Occam's Razor

We are told socialism is bad and un-American, but is capitalism really all that great? Consider how poor a job the free market is doing in providing affordable health care. Before the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies did their best to keep their insured pools as pristine as possible. They had no problems canceling people’s insurance when they judged they were too risky and often when they needed it the most.

In spite of the ACA, which Republicans and Trump are working hard to kill, premiums still are going up. Since this latest tinkering by Trump, they are going up a lot while kicking millions off health insurance. Premiums for 2019 will be announced shortly before the midterm elections and they are expected to rise twenty percent or more. This will likely result in lots of disgruntled voters. Right now, the cost and availability of health care is their number one concern. So I really don’t see why Democrats running on a “Medicare for All” platform should fear the wrath of voters. It’s much more likely they will be cheered on instead.

Ask any senior citizen if they want to give up their Medicare. Even the senior citizen gun nuts will give up their guns if the choice was between giving up guns or Medicare. Medicare is wildly popular, despite its issues. The rest of us simply wonder why if it’s good enough for old folks, we younger and healthier people can’t buy into it.

After all, Medicare takes all comers, at least if you meet the age and eligibility requirements. There are certainly aspects of the program that are annoying and baffling. I have been studying them as my Medicare eligibility looms in a few years. I’m not sure why parts B, C and D can’t come as a general benefit for one premium. I don’t understand why there has to be a donut hole if you use their drug program. In any event, universal health care is not that hard. Every major industrialized country except for ours has done it. Surprisingly, people in these countries are quite happy with their systems overall. So while we are creating Medicare for All, let’s improve the system too.

Of course with our Congress awash in health care money, their real mission seems to be to keep these companies flush with profits. Which is why me and the majority of Americans could really use Medicare for All, which is basically democratic socialism at work. It’s socialist in the sense that the government creates and manages the system. It’s democratic in that we the people get to elect people who will enact such a system.

The private sector has proven not up to the task. That’s why Medicare was created in the first place. The private sector didn’t want anything to do with insuring old people. There was no profit in it so it was either put grandma in the poor house or create a government program to fix the issue. Now health care costs are getting so high for the rest of us that we simply can’t afford it even if we can find insurance.

Republicans don’t get that the government’s purpose is to do things the private sector can’t or won’t but which the public needs. If there were no needs like this, we wouldn’t need government. Private health insurance is a failure. Rather than lowering prices, it raises them for all while kicking millions off health care altogether. Competition between insurers with an even playing field was the basis of the ACA. It helped but it has not proven to be the solution. We need something a whole lot more socialistic.

So sign me up as a Democratic Socialist. There’s no Democratic Socialist party to join, but maybe there will be if the Democratic Party can’t get its act together on these pressing issues. Government exists to help all its citizens and to provide solutions where the free market can’t or won’t affordably or at all. I see this out here in western Massachusetts where I live. Cities out here have high speed Internet, but many in the hill towns don’t. Comcast and the like can’t be bothered. It’s not profitable. No wonder local governments are engaging in some democratic socialism by creating community networks, an effort I am helping lead in my city, and we already have Comcast. (We’ve figured that without Comcast, we could get 1 gigabit per second fiber to the home for a third less than Comcast charges. No wonder Comcast can afford to buy all those arenas.)

Ironically, many of the tenets of Democratic Socialism put Trump in the White House. During the campaign he promised much better health care than we have now for much less. He’s done nothing to implement this promise; in fact he has gone in a completely different direction. Many Obama voters voted for Trump because they thought he could break this gridlock by being different. Obviously they were crassly used, but the idea of having great health care while paying a lot less for it is sound, and is now the number one concern of voters.

Let’s bring in a whole new crew of Democratic Socialists to Congress in the midterms. Hopefully we can replace every Tea Partier elected in 2010 with a Democratic Socialist instead. Let’s let government govern again. Lyndon Johnson was the right leader in the 1960s to bring Medicare to fruition. Medicare for All can be done providing we elect leaders committing to doing the people’s business first.