It seems that so much of the rest of the countries of the world have learned that government by its fundamental nature must be a socially responsible institution. Yeah, we have “We the people…” at the beginning of our constitution, but lately we seem to be ignorant of what that means. Since social responsibility is one of my bedrock beliefs, I have been studying the Democratic field of presidential candidates to find those that have a socially responsible government as a core of their beliefs. I think I have found the candidate who epitomizes that arena.
I must admit that I have been following Elizabeth Warren for a number of years now, and she has been totally consistent in her belief that “We, The People” is what makes America what it is, or at least has been until recently. She has not budged one iota from her “Power to the people” approach to governing. For that reason I have contributed to her campaign recently and plan to continue doing that as long as he is a viable candidate.
I really thought that she, instead of Hillary, should have been the 2016 Democratic candidate. If she had I am convinced she would now be president and the country would be much different from what it is now. I will admit that some of her views I disagree with. One of those is that she is too anti-business for my fiscally conservative mind. Just because a company has managed to exceed customer expectations and gotten a large market share is no reason to split them up. Amazon, who is on her hit list has gotten where they are by offering prices and services that far exceed their competitors. We don’t need to be breaking up companies simply because the vastly exceed customer expectations!
Another area is immediately eliminating private insurance and making Medicare For All in its place. That process needs to start with Medicare competing in the healthcare field to prove that it is the only way to efficiently provide health services. That may take a few years, but we have been waiting for it for so long that a few more years won’t matter. I know she is a pragmatist, so I view her “Medicare for All” to be an end goal and not a starting point. Once she gets beyond the party campaigns I’m sure she will talk more about that.
I am also convinced that when some level of sanity returns to the congressional branch, they will reign in some of her more radical visions. I suspect that in 2021 both the presidency and congress will be in Democratic hands, and we can then get back to a level of sanity in our government processes. We can get back to the idea of having three distinct areas of government who counterbalance each other.
The next “Having My Say” post I will be talking about why I don’t want to see her as a second term president.
RJ's Corner 
I would like to address the Medicare for all. Presently healthcare is 18% of GDP. That is 50% larger than manufacturing. Medicare pays less the half what private insurance pays to healthcare providers. The only reason Medicare works is that the all the costs not paid by Medicare are shifted to private insurance plans. Folks on private insurance are subsidizing all the people on Medicare. To put everyone on Medicare within a few years would mean laying off countless healthcare workers and closing a large percentage of hospitals. Bottom line is the system could not possibly adjust quickly enough to vastly lower levels of payments. We also could not afford to raise Medicare payment rates to the current private insurance rates.
I would propose a less traumatic approach that fits the typical American outlook. Allow anyone over 50 to buy into Medicare. That would enjoy bipartisan support. Why would it help? Medicare collects only about 40% of its costs from payroll taxes and enrollees payments. That means the rest comes from general funds. More people on Medicare will increase the speed that the we fall into debt and limit government spending in the future. More people on Medicare will also shift more costs to private insurance. Both of these will finally bring the system to its knees as the costs to the working people grow increasingly ominous every year. This would simply speed up the process that is already taking place as the boomers join Medicare at the rate of 10,000 per day. Americans have shown they are not willing to turn their world upside down until there is absolutely no other choice.
I know the medical care system in the USA must be completely revamped. I don’t know if it will be single payer or some form of government controlled private insurance , like Switzerland. What I think is that we are no where near the point that the vast majority of Americans will support throwing a large percentage of our GDP into turmoil, eliminating millions of high paying jobs & almost assuredly reducing access to healthcare. As a group our citizens are not going to suddenly wake up and embrace common sense as relates to medical costs. We will have to collapse before we can rebuild.
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While I agree with some of your statement above, I don’t think whatever way we choose to take care of our broken healthcare system will result in massive layoff and hospital closures. That is about the same logic used by so many in the GOP whenever we raise the minimum wage and that scenario is yet to even remotely play out. I agree that going straight into the current version of Medicare is not practical in the short term. Pretty much the rest of the developed world has their medical costs in order and many of them are single payer. You didn’t see massive layoffs in Germany when that happened, nor do you see people dying in the street because of shutdowns and layoffs. But that scare tactic does work on an uninformed public so it will continue to be used by those who are fear stricken by any kind of change.
Let’s learn how the rest of the world did it and then improve our system so that it doesn’t cost twice what any other country pays. I’m sure that once Elizabeth Warren has tied up the nomination she will propose this pragmatic approach. It just makes sense.
Thanks again for the thoughts Fred.
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