthcare system straight to UHC. If they did, well, good for them and bad on me. But either way, we do have a framework for how to do it.



Have I misunderstood you?

 

[pragmatic]

I vote for anyone but TRump.

I still can't believe how he fooled me into thinking he was a reasoned adult alternative to the DC swamp creature.

A lot of moderate conservatives didn't vote for Trump in 2016. <raises hand>

And most won't vote for him again. (In an ideal world The Donald would/will get primaried out of the GOP nomination.)


Personal opinion is that if Trump is the nominee then Democrats will have a pretty easy time of it in the 2020 General Election. Assuming they aren't dumb enough to nominate anyone as polarizing/dislikable as Hillary.

 

[ThoughtEx.]

Well the thing is, UHC is clearly superior, but I have said in the past, I do not know how you can retroactively fix the US system to be one, it just doesn't seem possible because of the way its structured between all the different states, insurance providers, networks, it just doesn't seem feasible.

Unless you nationalized the entire industry, from top to bottom, which is not possible, would never fly, I just don't see how you can do it, because how else are you also supposed to fix the entire cost structure without killing every point of service provider?

Medicare doesn't nationalize service providers, and sets the prices it will pay based on regional pricing. Which Cartels have price fixed way, way up.

It's actually quite a simple fix, and it involves the VA. It's common knowledge that we need more VA hospitals as is to meet current Veteran demand. So build them. And instead of Medicare using a regional average cost, they use the Cost of the VA in that area. That VA has to pay their doctors, pay for durable medical equipment, everything a hospital has to do, but as efficiently as possible with no profit motive. That will give us a real look at what healthcare costs.

Once we have a look at the real cost nationwide. We expand medicare to everyone. And let insurance companies make their money off supplements.

Medicare that everyone gets for free is called Part A. Part B, the 80/20 coverage, usually comes in at around 120 bucks a month. That would go down as healthy people got onto Part B. Right now it's just people over 65, and those younger people that qualify because of disability. People usually get a supplement for their part B, to cover that 20 percent.

This would hurt the profit margins of an industry that rakes in more than Oil and Tobacco combined while operating as non profits. But it wouldn't put them out of business, hinder their expansion, or require them to be nationalized. While still allowing insurance companies a way to market plans.

So in short, if we fix the VA, and have Medicare base their prices on what it costs the VA to operate, and give everyone Medicare Part A, with an option for Part B, it will work just fine.

 

[Crosscheck]

A lot of moderate conservatives didn't vote for Trump in 2016. <raises hand>

And most won't vote for him again. (In an ideal world The Donald would/will get primaried out of the GOP nomination.)


Personal opinion is that if Trump is the nominee then Democrats will have a pretty easy time of it in the 2020 General Election. Assuming they aren't dumb enough to nominate anyone as polarizing/dislikable as Hillary.

The thought of Trump vs Hillary again causes me to puke in the back of my mouth.

Could the American voters be that dumb? At that point Putin should just come over and take over responsibility of running this country.

 

[Jetboogieman]

I don't think I follow. We already do this for a good number of patients through Medicare. The main change is just that government is negotiating prices with providers and paying them for care. Obviously, they'd have to pay enough for providers to exist. I don't think it requires nationalizing the medical profession, if that's what you meant.

Bear in mind, Obamacare is fine in terms of the power to do it, as has ruled SCOTUS. I don't remember if an argument was made that it wasn't allowable under the Supremacy Clause, but I have to imagine it would be made if none of the anti-Obamacare plaintiffs made it and I would have heard about it at some point. And Obamacare overrode various state regulations on insurance. So passing legislation that simply overrode all inconsistent state laws shouldn't be an issue.

Maybe I'm woefully ignorant, but I can't believe the countries that currently have UHC had, in the past, gone from a no healthcare system straight to UHC. If they did, well, good for them and bad on me. But either way, we do have a framework for how to do it.

Have I misunderstood you?

I started to type something out, and I just actually don't think I Have the knowledge base to accurately convey what I'm trying to say.

In a nutshell, with how complicated the US system is and how varying price structures can be, even from hospital to hospital, let alone State to State, I just don't see how you can create a system that can encompass it nationwide and make it work, as you've pointed out though, not without completely blowing up the deficit at least.

A lot of nations in the 20th century didn't have a healthcare industry persay, you'd kind of have doctors who had an office in a town kind of thing, not sure exactly how hospitals worked but they were kind of starting from scratch to create national or provincial healthcare systems.

 

[Mr Person]

If she's for that tax credit crap I'm not on board with her.

It's weird. It's like she doesn't want to have people accuse her of pushing tax cuts (I assume she's said something about Trump's tax cuts. I haven't paid her much attention).

