National Democratic Socialism is just National Socialism with the affectation of democracy like the illiberal, managed, and/or electoral authoritarian regimes and parties that have emerged within democratic societies in recent decades.

I don’t buy it as an attempt to rebrand class reductionism to be more intriguing to conservatives questioning capitalism. Interacting with these sorts, it’s clear that they don’t understand or care about the nuances of the debate over intersectionality vs class first, last, and always.

They largely dismiss the idea that people’s non-economic identities have merit in a way that feels more aggressive and pernicious than those who view bigotry as a function of capitalism and false consciousness rather than something that may have its own independent existence and sources in human behavior.

I’m willing to draw distinctions between these people who seem to be emulating the neo-fascist parties of Europe that have both center right and center left parties on the ropes and classical class focused leftists. The difference is while class reductionists may view bigotry as false consciousness and a tool of elite oppression, these fascists pretending to be leftists are as obsessed with all the same predilections of the hard right as any MAGA red hat or Gen Z / Millennial wehraboo.

i think that social-censorship is a real phenomenon, but that signalling is basically almost exlcusively group-membership-signalling, (on the large scale blue and red tribe, but it gets way more granular than that, and a theres a ton of it with intra-left squabbling (i assume the same is true with the right but i dont have the personal experience to know)), and that social censorship basically amounts to backlash for signalling membership of group B while being in group A’s “territory”

also the world building in TLJ is also....SUPER BAD like the galaxy is functionally in a state of anarchy right now. 

the new republic’s governing body & a heavily populated system got obliterated. even if they wanted to fight back, who? would make that call? all the senators are gone. probably the bulk of the new republic’s fleet is gone too. i’m sure some people are trying to piece it back together but i bet you half of the member worlds left after the destruction of the hosnian system. there’s a good chance the new republic won’t ever recover? the first order... kind of succeeded in TFA in wiping them out. 

BUT ALSO the destruction of starkiller base is a huge deal??? like that’s a base the size of a planet— the first order probably had no idea that it could be blown up. they had a TON of troops there as we see during hux’s speech, so it stands to reason that they have a ton of supplies & weapons there too. all of that is gone now? so clearly the first order is not in great shape either.

i think that leads to a super interesting scenario where it’s essentially every planet for itself; centralized government is offline atm. 

so what happens in a galaxy without any centralized order? do core planets start operating closer to outer rim planets? for the outer rim, it’s probably business as usual— it’s not like many outer rim worlds have strong intra-planet governments anyways. but in the core, literally what happens next? all interplanetary trade is regulated by the new republic! do we ignore those rules now? what about galactic taxes? are those still required?? 

it’d be like if congress were in session and washington DC got wiped out— the entire chain of command is gone what happens now? do all the governors convene to come up with next steps?? 

......anyways the point being i’m trying to write a rewrite of TLJ but i keep getting caught up in thinking about the politics and wanting to write a spin-off of ~100 representatives of core worlds holed up in a conference room on coruscant squabbling about where the new republic goes from here. 

U.S. cuts aid to Afghanistan by $1 billion after rival leaders fail to agree on new government 

WASHINGTON

The Trump administration is slashing $1 billion in assistance to Afghanistan and threatening further reductions in all forms of cooperation after the country's rival leaders failed to agree on forming a new government.

The decision to cut the aid was made on Monday by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo after he made an unannounced, urgent visit to Kabul to meet with Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, the rival Afghan politicians who have each declared themselves president of the country after disputed elections last year. Pompeo had hoped to break the deadlock but was unable to.

In an unusually harsh statement, Pompeo slammed the two men for being unable to work together and threatening a potential peace deal that could end America's longest-running conflict. The U.S. has been the prime backer of the Afghan government since it invaded the country in 2001 and overthrew the Taliban after the 9/11 attacks.

“The United States deeply regrets that Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and former Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah have informed Secretary Pompeo that they have been unable to agree on an inclusive government that can meet the challenges of governance, peace, and security, and provide for the health and welfare of Afghan citizens,” he said.

Pompeo said the U.S. was “disappointed” in both men and their conduct, which he said had “harmed U.S.-Afghan relations and, sadly, dishonors those Afghan, Americans, and coalition partners who have sacrificed their lives and treasure in the struggle to build a new future for this country.”

Pompeo said their inability to work together posed a “direct threat” to U.S. national interests and that the administration would begin an immediate review of all its support programs for Afghanistan, starting with a reduction of $1 billion in aid this year. He said it could be reduced by another billion dollars in 2021.

“We have made clear to the leadership that we will not back security operations that are politically motivated, nor support political leaders who order such operations or those who advocate for or support parallel government,” Pompeo said.

Speaking to reporters aboard his plane on the return flight home, Pompeo said he was hopeful Ghani and Abdullah “will get their act together and we won’t have to” cut the assistance. “But we’re prepared to do that,” he said. He defended his written statement from interpretations that it is overly harsh saying it “is neither hopeful nor threatening. It is factual. These are the expectations that we have.”

Pompeo, who after leaving Kabul met with a senior Taliban official in Qatar, also said Ghani and Abdullah were acting inconsistent with agreements they made to support a U.S.-Taliban peace agreement signed last month. That deal called for intra-Afghan peace talks to begin within 10 days, by March 10, but they have not begun. Ghani and Abdullah have not yet even agreed on who should be part of the non-Taliban delegation nor have they agreed to prisoner swaps with the Taliban as envisaged by the deal.

“It’s all gotta come together,” Pompeo said. Asked if the Taliban had also been acting “inconsistently” with the agreement, he replied: “No. They committed to reducing violence and they’ve largely done that and they are working towards delivering their team to the ultimate negotiations.”

Pompeo said the United States would continue to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan under the terms of its agreement with Taliban, which calls for the reduction in the next several months from about 13,000 to 8,600.

Pompeo added that the U.S. would be willing to look again at the aid cuts if the two leaders can form an inclusive government and said Washington remained committed to partnership with the people of Afghanistan. As a demonstration of that, he said, the U.S. would provide $15 million in assistance to help Afghanistan fight the spread of the coronavirus.

Pompeo had left Afghanistan earlier Monday without saying whether he was able to broker an agreement between the squabbling political leaders. He'd traveled thousands of miles despite a near-global travel shutdown because of the coronavirus pandemic, at a time when world leaders and statesmen are curtailing official travel.

But as he departed the was no sign the impasse was over and there were reports in Kabul that Pompeo had given Ghani and Abdullah until Tuesday to come up with a compromise.

From Kabul, Pompeo flew to Doha, Qatar, where he had witnessed the signing of the U.S.-Taliban deal on Feb. 29, to meet Taliban officials, including Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a co-founder of the Taliban and head of their political office in Qatar. Baradar signed the agreement on behalf of the group. The State Department said Pompeo's aim was "to press the Taliban to continue to comply with the agreement signed last month.”

Since the U.S.-Taliban deal was signed, the peace process has stalled amid political turmoil in Afghanistan, as Ghani and Abdullah remained deadlocked over who was elected president in last September's presidential polls. They both declared themselves president in dueling inauguration ceremonies earlier this month.

Pompeo had met separately with Ghani and then Abdullah on Monday before meeting together with both men together.

The United States pays billions every year toward the Afghan budget, including the country's defense forces. Afghanistan barely raises a quarter of the revenue it needs to run the country, giving Pompeo considerable financial leverage to force the two squabbling leaders to overcome the impasse.

The political turmoil has put on hold the start of intra-Afghan peace talks that would include the Taliban. Those talks are seen as a critical next step in the peace deal, negotiated to allow the United States to bring home its troops and give Afghans the best chance at peace.

The U.S. and NATO have already begun to withdraw some troops from Afghanistan. The final pullout of U.S. forces is not dependent on the success of intra-Afghan negotiations but rather on promises made by the Taliban to deny space in Afghanistan to other terror groups, such as the insurgents' rival Islamic State group.

But within days of the U.S. and the Taliban signing the peace deal in Qatar, Afghanistan sunk into a political crisis with Ghani and Abdullah squaring off over election results and Ghani refusing to fulfill his part of a promise made in the U.S.-Taliban deal to free up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners. The insurgents were to free 1,000 Afghan officials and soldiers they hold captive. The exchange was meant to be a goodwill gesture by both sides to start the negotiations.

The urgency of Pompeo’s surprise visit was highlighted by the fact that the State Department has warned American citizens against all international travel, citing the spread of the coronavirus. Pompeo’s last overseas trip in late February was to Doha for the signing of the U.S.-Taliban peace deal he is now trying to salvage.

