<< And again, Bradley has proposed spending $60 billion per year more on health
care access for low-income individuals.
As long as so little money goes to health care for low-income individuals,
cherry-picking and health care cuts are inevitable one way or another whatever
the details.
>>
In a kewy way, Nathan's last comment goes to the geart of the matter. I think this has been a useful discussion, and it is good to have us talking policy wonk issues--issues about which I know little, btw. But there is a political point to be made. Bradley's plan might be better than what we have, for some of us,including maney who don't have anything. It might be worse for others--if it were actually to be instituted.
But like Clinton's plan, about which similar things could be said, it won't be instituted, precisely because of the sort of plan it is. Bradley, like Clinton, sees that people are hurting and wants to do something about it. ( have met him and talked with him for several hours, long ago, when he was running for Senate, and for all the harsh things I have said about him, I found him to be a decent, intelligent, thoughtful, and honorable man--about as good as you could want in a bourgeois politician. He does not see himself as capitalist tool. However, and this is a big however, he feels constrained by his bourgeois base and cannot do anything to serioualy offend the big donors, including the insua\rance companies and the health industry.
Therefore he has put out a plan that, like Clinton's, is a wonkish plan without a real political grounding, and if he were to be elected it would be treated like Clinton's, namely shredded by the special interests. That is because it hurts the special interest enough to make them mad without offering enough, in a clean and understandable way, to the traditional Democratic basis in the working class to mobilize support enough to overcome that opposition. In trying to use the existing structure, whiuch is the problem, and the existing incentives, which got us where we are, to try to counteract the effect of that structure and those incentives, he has come up with a Clintonian plan that doesn't really go to the root of the problem and therefore cannot be implemented.
It's good to talk nuts and bolts and familaize ourselves with the issues. But Bradley's paln is not, for the reasons explained, a reason to support Bradley even if it would everything Nathan claims for it if it were to be implemented as envisaged. Thes ort of plan it is shows the limits of this sort of New Democratic politics,a nd is a reason to oppose such politics.
We have have decent universal healthcare without socialist revolution. Everyt other industrialized country does. What we need is a reformist politician backed by a movement who has the guts to offer genuinely universal healthcare, and to tell the public that, when the special interests say we cannot afford it, that THEY cannot afford it, but WE can.
--jks