So, ok, it's the month for universal health care plans. Hacker presented one for the EPI last week. I'm not going to go into it in great detail, because there's no point - it sets up public/private competition, with private companies having to at least have plans which give as good coverage as the government's.

If it doesn't include the entire age group, then what will happen is cherry picking by the private companies. Keeping underwriting involved and splitting up the pool for actuarial purposes, will continue to keep costs high, and will stop the US from getting most of the economic benefits of properly done universal care. The government will not necessarily win the competition , because the government won't underwrite, and the private companies will - so the government will be stuck with the sicker people, by far and will thus have higher costs even if it manages to have lower administrative costs.

I don't understand the urge here to complicate things. I don't understand why all these pre-compromised plans are coming out. Medicare-for-all is the best plan currently suggested, by far. To hell with the private insurance companies - their inclusion in any way except for top up/additional insurance, is deadly to actually achieving the benefits of universal healthcare.

The US is BROKE (I don't just mean the government, I mean Americans). You need the 1/3 savings. You need them badly. Any plan that does not achieve them, and any plan that allows any underwriting to continue, at all, for basic insurance, will not achieve them - is a bad plan. You cannot afford to spend billions giving a subsidy to the health insurance companies - the money isn't there anymore and if you do it, it's coming directly out of something else important.

All of these plans, except Medicare-for-all, are pre-compromised.

Remember, when Medicare came out they thought it would quickly be expanded to everyone. It never was. Go for the gold - go for the whole shebang - because it may be a generation befoe you get another shot. Once a system like Hacke'rs or Wyden's is in, it'll take 10 or 15 years for it to be seen to have been given a "fair shake". That's a long time if you're living through them, and at the end of that time there's no guarantee the political situation will be good for a better, more progressive or liberal plan.

There is a strong desire for universal healthcare. Everyone knows what Medicare is. It is popular. It is the easiest thing to sell to the public - it cannot be demonized the way that Hilary's plan was or any other new plan can be. The only industries strongly against Medicare-for-all is the insurance industry and maybe Pharma - every other business in America would benefit.

And if the Republicans want to vote against it, hell if some blue dogs want to vote against it, let'em. And then in 2008 you run issue ads in their districts hammering them for caring more about insruance company profits than their constitutents. No one, and I mean no one, likes insurance companies. Tie any Rep or Senator who votes against Medicare-for-all to the insurance companies like a mafia hit to concrete, and toss them in the bay.

Note: Matt Stoller discusses the politics of this at MyDD.