Pompeo’s visit was also extraordinary for the fact that the U.S., like the United Nations, had earlier said it would not be drawn into mediating feuding Afghan politicians as it did in 2014 presidential polls. While the Afghan election commission this time gave the win to Ghani, Abdullah and the election complaints commission charged widespread irregularities to challenge Ghani’s win

Basically my Big Picture political thoughts right now are that there needs to be SOME way to thread the needle between “fuck intra-resistance squabbling, we need a big tent for EVERYONE who wants to stand against this neo-right bullshit, including moderates and sane conservatives” and “the neo-right bullshit is gaining power through legitimate discontent brought about by the ways the system is VERY BROKEN, and we need a credible reform agenda, which large swathes of The Establishment will find very hard to stomach.”

So far the best pitch I’ve got is that the hard right is mostly trying to sell us solutions to problems that THEY THEMSELVES created, through a combination of militarized war-on-terror authoritarianism, the weakening of small-r republican institutions via partisan attack politics, the favoring of market “efficiency” voodoo over actual (competitive) market freedom, and the favoring of corporate interests (and corporate cash) over justice for all.

These are all messes that the political “center” has accepted as the status quo because the hard right dragged us into them--and then, whenever they were voted out of power, made such low-down-dirty obstructionist nuisances of themselves that anyone who wanted to actually govern ended up fighting fire with fire (while the right, of course, howled “tyranny!” and “corruption!” against the tactics that they themselves introduced).

So IMO the way forward is some kind of “common ground” coalition that agrees on certain core abuses that are poison to a functioning democracy, and declares truce on the usual left/right tug-of-war issues until some basic reforms are carried out. Hit the pause button on the “gays guns and abortion” parts of the culture war--but not on issues like voting rights that are only still issues because the far-right uses racial oppression as political leverage. No smug “come join the Democrats, admit that reality has a liberal bias, you have to get with the progressive program because we’re the only sane ones left” coercive-unity BS. There are deep and legitimate differences among people whose political beliefs can be described as “not batshit fucking crazy.” Fortunately or unfortunately, those differences are now way less important than the differences between liberal democracy and this latest ugly outbreak of authoritarian thuggery.

And if the far left wants to throw the baby out with the bathwater, scream “neoliberal scum!” at anyone insufficiently radical for its tastes, and succumb to its old temptation to cozy up to any two-bit totalitarian who spouts the correct anti-capitalist slogans rather than be caught dead supporting the left-leaning wing of The Establishment... as previously noted, left/right as preferences for how best to configure the system are currently WAY less important than “fix the system” vs “burn it to the fucking ground so we can get our way unimpeded.” Yeah, free-market liberal democracy is kinda broken right now. Its general blueprint is also humanity’s least-bad solution so far to “we need to organize an immensely complex society, but minimize the damage caused by humans being stupid with power.” Until you’ve got a viable replacement that’s actually worked in the real world, your best option is to stick with team “fix the damn thing.” And we may as well start doing that in ways that a variety of factions can agree on, ways that will also make the usual political back-and-forth about everything else a helluva lot more civilized.

Between the protests and the pandemic, you’d be forgiven for forgetting that the Affordable Care Act is still in limbo. But the events of the last week have set the stage for Democrats and Republicans to fight a 2020 rematch of the battle over health care coverage: between the party that giveth, and the party that taketh away.

The Trump Administration asked the Supreme Court on June 25 to overturn the law known as Obamacare, joining a group of Republican attorneys general in arguing that Congress effectively made the ACA unconstitutional in 2017 when it zeroed out the individual mandate. The ACA has survived two previous Supreme Court challenges, including a 5-4 ruling upholding the law in 2012, when Chief Justice John Roberts ruled the individual mandate was constitutional under Congress’s power to levy taxes. Now the law faces an existential legal threat for the third time in its 10-year history. “The entire ACA thus must fall with the individual mandate,” Solicitor General Noel Francisco wrote in the Administration’s brief.

The Trump Administration’s challenge to the law comes as the coronavirus pandemic has left more than 120,000 Americans dead and thrown millions off the health care rolls due to lost jobs. If the court decides to overturn the law, the impact would ripple through nearly every part of the U.S. health system. Dismantling the law would worsen racial disparities and make it harder for sick people to get new coverage at a time when COVID-19 is disproportionately impacting Black and Latino Americans and leaving hundreds of thousands with potentially lasting health problems. It would also leave 23 million Americans without health coverage, according to an analysis by the liberal Center for American Progress think tank.

The Supreme Court has not said when it will hear the ACA case, but oral arguments will likely take place this fall, as President Donald Trump and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden make their case to voters. Democrats believe Trump’s decision to elevate the fight over health care coverage will play to their advantage, just as it did in the 2018 midterms, when the party recaptured the House of Representatives with the help of Republicans’ attempts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.

“Everybody knows that Trump and the GOP’s attacks on health care were a driving force behind the energy that built the blue wave in 2018. Now Trump is fighting yet again to trash the Affordable Care Act and replace it with a shrug,” says Ezra Levin, co-founder of the liberal grassroots network Indivisible. “We welcome this political malpractice, and it makes it easy for Biden to simply stand against death and destruction—which is, you know, a winning campaign message.”

Biden previewed this message in a speech last week in Lancaster, Penn. “Perhaps most cruelly of all, if Donald Trump has his way, complications from COVID-19 could become a new pre-existing condition,” Biden said after a roundtable with Pennsylvania voters who said they had benefitted from the Affordable Care Act. He added that that without the ACA, lung scarring and heart damage from COVID-19 could make it difficult for survivors to get future coverage. “They would live their lives caught in a vise between Donald Trump’s twin legacies: his failure to protect the American people from the coronavirus, and his heartless crusade to take health care protections away from American families.”

The simplicity of the contrast is a gift to Biden. During the primary, Biden struggled at times articulate a winning message on health care, amid a massive intra-party squabble over whether or not to push for Medicare for All. Now he seems poised to run on the same playbook that helped Democrats win swing states in the midterms: arguing Republicans are trying to take away American’s health care, while he would protect it.

Pushing to overturn the ACA has been a Republican goal ever since the law first passed in 2010, and opposition to the health care law fueled the rise of the Tea Party during the Obama presidency. But in recent years, attempts to gut Obamacare have benefited Democrats more than Republicans, as more and more Americans have gotten used to the law’s protections. A June poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 53% of Americans trusted Biden to handle health care policy, compared to just 38% who trusted Donald Trump.

One of the reasons that Republicans have historically fought so hard to avoid implementing new social programs is that once a benefit is given to the American people, it becomes very difficult to take it away. While it was initially unpopular, Americans have warmed up to to the Affordable Care Act: by its 10-year anniversary, 55% of Americans viewed Obamacare favorably, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, an all-time high.

The pandemic has only underscored its importance. Of the nearly 27 million people who relinquished health insurance when they lost their jobs through early May, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that 48% were eligible for coverage through Medicaid, which was expanded under the ACA, and another 31% were eligible for subsidies to help them afford new plans on the marketplace.

People have been taking advantage of these options. The Trump Administration’s brief came the same day as a report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that showed 487,000 Americans bought insurance by using the special enrollment period that opens when individuals lose their health coverage, and most states that run their own marketplaces have also created new COVID-19 special enrollment periods to allow more people to get covered.

Without the ACA, fewer people would be eligible for coverage through Medicaid and many more low- and middle-income families would struggle to buy insurance. Protections for those with pre-existing conditions would disappear, as would requirements that insurance companies sell to anyone who wants it and charge the same price to anyone who buys similar insurance.

All of this would be worse for people of color. The ACA significantly narrowed racial and ethnic coverage gaps in the years after it was passed, though gains slowed when Trump was elected in 2016. But now that Black, Hispanic and Native Americans are dying and being hospitalized from COVID-19 at higher rates than white Americans, doctors have emphasized that health coverage is more important than ever.

“Trump’s deadly move comes at a time when there is still so much work left to do. The Trump Administration’s own data this week showed that Black Americans are four times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19. That confirms long standing disparities we all were aware of,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who is leading the group of Democratic states fighting to preserve the ACA, told reporters on June 24. “Now is not the time to rip away our best tool to address very real and very deadly health disparities in our communities.”

Republicans have not put forward their own alternative health care plan to replace the ACA. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar recently told CNN’s Jake Tapper that the Administration would protect those with preexisting conditions but that specifics were still up in the air. “The exact details will be dependent on the—frankly, the composition of Congress if and when the Supreme Court does strike down all or a large part of Obamacare,” Azar said.

But voters don’t respond well to plans to take away Americans’ health care without a concrete plan to replace it. They may balk even more during a global pandemic. And Biden will make sure voters don’t forget which party is fighting to gut health care coverage, and which side is fighting to protect it.

(ISLAMABAD, Pakistan) — The Taliban said their peace deal with the United States was nearing a breaking point, accusing Washington of violations that included drone attacks on civilians, while also chastising the Afghan government for delaying the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners promised in the agreement.