So, you get this:

The latest volley in the competition is the LIFT the Middle Class Act from Harris. As the Atlantic’s Annie Lowrey explains, the bill would offer a sizable cash payment to most middle-class households. Single people would get $250 per month or $3,000 a year, married couples would get $500 per month or $6,000 a year, and it would phase out for singles without kids making $50,000 or more, and for married couples or single people with kids making $100,000 or more. It costs about $200 billion in the first year or $2 trillion over 10, roughly in the range of the price tag for the 2017 tax cuts.

Like a somewhat similar bill from Rep. Ro Khanna and Sen. Sherrod Brown last year, you can think of Harris’s plan as a particularly massive expansion of the earned income tax credit, so that the solidly middle-class benefit too, not just the working poor. And instead of loading up benefits at tax time, people could get them as a monthly check in the mail. It’s a big expansion of the safety net. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that it would lift 9 million people out of poverty. And, not for nothing, but it’s arguably the closest thing that any 2020 contender has proposed to a universal basic income, an idea that is exactly what it sounds like: a guaranteed cash benefit to every American. Harris’s office claims 80 million total Americans would benefit in some way. That’s not everyone, as under a true UBI, but it’s a big step.


https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/10/19/17995374/kamala-harris-lift-act-basic-income-cash-eitc

I sort of get the difference: with tax cuts, the benefit is per-quarter (assuming you're doing your taxes properly). This is monthly. Doesn't change the fact that it's an unfunded handout. I want to see us pay for what we get, and then we can talk about cutting spending. What we're doing now is stupid, what she wants us to do is completely unsustainable. We'll hit rock bottom way faster that way.



Honestly, I would want to see the proper numbers on doing something like getting rid of all federal welfare-type safety net programs (ie, help with things that cost money), and then paying a fair guaranteed basic income to them. This is sort of like that, except it's just.....give them more money.

And I want to respond something at the end of the quote, which struck me as odd. That statement about benefiting 80 million people, whereas "UBI" would benefit everyone. As far as I've referred guaranteed basic income, I've referred to that income for those genuinely in need. The idea of paying everyone is ridiculous and also unworkable, because how the hell are you paying for it? Huge tax increases on everyone, then you give a huge chunk of it back? Donald Trump would get paid the type of UBI the article refers to. What? Why?

 

[Mr Person]

I started to type something out, and I just actually don't think I Have the knowledge base to accurately convey what I'm trying to say.

In a nutshell, with how complicated the US system is and how varying price structures can be, even from hospital to hospital, let alone State to State, I just don't see how you can create a system that can encompass it nationwide and make it work, as you've pointed out though, not without completely blowing up the deficit at least.

A lot of nations in the 20th century didn't have a healthcare industry persay, you'd kind of have doctors who had an office in a town kind of thing, not sure exactly how hospitals worked but they were kind of starting from scratch to create national or provincial healthcare systems.

Well, I'm not so skeptical. My main worry is that the insane political atmosphere ****s up some eventual attempt to do this, and then we just swim in **** for another twenty years as people flail around arguing about who caused the problem without just sitting down and dealing with it like rational adults.

I suppose I ought to go do a little research and make sure I'm wrong in assuming that at least some of the UHC countries switched from private insurance to UHC, thereby supplying a partially applicable model.

 

[Grokmaster]

 

[Greenbeard]

It's actually quite a simple fix, and it involves the VA. It's common knowledge that we need more VA hospitals as is to meet current Veteran demand. So build them. And instead of Medicare using a regional average cost, they use the Cost of the VA in that area. That VA has to pay their doctors, pay for durable medical equipment, everything a hospital has to do, but as efficiently as possible with no profit motive. That will give us a real look at what healthcare costs.

Build how many? And with what operating budget? Given the way they're funded, you have to decide how much those facilities should cost first, that's not a universal truth that emerges later.

 

[noonereal]

A lot of moderate conservatives didn't vote for Trump in 2016. <raises hand>

And most won't vote for him again. (In an ideal world The Donald would/will get primaried out of the GOP nomination.)


Personal opinion is that if Trump is the nominee then Democrats will have a pretty easy time of it in the 2020 General Election. Assuming they aren't dumb enough to nominate anyone as polarizing/dislikable as Hillary.

A split in the Democratic party like this guy from Starbucks wants to do will give TRump 4 more years.

 

[roughdraft274]

Not "Well, she'll certainly be better than Trump!"

Tell me what she believes and how she'll govern that will be a positive for the country.

Single payer would be a great benefit to the country.

 

[pragmatic]

A split in the Democratic party like this guy from Starbucks wants to do will give TRump 4 more years.

Very possible.

For that reason i think it is very unlikely the Starbucks guy will pursue any lasting campaign. The guy is smart enough to know that he would wear that badge of shame for the rest of his life.