I guess they must think that's a bad thing?

It took me a while to figure it out yesterday but the general consensus out there is that this NYT article was intended as a criticism of single-payer health care. It's confusing because, of course, we ought to guarantee health care to every person as a basic human right. Only a monster would think otherwise.  All they're really pointing out here is doing that will be hard for us because there is so much wealth tied up in.. not doing it.

But doing away with an entire industry would also be profoundly disruptive. The private health insurance business employs at least a half a million people, covers about 250 million Americans, and generates roughly a trillion dollars in revenues. Its companies’ stocks are a staple of the mutual funds that make up millions of Americans’ retirement savings.

Such a change would shake the entire health care system, which makes up a fifth of the United States economy, as hospitals, doctors, nursing homes and pharmaceutical companies would have to adapt to a new set of rules. Most Americans would have a new insurer — the federal government — and many would find the health insurance stocks in their retirement portfolios much less valuable.

And, okay, that's a fair point. Single-payer healthcare (currently branded as "Medicare For All") is a revolutionary project in scope.  It is a call to break up entrenched institutions controlling vast stores of wealth and power.   The CEO of United Healthcare makes 298 times as much per year as its median employee salary. That sounds like an industry in profound need of disruption. But NYT is saying that like it would be a bad thing. 


It's true that fulfilling this moral imperative to free people from the fear and debt machine that is private health insurance, not to mention save hundreds of thousands of lives in the process is going to be a heavy lift. It's such a heavy lift, in fact, that Hillary Clinton's admonition that it was "never ever" going to happen, as cynical and hopeless as it sounds, is still the most sober assessment.  That's no reason not to try, of course. It's just that doing the right thing in politics almost always means failure and Hillary has had a very long and successful career in politics.  

She's mostly out of the way for now but that doesn't mean there aren't other successful Democrats on hand to waver on Medicare for All and whittle away its purpose.  

House Democrats plan to unveil health-care legislation on March 26 aimed at lowering costs and protecting people with pre-existing conditions, according to an advisory from the office of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The bill, broadly timed to coincide with the 9th anniversary this weekend of Obamacare being signed into law, would “reverse the Trump administration’s health-care sabotage, and take new measures to lower health premiums and out-of-pocket costs for families,” according to the statement.

The measure is set to be proposed as more than 100 Democrats in the House back a “Medicare for All” bill introduced in February by Progressive Caucus co-chair Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington state. The legislation, which right now has no chance of becoming law in a divided Congress, would create a universal, single-payer health program. Pelosi and a number of party moderates have resisted the idea.

Strictly speaking, this proposal to patch up some of the holes the Republicans have blown in Obamacare in recent years doesn't have to be at cross purposes with the larger project of passing single-payer. Not immediately, anyway.  Eventually the latter measure should render the former moot, though. So it's fair to assume that Democrats who are not among the 100 cosponsors of Jaypal's bill but do support more insurance-friendly bill's like what Pelosi is introducing tomorrow are making an explicit choice to support the industry over the needs of patients.

Cedric Richmond is the only Democratic member of the Louisiana congressional delegation. Which side is he on?