The Taliban said they had restricted attacks against Afghan security forces to rural outposts, had not attacked international forces and had not attacked Afghan forces in cities or military installations. The Taliban said these limits on their attacks had not been specifically laid out in the agreement with the U.S. signed in February.

The Taliban’s statement issued Sunday warned of more violence if the U.S. and the Afghan government continue alleged violations of the deal.

U.S. military spokesman Col. Sonny Leggett in a tweet overnight denied the Taliban allegation, saying the U.S. forces in Afghanistan has “upheld and continues to uphold the military terms of the U.S.-TB (Taliban) agreement; any assertion otherwise is baseless.”

In his tweet, Leggett called for Taliban to reduce violence and said the U.S. military will continue to come to the aid of Afghanistan’s security forces if attacked, in line with the agreement.

Meanwhile, the militants said they had reduced their attacks compared to last year, but said continued violations would “create an atmosphere of mistrust that will not only damage the agreements, but also force mujaheddin to a similar response and will increase the level of fighting.”

The Taliban have accused the Afghan government of using “indefensible arguments” to explain the repeated delays in releasing a promised 5,000 Taliban prisoners in exchange for 1,000 government personnel. The Afghan government’s foot-dragging has also left Washington frustrated.

Meanwhile, in the Afghan capital, President Ashraf Ghani announced his new Cabinet even as he squabbles with his main political challenger over last year’s election results. Ghani’s move came even as Afghan mediators — including former President Hamid Karzai — shuttled between the president and his opponent, Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, who has also declared himself Afghanistan’s president.

The country’s Independent Election Commission has declared Ghani a winner, but Abdullah and the Elections Complaint Commission have charged widespread irregularities.

Attempts to negotiate an end to the political turmoil roiling Kabul have made little progress, frustrating the U.S. and potentially derailing the next stage in the Afghan peace process. Washington has threatened to withhold $1 billion in aid this year if Ghani and Abdullah can’t reach a compromise.

The Trump administration wants a quick start to intra-Afghan negotiations, the next step in the peace deal it signed on Feb. 29. It looked promising when Ghani announced his negotiating team last week, but Abdullah’s response to it has been lukewarm and the Taliban have rejected it as one-sided.

The U.S. and NATO have already begun to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. The full withdrawal is expected to be completed in 14 months and is tied to Taliban commitments to fight terrorist groups and help in the battle against the Islamic State group.

The withdrawal is not tied to the success of intra-Afghan negotiations, but U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had traveled to Afghanistan last month to try to break the impasse between Ghani and Abdullah. Pompeo left without a solution; however, last week he welcomed that the Afghan government had put together a negotiating team and made progress toward the prisoner releases.

Those releases have stumbled even as the Taliban sent a three member team to Kabul last week.

US slashes aid to Afghanistan after Mike Pompeo visit to Kabul

New Post has been published on https://apzweb.com/us-slashes-aid-to-afghanistan-after-mike-pompeo-visit-to-kabul/

US slashes aid to Afghanistan after Mike Pompeo visit to Kabul

The Trump administration is slashing $1 billion in assistance to Afghanistan and threatening further reductions in all forms of cooperation after the country’s rival leaders failed to agree on forming a new government.

The decision to cut the aid was made on Monday by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo after he made an unannounced, urgent visit to Kabul to meet with Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, the rival Afghan politicians who have each declared themselves president of the country after disputed elections last year. Pompeo had hoped to break the deadlock but was unable to.

In an unusually harsh statement, Pompeo slammed the two men for being unable to work together and threatening a potential peace deal that could end America’s longest-running conflict. The U.S. has been the prime backer of the Afghan government since it invaded the country in 2001 and overthrew the Taliban after the 9/11 attacks.

The United States deeply regrets that Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and former Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah have informed Secretary Pompeo that they have been unable to agree on an inclusive government that can meet the challenges of governance, peace, and security, and provide for the health and welfare of Afghan citizens, he said.

Pompeo said the U.S. was disappointed in both men and their conduct, which he said had harmed U.S.-Afghan relations and, sadly, dishonors those Afghan, Americans, and coalition partners who have sacrificed their lives and treasure in the struggle to build a new future for this country.

Pompeo said their inability to work together posed a direct threat to U.S. national interests and that the administration would begin an immediate review of all its support programs for Afghanistan, starting with a reduction of $1 billion in aid this year. He said it could be reduced by another billion dollars in 2021.

We have made clear to the leadership that we will not back security operations that are politically motivated, nor support political leaders who order such operations or those who advocate for or support parallel government, Pompeo said.

Speaking to reporters aboard his plane on the return flight home, Pompeo said he was hopeful Ghani and Abdullah will get their act together and we won’t have to cut the assistance. But we’re prepared to do that, he said. He defended his written statement from interpretations that it is overly harsh saying it is neither hopeful nor threatening. It is factual. These are the expectations that we have.

Pompeo, who after leaving Kabul met with a senior Taliban official in Qatar, also said Ghani and Abdullah were acting inconsistent with agreements they made to support a U.S.-Taliban peace agreement signed last month. That deal called for intra-Afghan peace talks to begin within 10 days, by March 10, but they have not begun. Ghani and Abdullah have not yet even agreed on who should be part of the non-Taliban delegation nor have they agreed to prisoner swaps with the Taliban as envisaged by the deal.

It’s all gotta come together, Pompeo said. Asked if the Taliban had also been acting inconsistently with the agreement, he replied: No. They committed to reducing violence and they’ve largely done that and they are working towards delivering their team to the ultimate negotiations.

Pompeo said the United States would continue to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan under the terms of its agreement with Taliban, which calls for the reduction in the next several months from about 13,000 to 8,600.

Pompeo added that the U.S. would be willing to look again at the aid cuts if the two leaders can form an inclusive government and said Washington remained committed to partnership with the people of Afghanistan. As a demonstration of that, he said, the U.S. would provide $15 million in assistance to help Afghanistan fight the spread of the coronavirus.

Pompeo had left Afghanistan earlier Monday without saying whether he was able to broker an agreement between the squabbling political leaders. He’d traveled thousands of miles despite a near-global travel shutdown because of the coronavirus pandemic, at a time when world leaders and statesmen are curtailing official travel.

But as he departed the was no sign the impasse was over and there were reports in Kabul that Pompeo had given Ghani and Abdullah until Tuesday to come up with a compromise.

From Kabul, Pompeo flew to Doha, Qatar, where he had witnessed the signing of the U.S.-Taliban deal on Feb. 29, to meet Taliban officials, including Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a co-founder of the Taliban and head of their political office in Qatar. Baradar signed the agreement on behalf of the group. The State Department said Pompeo’s aim was to press the Taliban to continue to comply with the agreement signed last month.

Since the U.S.-Taliban deal was signed, the peace process has stalled amid political turmoil in Afghanistan, as Ghani and Abdullah remained deadlocked over who was elected president in last September’s presidential polls. They both declared themselves president in dueling inauguration ceremonies earlier this month.

Pompeo had met separately with Ghani and then Abdullah on Monday before meeting together with both men together.

The United States pays billions every year toward the Afghan budget, including the country’s defense forces. Afghanistan barely raises a quarter of the revenue it needs to run the country, giving Pompeo considerable financial leverage to force the two squabbling leaders to overcome the impasse.

The political turmoil has put on hold the start of intra-Afghan peace talks that would include the Taliban. Those talks are seen as a critical next step in the peace deal, negotiated to allow the United States to bring home its troops and give Afghans the best chance at peace.

The U.S. and NATO have already begun to withdraw some troops from Afghanistan. The final pullout of U.S. forces is not dependent on the success of intra-Afghan negotiations but rather on promises made by the Taliban to deny space in Afghanistan to other terror groups, such as the insurgents’ rival Islamic State group.

But within days of the U.S. and the Taliban signing the peace deal in Qatar, Afghanistan sunk into a political crisis with Ghani and Abdullah squaring off over election results and Ghani refusing to fulfill his part of a promise made in the U.S.-Taliban deal to free up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners. The insurgents were to free 1,000 Afghan officials and soldiers they hold captive. The exchange was meant to be a goodwill gesture by both sides to start the negotiations.

The urgency of Pompeo’s surprise visit was highlighted by the fact that the State Department has warned American citizens against all international travel, citing the spread of the coronavirus. Pompeo’s last overseas trip in late February was to Doha for the signing of the U.S.-Taliban peace deal he is now trying to salvage.

Pompeo’s visit was also extraordinary for the fact that the U.S., like the United Nations, had earlier said it would not be drawn into mediating feuding Afghan politicians as it did in 2014 presidential polls. While the Afghan election commission this time gave the win to Ghani, Abdullah and the election complaints commission charged widespread irregularities to challenge Ghani’s win.

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(Bloomberg) -- In April, many of the top Democratic presidential candidates eagerly lined up to co-sponsor Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All bill -- a vast restructuring of the U.S. health-care system that would go far beyond Obamacare.Senators Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand, along with Representatives Tim Ryan and Tulsi Gabbard, all co-sponsored the bill with an eye toward the upcoming presidential primaries.“It was a recognition that the center of gravity in the party has moved in a much more progressive direction,” said Jeff Weaver, a senior adviser to the Sanders campaign. “Many candidates wanted to position themselves with the vast majority of Democratic primary voters by supporting real Medicare for All.”But as this week’s Democratic debates in Detroit illustrated, many of those initial co-sponsors, fearful of blowback from voters -- particularly those who have satisfactory private health insurance they’re reluctant to give up for something unknown, as they would have to under Sanders’s plan -- have begun backing away.Sanders’s Medicare For All would expand to all American residents the government-run health insurance program that’s covered senior citizens and certain other people for over 50 years. But as the costs and disruptions of the plan have come into focus, Medicare for All has emerged as the major fault line in the Democratic presidential primary.Top IssueHealth-care coverage consistently ranks as the top issue for Democrats and helped drive the party’s electoral gains in 2018. But polls show that voters harbor deep concerns about the possible disruption from a policy as far-reaching as Sanders has proposed.The two-night gathering in Detroit made clear that the biggest fight in Democratic politics right now is whether the party should press ahead with remaking the health care system, which accounts for 18% of U.S. gross domestic spending, or instead pursue more limited reforms along the lines of front-runner Joe Biden’s proposal to “build on Obamacare,” the signature legislative achievement of President Barack Obama.“At the level of the bumper sticker or talking points, proposals are very popular, but when you start filling in the details and the trade-offs become clear, it becomes more apparent that there are losers as well as winners,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “At the bumper sticker level, it seems that everyone is a winner.”A PBS NewsHour/Marist poll of U.S. adults conducted July 15-17 highlighted the Democrats’ dilemma. It found that while 70% of respondents favor a Medicare for All option, only 41% support doing away with private health insurance. A recent tracking poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed overall favorability for a Medicare for All system dropped to 51% in July from 56% in April. It also found that more Democrats, 55%, prefer to expand coverage by bolstering the Affordable Care Act than the 39% who believe in replacing Obamacare with a Medicare for All system.During the debates, Booker and Gillibrand both dodged questions about the role of private insurance under a Medicare for All regime. Instead, they sought to re-frame the conversation about health care in broader terms, drawing a contrast between Democrats and Republicans.“This pitting progressives against moderates, saying one is unrealistic and the other doesn’t care enough, that to me is dividing our party and demoralizing us in face of the real enemy here,” Booker said. Forest Versus TreesGillibrand said the intra-party squabbling risked “losing the forest through the trees.”Harris, in particular, has struggled to stick to a clear position on Medicare for All. The California senator was the first Democrat to co-sponsor Sanders’ bill and raised her hand when moderators at the June debates asked which candidates would be comfortable abolishing private health insurance. Harris later backtracked, saying she’d misheard the question.“She violated a rule I’ve promulgated in politics: if you’re caught in a bind and can’t think of any way out of it, don’t say something that no one will believe,” said Barney Frank, the former Democratic representative from Massachusetts, who’s not endorsed a presidential candidate for 2020.On July 29 Harris introduced her own, less ambitious Medicare for All plan that also allows private insurance coverage and would be phased in over a decade.Kate Bedingfield, a spokeswoman for former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign, assailed it as a “have-it-every-which-way approach” that would raise middle class taxes. Biden amplified that charge during the debate by saying, “You can’t beat President Trump with double-talk on this plan.”Valuable BrandHarris shot back that the Biden campaign was “probably confused because they’ve not read it.”Harris’s plan was also attacked from the left. Weaver said Harris was seeking to co-opt the Medicare for All “brand name” while offering her own, scaled-back plan. “It’s not Medicare for All -- at all,” Weaver said.The most extreme flip-flop belongs to Ryan, who’s still listed as a co-sponsor of Sanders’ Medicare for All legislation in the House but laced into the plan during Tuesday night’s debate. The next day, Ryan continued to warn about the political consequences of eliminating private insurance.“I think we’d lose 48 states, and I’m having a hard time figuring out what the two states are we’re going to win if our lead message is, ‘We’re going to confiscate health care from people,’” he said.Aly Javery, a spokeswoman for Ryan’s campaign, said he remained a cosponsor of Sanders’s plan despite his misgivings because Ryan would like to see the country move toward a Medicare for All system.‘Sucking Value Out’Warren, who hesitated to say she wanted to completely eliminate private insurance in the early months of her campaign, has since leaned into Sanders’ vision of a single-payer Medicare for All system that eliminates private insurance.“Every developed country on earth has moved to a single-payer system because it produces better outcomes at lower cost,” Warren said in a July 17 interview with Bloomberg Businessweek. “The markets, they’re sucking value out without delivering the health care we need.”But even Warren has shied away from acknowledging that a Medicare for All system would raise taxes on the middle class, which Sanders admits. Asked twice by debate moderators in Detroit if the plan she’s endorsed would raise middle class taxes, Warren dodged by replying that “total costs will go down” to obtain health coverage.With the presidential field expected to narrow in the coming weeks as low-performing candidates potentially drop out before the September debates, the health-care discussion will come into sharper focus as proponents and critics of Sanders’ Medicare for All plan meet on a single stage.Even as many of the original sponsors back away, Democratic strategists worry how a nominee like Sanders or Warren, who support the most ambitious version of Medicare for All, would fare in the general election.“Medicare for All’s biggest drawback is that it destroys choice and that it takes away private health insurance from people who have it and like it,” said Bob Shrum, a veteran Democratic strategist who now runs the Center for the Political Future at the University of Southern California.“You could turn an issue that works for Democrats around into an issue that hurts Democrats by telling tens of millions or 100 million people who may like the insurance they have now that they’re going to go into something unknown.”To contact the reporters on this story: Tyler Pager in Washington at [email protected];Joshua Green in Washington at [email protected] contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at [email protected], Ros KrasnyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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(Bloomberg) -- In April, many of the top Democratic presidential candidates eagerly lined up to co-sponsor Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All bill -- a vast restructuring of the U.S. health-care system that would go far beyond Obamacare.Senators Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand, along with Representatives Tim Ryan and Tulsi Gabbard, all co-sponsored the bill with an eye toward the upcoming presidential primaries.“It was a recognition that the center of gravity in the party has moved in a much more progressive direction,” said Jeff Weaver, a senior adviser to the Sanders campaign. “Many candidates wanted to position themselves with the vast majority of Democratic primary voters by supporting real Medicare for All.”But as this week’s Democratic debates in Detroit illustrated, many of those initial co-sponsors, fearful of blowback from voters -- particularly those who have satisfactory private health insurance they’re reluctant to give up for something unknown, as they would have to under Sanders’s plan -- have begun backing away.Sanders’s Medicare For All would expand to all American residents the government-run health insurance program that’s covered senior citizens and certain other people for over 50 years. But as the costs and disruptions of the plan have come into focus, Medicare for All has emerged as the major fault line in the Democratic presidential primary.Top IssueHealth-care coverage consistently ranks as the top issue for Democrats and helped drive the party’s electoral gains in 2018. But polls show that voters harbor deep concerns about the possible disruption from a policy as far-reaching as Sanders has proposed.The two-night gathering in Detroit made clear that the biggest fight in Democratic politics right now is whether the party should press ahead with remaking the health care system, which accounts for 18% of U.S. gross domestic spending, or instead pursue more limited reforms along the lines of front-runner Joe Biden’s proposal to “build on Obamacare,” the signature legislative achievement of President Barack Obama.“At the level of the bumper sticker or talking points, proposals are very popular, but when you start filling in the details and the trade-offs become clear, it becomes more apparent that there are losers as well as winners,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “At the bumper sticker level, it seems that everyone is a winner.”A PBS NewsHour/Marist poll of U.S. adults conducted July 15-17 highlighted the Democrats’ dilemma. It found that while 70% of respondents favor a Medicare for All option, only 41% support doing away with private health insurance. A recent tracking poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed overall favorability for a Medicare for All system dropped to 51% in July from 56% in April. It also found that more Democrats, 55%, prefer to expand coverage by bolstering the Affordable Care Act than the 39% who believe in replacing Obamacare with a Medicare for All system.During the debates, Booker and Gillibrand both dodged questions about the role of private insurance under a Medicare for All regime. Instead, they sought to re-frame the conversation about health care in broader terms, drawing a contrast between Democrats and Republicans.“This pitting progressives against moderates, saying one is unrealistic and the other doesn’t care enough, that to me is dividing our party and demoralizing us in face of the real enemy here,” Booker said. Forest Versus TreesGillibrand said the intra-party squabbling risked “losing the forest through the trees.”Harris, in particular, has struggled to stick to a clear position on Medicare for All. The California senator was the first Democrat to co-sponsor Sanders’ bill and raised her hand when moderators at the June debates asked which candidates would be comfortable abolishing private health insurance. Harris later backtracked, saying she’d misheard the question.“She violated a rule I’ve promulgated in politics: if you’re caught in a bind and can’t think of any way out of it, don’t say something that no one will believe,” said Barney Frank, the former Democratic representative from Massachusetts, who’s not endorsed a presidential candidate for 2020.On July 29 Harris introduced her own, less ambitious Medicare for All plan that also allows private insurance coverage and would be phased in over a decade.Kate Bedingfield, a spokeswoman for former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign, assailed it as a “have-it-every-which-way approach” that would raise middle class taxes. Biden amplified that charge during the debate by saying, “You can’t beat President Trump with double-talk on this plan.”Valuable BrandHarris shot back that the Biden campaign was “probably confused because they’ve not read it.”Harris’s plan was also attacked from the left. Weaver said Harris was seeking to co-opt the Medicare for All “brand name” while offering her own, scaled-back plan. “It’s not Medicare for All -- at all,” Weaver said.The most extreme flip-flop belongs to Ryan, who’s still listed as a co-sponsor of Sanders’ Medicare for All legislation in the House but laced into the plan during Tuesday night’s debate. The next day, Ryan continued to warn about the political consequences of eliminating private insurance.“I think we’d lose 48 states, and I’m having a hard time figuring out what the two states are we’re going to win if our lead message is, ‘We’re going to confiscate health care from people,’” he said.Aly Javery, a spokeswoman for Ryan’s campaign, said he remained a cosponsor of Sanders’s plan despite his misgivings because Ryan would like to see the country move toward a Medicare for All system.‘Sucking Value Out’Warren, who hesitated to say she wanted to completely eliminate private insurance in the early months of her campaign, has since leaned into Sanders’ vision of a single-payer Medicare for All system that eliminates private insurance.“Every developed country on earth has moved to a single-payer system because it produces better outcomes at lower cost,” Warren said in a July 17 interview with Bloomberg Businessweek. “The markets, they’re sucking value out without delivering the health care we need.”But even Warren has shied away from acknowledging that a Medicare for All system would raise taxes on the middle class, which Sanders admits. Asked twice by debate moderators in Detroit if the plan she’s endorsed would raise middle class taxes, Warren dodged by replying that “total costs will go down” to obtain health coverage.With the presidential field expected to narrow in the coming weeks as low-performing candidates potentially drop out before the September debates, the health-care discussion will come into sharper focus as proponents and critics of Sanders’ Medicare for All plan meet on a single stage.Even as many of the original sponsors back away, Democratic strategists worry how a nominee like Sanders or Warren, who support the most ambitious version of Medicare for All, would fare in the general election.“Medicare for All’s biggest drawback is that it destroys choice and that it takes away private health insurance from people who have it and like it,” said Bob Shrum, a veteran Democratic strategist who now runs the Center for the Political Future at the University of Southern California.“You could turn an issue that works for Democrats around into an issue that hurts Democrats by telling tens of millions or 100 million people who may like the insurance they have now that they’re going to go into something unknown.”To contact the reporters on this story: Tyler Pager in Washington at [email protected];Joshua Green in Washington at [email protected] contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at [email protected], Ros KrasnyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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(Bloomberg) -- In April, many of the top Democratic presidential candidates eagerly lined up to co-sponsor Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All bill -- a vast restructuring of the U.S. health-care system that would go far beyond Obamacare.Senators Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand, along with Representatives Tim Ryan and Tulsi Gabbard, all co-sponsored the bill with an eye toward the upcoming presidential primaries.“It was a recognition that the center of gravity in the party has moved in a much more progressive direction,” said Jeff Weaver, a senior adviser to the Sanders campaign. “Many candidates wanted to position themselves with the vast majority of Democratic primary voters by supporting real Medicare for All.”But as this week’s Democratic debates in Detroit illustrated, many of those initial co-sponsors, fearful of blowback from voters -- particularly those who have satisfactory private health insurance they’re reluctant to give up for something unknown, as they would have to under Sanders’s plan -- have begun backing away.Sanders’s Medicare For All would expand to all American residents the government-run health insurance program that’s covered senior citizens and certain other people for over 50 years. But as the costs and disruptions of the plan have come into focus, Medicare for All has emerged as the major fault line in the Democratic presidential primary.Top IssueHealth-care coverage consistently ranks as the top issue for Democrats and helped drive the party’s electoral gains in 2018. But polls show that voters harbor deep concerns about the possible disruption from a policy as far-reaching as Sanders has proposed.The two-night gathering in Detroit made clear that the biggest fight in Democratic politics right now is whether the party should press ahead with remaking the health care system, which accounts for 18% of U.S. gross domestic spending, or instead pursue more limited reforms along the lines of front-runner Joe Biden’s proposal to “build on Obamacare,” the signature legislative achievement of President Barack Obama.“At the level of the bumper sticker or talking points, proposals are very popular, but when you start filling in the details and the trade-offs become clear, it becomes more apparent that there are losers as well as winners,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “At the bumper sticker level, it seems that everyone is a winner.”A PBS NewsHour/Marist poll of U.S. adults conducted July 15-17 highlighted the Democrats’ dilemma. It found that while 70% of respondents favor a Medicare for All option, only 41% support doing away with private health insurance. A recent tracking poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed overall favorability for a Medicare for All system dropped to 51% in July from 56% in April. It also found that more Democrats, 55%, prefer to expand coverage by bolstering the Affordable Care Act than the 39% who believe in replacing Obamacare with a Medicare for All system.During the debates, Booker and Gillibrand both dodged questions about the role of private insurance under a Medicare for All regime. Instead, they sought to re-frame the conversation about health care in broader terms, drawing a contrast between Democrats and Republicans.“This pitting progressives against moderates, saying one is unrealistic and the other doesn’t care enough, that to me is dividing our party and demoralizing us in face of the real enemy here,” Booker said. Forest Versus TreesGillibrand said the intra-party squabbling risked “losing the forest through the trees.”Harris, in particular, has struggled to stick to a clear position on Medicare for All. The California senator was the first Democrat to co-sponsor Sanders’ bill and raised her hand when moderators at the June debates asked which candidates would be comfortable abolishing private health insurance. Harris later backtracked, saying she’d misheard the question.“She violated a rule I’ve promulgated in politics: if you’re caught in a bind and can’t think of any way out of it, don’t say something that no one will believe,” said Barney Frank, the former Democratic representative from Massachusetts, who’s not endorsed a presidential candidate for 2020.On July 29 Harris introduced her own, less ambitious Medicare for All plan that also allows private insurance coverage and would be phased in over a decade.Kate Bedingfield, a spokeswoman for former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign, assailed it as a “have-it-every-which-way approach” that would raise middle class taxes. Biden amplified that charge during the debate by saying, “You can’t beat President Trump with double-talk on this plan.”Valuable BrandHarris shot back that the Biden campaign was “probably confused because they’ve not read it.”Harris’s plan was also attacked from the left. Weaver said Harris was seeking to co-opt the Medicare for All “brand name” while offering her own, scaled-back plan. “It’s not Medicare for All -- at all,” Weaver said.The most extreme flip-flop belongs to Ryan, who’s still listed as a co-sponsor of Sanders’ Medicare for All legislation in the House but laced into the plan during Tuesday night’s debate. The next day, Ryan continued to warn about the political consequences of eliminating private insurance.“I think we’d lose 48 states, and I’m having a hard time figuring out what the two states are we’re going to win if our lead message is, ‘We’re going to confiscate health care from people,’” he said.Aly Javery, a spokeswoman for Ryan’s campaign, said he remained a cosponsor of Sanders’s plan despite his misgivings because Ryan would like to see the country move toward a Medicare for All system.‘Sucking Value Out’Warren, who hesitated to say she wanted to completely eliminate private insurance in the early months of her campaign, has since leaned into Sanders’ vision of a single-payer Medicare for All system that eliminates private insurance.“Every developed country on earth has moved to a single-payer system because it produces better outcomes at lower cost,” Warren said in a July 17 interview with Bloomberg Businessweek. “The markets, they’re sucking value out without delivering the health care we need.”But even Warren has shied away from acknowledging that a Medicare for All system would raise taxes on the middle class, which Sanders admits. Asked twice by debate moderators in Detroit if the plan she’s endorsed would raise middle class taxes, Warren dodged by replying that “total costs will go down” to obtain health coverage.With the presidential field expected to narrow in the coming weeks as low-performing candidates potentially drop out before the September debates, the health-care discussion will come into sharper focus as proponents and critics of Sanders’ Medicare for All plan meet on a single stage.Even as many of the original sponsors back away, Democratic strategists worry how a nominee like Sanders or Warren, who support the most ambitious version of Medicare for All, would fare in the general election.“Medicare for All’s biggest drawback is that it destroys choice and that it takes away private health insurance from people who have it and like it,” said Bob Shrum, a veteran Democratic strategist who now runs the Center for the Political Future at the University of Southern California.“You could turn an issue that works for Democrats around into an issue that hurts Democrats by telling tens of millions or 100 million people who may like the insurance they have now that they’re going to go into something unknown.”To contact the reporters on this story: Tyler Pager in Washington at [email protected];Joshua Green in Washington at [email protected] contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at [email protected], Ros KrasnyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/3368r2y

(Bloomberg) -- In April, many of the top Democratic presidential candidates eagerly lined up to co-sponsor Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All bill -- a vast restructuring of the U.S. health-care system that would go far beyond Obamacare.Senators Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand, along with Representatives Tim Ryan and Tulsi Gabbard, all co-sponsored the bill with an eye toward the upcoming presidential primaries.“It was a recognition that the center of gravity in the party has moved in a much more progressive direction,” said Jeff Weaver, a senior adviser to the Sanders campaign. “Many candidates wanted to position themselves with the vast majority of Democratic primary voters by supporting real Medicare for All.”But as this week’s Democratic debates in Detroit illustrated, many of those initial co-sponsors, fearful of blowback from voters -- particularly those who have satisfactory private health insurance they’re reluctant to give up for something unknown, as they would have to under Sanders’s plan -- have begun backing away.Sanders’s Medicare For All would expand to all American residents the government-run health insurance program that’s covered senior citizens and certain other people for over 50 years. But as the costs and disruptions of the plan have come into focus, Medicare for All has emerged as the major fault line in the Democratic presidential primary.Top IssueHealth-care coverage consistently ranks as the top issue for Democrats and helped drive the party’s electoral gains in 2018. But polls show that voters harbor deep concerns about the possible disruption from a policy as far-reaching as Sanders has proposed.The two-night gathering in Detroit made clear that the biggest fight in Democratic politics right now is whether the party should press ahead with remaking the health care system, which accounts for 18% of U.S. gross domestic spending, or instead pursue more limited reforms along the lines of front-runner Joe Biden’s proposal to “build on Obamacare,” the signature legislative achievement of President Barack Obama.“At the level of the bumper sticker or talking points, proposals are very popular, but when you start filling in the details and the trade-offs become clear, it becomes more apparent that there are losers as well as winners,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “At the bumper sticker level, it seems that everyone is a winner.”A PBS NewsHour/Marist poll of U.S. adults conducted July 15-17 highlighted the Democrats’ dilemma. It found that while 70% of respondents favor a Medicare for All option, only 41% support doing away with private health insurance. A recent tracking poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed overall favorability for a Medicare for All system dropped to 51% in July from 56% in April. It also found that more Democrats, 55%, prefer to expand coverage by bolstering the Affordable Care Act than the 39% who believe in replacing Obamacare with a Medicare for All system.During the debates, Booker and Gillibrand both dodged questions about the role of private insurance under a Medicare for All regime. Instead, they sought to re-frame the conversation about health care in broader terms, drawing a contrast between Democrats and Republicans.“This pitting progressives against moderates, saying one is unrealistic and the other doesn’t care enough, that to me is dividing our party and demoralizing us in face of the real enemy here,” Booker said. Forest Versus TreesGillibrand said the intra-party squabbling risked “losing the forest through the trees.”Harris, in particular, has struggled to stick to a clear position on Medicare for All. The California senator was the first Democrat to co-sponsor Sanders’ bill and raised her hand when moderators at the June debates asked which candidates would be comfortable abolishing private health insurance. Harris later backtracked, saying she’d misheard the question.“She violated a rule I’ve promulgated in politics: if you’re caught in a bind and can’t think of any way out of it, don’t say something that no one will believe,” said Barney Frank, the former Democratic representative from Massachusetts, who’s not endorsed a presidential candidate for 2020.On July 29 Harris introduced her own, less ambitious Medicare for All plan that also allows private insurance coverage and would be phased in over a decade.Kate Bedingfield, a spokeswoman for former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign, assailed it as a “have-it-every-which-way approach” that would raise middle class taxes. Biden amplified that charge during the debate by saying, “You can’t beat President Trump with double-talk on this plan.”Valuable BrandHarris shot back that the Biden campaign was “probably confused because they’ve not read it.”Harris’s plan was also attacked from the left. Weaver said Harris was seeking to co-opt the Medicare for All “brand name” while offering her own, scaled-back plan. “It’s not Medicare for All -- at all,” Weaver said.The most extreme flip-flop belongs to Ryan, who’s still listed as a co-sponsor of Sanders’ Medicare for All legislation in the House but laced into the plan during Tuesday night’s debate. The next day, Ryan continued to warn about the political consequences of eliminating private insurance.“I think we’d lose 48 states, and I’m having a hard time figuring out what the two states are we’re going to win if our lead message is, ‘We’re going to confiscate health care from people,’” he said.Aly Javery, a spokeswoman for Ryan’s campaign, said he remained a cosponsor of Sanders’s plan despite his misgivings because Ryan would like to see the country move toward a Medicare for All system.‘Sucking Value Out’Warren, who hesitated to say she wanted to completely eliminate private insurance in the early months of her campaign, has since leaned into Sanders’ vision of a single-payer Medicare for All system that eliminates private insurance.“Every developed country on earth has moved to a single-payer system because it produces better outcomes at lower cost,” Warren said in a July 17 interview with Bloomberg Businessweek. “The markets, they’re sucking value out without delivering the health care we need.”But even Warren has shied away from acknowledging that a Medicare for All system would raise taxes on the middle class, which Sanders admits. Asked twice by debate moderators in Detroit if the plan she’s endorsed would raise middle class taxes, Warren dodged by replying that “total costs will go down” to obtain health coverage.With the presidential field expected to narrow in the coming weeks as low-performing candidates potentially drop out before the September debates, the health-care discussion will come into sharper focus as proponents and critics of Sanders’ Medicare for All plan meet on a single stage.Even as many of the original sponsors back away, Democratic strategists worry how a nominee like Sanders or Warren, who support the most ambitious version of Medicare for All, would fare in the general election.“Medicare for All’s biggest drawback is that it destroys choice and that it takes away private health insurance from people who have it and like it,” said Bob Shrum, a veteran Democratic strategist who now runs the Center for the Political Future at the University of Southern California.“You could turn an issue that works for Democrats around into an issue that hurts Democrats by telling tens of millions or 100 million people who may like the insurance they have now that they’re going to go into something unknown.”To contact the reporters on this story: Tyler Pager in Washington at [email protected];Joshua Green in Washington at [email protected] contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at [email protected], Ros KrasnyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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New story in Politics from Time: Trump Is Trying to End Obamacare in the Middle of a Pandemic. That’s a Huge Gift to Biden

Between the protests and the pandemic, you’d be forgiven for forgetting that the Affordable Care Act is still in limbo. But the events of the last week have set the stage for Democrats and Republicans to fight a 2020 rematch of the battle over health care coverage: between the party that giveth, and the party that taketh away.

The Trump Administration asked the Supreme Court on June 25 to overturn the law known as Obamacare, joining a group of Republican attorneys general in arguing that Congress effectively made the ACA unconstitutional in 2017 when it zeroed out the individual mandate. The ACA has survived two previous Supreme Court challenges, including a 5-4 ruling upholding the law in 2012, when Chief Justice John Roberts ruled the individual mandate was constitutional under Congress’s power to levy taxes. Now the law faces an existential legal threat for the third time in its 10-year history. “The entire ACA thus must fall with the individual mandate,” Solicitor General Noel Francisco wrote in the Administration’s brief.

The Trump Administration’s challenge to the law comes as the coronavirus pandemic has left more than 120,000 Americans dead and thrown millions off the health care rolls due to lost jobs. If the court decides to overturn the law, the impact would ripple through nearly every part of the U.S. health system. Dismantling the law would worsen racial disparities and make it harder for sick people to get new coverage at a time when COVID-19 is disproportionately impacting Black and Latino Americans and leaving hundreds of thousands with potentially lasting health problems. It would also leave 23 million Americans without health coverage, according to an analysis by the liberal Center for American Progress think tank.

The Supreme Court has not said when it will hear the ACA case, but oral arguments will likely take place this fall, as President Donald Trump and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden make their case to voters. Democrats believe Trump’s decision to elevate the fight over health care coverage will play to their advantage, just as it did in the 2018 midterms, when the party recaptured the House of Representatives with the help of Republicans’ attempts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.

“Everybody knows that Trump and the GOP’s attacks on health care were a driving force behind the energy that built the blue wave in 2018. Now Trump is fighting yet again to trash the Affordable Care Act and replace it with a shrug,” says Ezra Levin, co-founder of the liberal grassroots network Indivisible. “We welcome this political malpractice, and it makes it easy for Biden to simply stand against death and destruction—which is, you know, a winning campaign message.”

Biden previewed this message in a speech last week in Lancaster, Penn. “Perhaps most cruelly of all, if Donald Trump has his way, complications from COVID-19 could become a new pre-existing condition,” Biden said after a roundtable with Pennsylvania voters who said they had benefitted from the Affordable Care Act. He added that that without the ACA, lung scarring and heart damage from COVID-19 could make it difficult for survivors to get future coverage. “They would live their lives caught in a vise between Donald Trump’s twin legacies: his failure to protect the American people from the coronavirus, and his heartless crusade to take health care protections away from American families.”

The simplicity of the contrast is a gift to Biden. During the primary, Biden struggled at times articulate a winning message on health care, amid a massive intra-party squabble over whether or not to push for Medicare for All. Now he seems poised to run on the same playbook that helped Democrats win swing states in the midterms: arguing Republicans are trying to take away American’s health care, while he would protect it.

Pushing to overturn the ACA has been a Republican goal ever since the law first passed in 2010, and opposition to the health care law fueled the rise of the Tea Party during the Obama presidency. But in recent years, attempts to gut Obamacare have benefited Democrats more than Republicans, as more and more Americans have gotten used to the law’s protections. A June poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 53% of Americans trusted Biden to handle health care policy, compared to just 38% who trusted Donald Trump.

One of the reasons that Republicans have historically fought so hard to avoid implementing new social programs is that once a benefit is given to the American people, it becomes very difficult to take it away. While it was initially unpopular, Americans have warmed up to to the Affordable Care Act: by its 10-year anniversary, 55% of Americans viewed Obamacare favorably, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, an all-time high.

The pandemic has only underscored its importance. Of the nearly 27 million people who relinquished health insurance when they lost their jobs through early May, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that 48% were eligible for coverage through Medicaid, which was expanded under the ACA, and another 31% were eligible for subsidies to help them afford new plans on the marketplace.

People have been taking advantage of these options. The Trump Administration’s brief came the same day as a report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that showed 487,000 Americans bought insurance by using the special enrollment period that opens when individuals lose their health coverage, and most states that run their own marketplaces have also created new COVID-19 special enrollment periods to allow more people to get covered.

Without the ACA, fewer people would be eligible for coverage through Medicaid and many more low- and middle-income families would struggle to buy insurance. Protections for those with pre-existing conditions would disappear, as would requirements that insurance companies sell to anyone who wants it and charge the same price to anyone who buys similar insurance.

All of this would be worse for people of color. The ACA significantly narrowed racial and ethnic coverage gaps in the years after it was passed, though gains slowed when Trump was elected in 2016. But now that Black, Hispanic and Native Americans are dying and being hospitalized from COVID-19 at higher rates than white Americans, doctors have emphasized that health coverage is more important than ever.

“Trump’s deadly move comes at a time when there is still so much work left to do. The Trump Administration’s own data this week showed that Black Americans are four times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19. That confirms long standing disparities we all were aware of,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who is leading the group of Democratic states fighting to preserve the ACA, told reporters on June 24. “Now is not the time to rip away our best tool to address very real and very deadly health disparities in our communities.”

Republicans have not put forward their own alternative health care plan to replace the ACA. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar recently told CNN’s Jake Tapper that the Administration would protect those with preexisting conditions but that specifics were still up in the air. “The exact details will be dependent on the—frankly, the composition of Congress if and when the Supreme Court does strike down all or a large part of Obamacare,” Azar said.

But voters don’t respond well to plans to take away Americans’ health care without a concrete plan to replace it. They may balk even more during a global pandemic. And Biden will make sure voters don’t forget which party is fighting to gut health care coverage, and which side is fighting to protect it.

By Abigail Abrams and Charlotte Alter on June 29, 2020 at 06:02PM

(Bloomberg) -- In April, many of the top Democratic presidential candidates eagerly lined up to co-sponsor Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All bill -- a vast restructuring of the U.S. health-care system that would go far beyond Obamacare.Senators Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand, along with Representatives Tim Ryan and Tulsi Gabbard, all co-sponsored the bill with an eye toward the upcoming presidential primaries.“It was a recognition that the center of gravity in the party has moved in a much more progressive direction,” said Jeff Weaver, a senior adviser to the Sanders campaign. “Many candidates wanted to position themselves with the vast majority of Democratic primary voters by supporting real Medicare for All.”But as this week’s Democratic debates in Detroit illustrated, many of those initial co-sponsors, fearful of blowback from voters -- particularly those who have satisfactory private health insurance they’re reluctant to give up for something unknown, as they would have to under Sanders’s plan -- have begun backing away.Sanders’s Medicare For All would expand to all American residents the government-run health insurance program that’s covered senior citizens and certain other people for over 50 years. But as the costs and disruptions of the plan have come into focus, Medicare for All has emerged as the major fault line in the Democratic presidential primary.Top IssueHealth-care coverage consistently ranks as the top issue for Democrats and helped drive the party’s electoral gains in 2018. But polls show that voters harbor deep concerns about the possible disruption from a policy as far-reaching as Sanders has proposed.The two-night gathering in Detroit made clear that the biggest fight in Democratic politics right now is whether the party should press ahead with remaking the health care system, which accounts for 18% of U.S. gross domestic spending, or instead pursue more limited reforms along the lines of front-runner Joe Biden’s proposal to “build on Obamacare,” the signature legislative achievement of President Barack Obama.“At the level of the bumper sticker or talking points, proposals are very popular, but when you start filling in the details and the trade-offs become clear, it becomes more apparent that there are losers as well as winners,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “At the bumper sticker level, it seems that everyone is a winner.”A PBS NewsHour/Marist poll of U.S. adults conducted July 15-17 highlighted the Democrats’ dilemma. It found that while 70% of respondents favor a Medicare for All option, only 41% support doing away with private health insurance. A recent tracking poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed overall favorability for a Medicare for All system dropped to 51% in July from 56% in April. It also found that more Democrats, 55%, prefer to expand coverage by bolstering the Affordable Care Act than the 39% who believe in replacing Obamacare with a Medicare for All system.During the debates, Booker and Gillibrand both dodged questions about the role of private insurance under a Medicare for All regime. Instead, they sought to re-frame the conversation about health care in broader terms, drawing a contrast between Democrats and Republicans.“This pitting progressives against moderates, saying one is unrealistic and the other doesn’t care enough, that to me is dividing our party and demoralizing us in face of the real enemy here,” Booker said. Forest Versus TreesGillibrand said the intra-party squabbling risked “losing the forest through the trees.”Harris, in particular, has struggled to stick to a clear position on Medicare for All. The California senator was the first Democrat to co-sponsor Sanders’ bill and raised her hand when moderators at the June debates asked which candidates would be comfortable abolishing private health insurance. Harris later backtracked, saying she’d misheard the question.“She violated a rule I’ve promulgated in politics: if you’re caught in a bind and can’t think of any way out of it, don’t say something that no one will believe,” said Barney Frank, the former Democratic representative from Massachusetts, who’s not endorsed a presidential candidate for 2020.On July 29 Harris introduced her own, less ambitious Medicare for All plan that also allows private insurance coverage and would be phased in over a decade.Kate Bedingfield, a spokeswoman for former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign, assailed it as a “have-it-every-which-way approach” that would raise middle class taxes. Biden amplified that charge during the debate by saying, “You can’t beat President Trump with double-talk on this plan.”Valuable BrandHarris shot back that the Biden campaign was “probably confused because they’ve not read it.”Harris’s plan was also attacked from the left. Weaver said Harris was seeking to co-opt the Medicare for All “brand name” while offering her own, scaled-back plan. “It’s not Medicare for All -- at all,” Weaver said.The most extreme flip-flop belongs to Ryan, who’s still listed as a co-sponsor of Sanders’ Medicare for All legislation in the House but laced into the plan during Tuesday night’s debate. The next day, Ryan continued to warn about the political consequences of eliminating private insurance.“I think we’d lose 48 states, and I’m having a hard time figuring out what the two states are we’re going to win if our lead message is, ‘We’re going to confiscate health care from people,’” he said.Aly Javery, a spokeswoman for Ryan’s campaign, said he remained a cosponsor of Sanders’s plan despite his misgivings because Ryan would like to see the country move toward a Medicare for All system.‘Sucking Value Out’Warren, who hesitated to say she wanted to completely eliminate private insurance in the early months of her campaign, has since leaned into Sanders’ vision of a single-payer Medicare for All system that eliminates private insurance.“Every developed country on earth has moved to a single-payer system because it produces better outcomes at lower cost,” Warren said in a July 17 interview with Bloomberg Businessweek. “The markets, they’re sucking value out without delivering the health care we need.”But even Warren has shied away from acknowledging that a Medicare for All system would raise taxes on the middle class, which Sanders admits. Asked twice by debate moderators in Detroit if the plan she’s endorsed would raise middle class taxes, Warren dodged by replying that “total costs will go down” to obtain health coverage.With the presidential field expected to narrow in the coming weeks as low-performing candidates potentially drop out before the September debates, the health-care discussion will come into sharper focus as proponents and critics of Sanders’ Medicare for All plan meet on a single stage.Even as many of the original sponsors back away, Democratic strategists worry how a nominee like Sanders or Warren, who support the most ambitious version of Medicare for All, would fare in the general election.“Medicare for All’s biggest drawback is that it destroys choice and that it takes away private health insurance from people who have it and like it,” said Bob Shrum, a veteran Democratic strategist who now runs the Center for the Political Future at the University of Southern California.“You could turn an issue that works for Democrats around into an issue that hurts Democrats by telling tens of millions or 100 million people who may like the insurance they have now that they’re going to go into something unknown.”To contact the reporters on this story: Tyler Pager in Washington at [email protected];Joshua Green in Washington at [email protected] contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at [email protected], Ros KrasnyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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Democratic 2020 Candidates Inch Away From Medicare for All

(Bloomberg) -- In April, many of the top Democratic presidential candidates eagerly lined up to co-sponsor Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All bill -- a vast restructuring of the U.S. health-care system that would go far beyond Obamacare.Senators Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand, along with Representatives Tim Ryan and Tulsi Gabbard, all co-sponsored the bill with an eye toward the upcoming presidential primaries.“It was a recognition that the center of gravity in the party has moved in a much more progressive direction,” said Jeff Weaver, a senior adviser to the Sanders campaign. “Many candidates wanted to position themselves with the vast majority of Democratic primary voters by supporting real Medicare for All.”But as this week’s Democratic debates in Detroit illustrated, many of those initial co-sponsors, fearful of blowback from voters -- particularly those who have satisfactory private health insurance they’re reluctant to give up for something unknown, as they would have to under Sanders’s plan -- have begun backing away.Sanders’s Medicare For All would expand to all American residents the government-run health insurance program that’s covered senior citizens and certain other people for over 50 years. But as the costs and disruptions of the plan have come into focus, Medicare for All has emerged as the major fault line in the Democratic presidential primary.Top IssueHealth-care coverage consistently ranks as the top issue for Democrats and helped drive the party’s electoral gains in 2018. But polls show that voters harbor deep concerns about the possible disruption from a policy as far-reaching as Sanders has proposed.The two-night gathering in Detroit made clear that the biggest fight in Democratic politics right now is whether the party should press ahead with remaking the health care system, which accounts for 18% of U.S. gross domestic spending, or instead pursue more limited reforms along the lines of front-runner Joe Biden’s proposal to “build on Obamacare,” the signature legislative achievement of President Barack Obama.“At the level of the bumper sticker or talking points, proposals are very popular, but when you start filling in the details and the trade-offs become clear, it becomes more apparent that there are losers as well as winners,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “At the bumper sticker level, it seems that everyone is a winner.”A PBS NewsHour/Marist poll of U.S. adults conducted July 15-17 highlighted the Democrats’ dilemma. It found that while 70% of respondents favor a Medicare for All option, only 41% support doing away with private health insurance. A recent tracking poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed overall favorability for a Medicare for All system dropped to 51% in July from 56% in April. It also found that more Democrats, 55%, prefer to expand coverage by bolstering the Affordable Care Act than the 39% who believe in replacing Obamacare with a Medicare for All system.During the debates, Booker and Gillibrand both dodged questions about the role of private insurance under a Medicare for All regime. Instead, they sought to re-frame the conversation about health care in broader terms, drawing a contrast between Democrats and Republicans.“This pitting progressives against moderates, saying one is unrealistic and the other doesn’t care enough, that to me is dividing our party and demoralizing us in face of the real enemy here,” Booker said. Forest Versus TreesGillibrand said the intra-party squabbling risked “losing the forest through the trees.”Harris, in particular, has struggled to stick to a clear position on Medicare for All. The California senator was the first Democrat to co-sponsor Sanders’ bill and raised her hand when moderators at the June debates asked which candidates would be comfortable abolishing private health insurance. Harris later backtracked, saying she’d misheard the question.“She violated a rule I’ve promulgated in politics: if you’re caught in a bind and can’t think of any way out of it, don’t say something that no one will believe,” said Barney Frank, the former Democratic representative from Massachusetts, who’s not endorsed a presidential candidate for 2020.On July 29 Harris introduced her own, less ambitious Medicare for All plan that also allows private insurance coverage and would be phased in over a decade.Kate Bedingfield, a spokeswoman for former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign, assailed it as a “have-it-every-which-way approach” that would raise middle class taxes. Biden amplified that charge during the debate by saying, “You can’t beat President Trump with double-talk on this plan.”Valuable BrandHarris shot back that the Biden campaign was “probably confused because they’ve not read it.”Harris’s plan was also attacked from the left. Weaver said Harris was seeking to co-opt the Medicare for All “brand name” while offering her own, scaled-back plan. “It’s not Medicare for All -- at all,” Weaver said.The most extreme flip-flop belongs to Ryan, who’s still listed as a co-sponsor of Sanders’ Medicare for All legislation in the House but laced into the plan during Tuesday night’s debate. The next day, Ryan continued to warn about the political consequences of eliminating private insurance.“I think we’d lose 48 states, and I’m having a hard time figuring out what the two states are we’re going to win if our lead message is, ‘We’re going to confiscate health care from people,’” he said.Aly Javery, a spokeswoman for Ryan’s campaign, said he remained a cosponsor of Sanders’s plan despite his misgivings because Ryan would like to see the country move toward a Medicare for All system.‘Sucking Value Out’Warren, who hesitated to say she wanted to completely eliminate private insurance in the early months of her campaign, has since leaned into Sanders’ vision of a single-payer Medicare for All system that eliminates private insurance.“Every developed country on earth has moved to a single-payer system because it produces better outcomes at lower cost,” Warren said in a July 17 interview with Bloomberg Businessweek. “The markets, they’re sucking value out without delivering the health care we need.”But even Warren has shied away from acknowledging that a Medicare for All system would raise taxes on the middle class, which Sanders admits. Asked twice by debate moderators in Detroit if the plan she’s endorsed would raise middle class taxes, Warren dodged by replying that “total costs will go down” to obtain health coverage.With the presidential field expected to narrow in the coming weeks as low-performing candidates potentially drop out before the September debates, the health-care discussion will come into sharper focus as proponents and critics of Sanders’ Medicare for All plan meet on a single stage.Even as many of the original sponsors back away, Democratic strategists worry how a nominee like Sanders or Warren, who support the most ambitious version of Medicare for All, would fare in the general election.“Medicare for All’s biggest drawback is that it destroys choice and that it takes away private health insurance from people who have it and like it,” said Bob Shrum, a veteran Democratic strategist who now runs the Center for the Political Future at the University of Southern California.“You could turn an issue that works for Democrats around into an issue that hurts Democrats by telling tens of millions or 100 million people who may like the insurance they have now that they’re going to go into something unknown.”To contact the reporters on this story: Tyler Pager in Washington at [email protected];Joshua Green in Washington at [email protected] contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at [email protected], Ros KrasnyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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from Blogger https://ift.tt/338NCn8

(Bloomberg) -- In April, many of the top Democratic presidential candidates eagerly lined up to co-sponsor Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All bill -- a vast restructuring of the U.S. health-care system that would go far beyond Obamacare.Senators Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand, along with Representatives Tim Ryan and Tulsi Gabbard, all co-sponsored the bill with an eye toward the upcoming presidential primaries.“It was a recognition that the center of gravity in the party has moved in a much more progressive direction,” said Jeff Weaver, a senior adviser to the Sanders campaign. “Many candidates wanted to position themselves with the vast majority of Democratic primary voters by supporting real Medicare for All.”But as this week’s Democratic debates in Detroit illustrated, many of those initial co-sponsors, fearful of blowback from voters -- particularly those who have satisfactory private health insurance they’re reluctant to give up for something unknown, as they would have to under Sanders’s plan -- have begun backing away.Sanders’s Medicare For All would expand to all American residents the government-run health insurance program that’s covered senior citizens and certain other people for over 50 years. But as the costs and disruptions of the plan have come into focus, Medicare for All has emerged as the major fault line in the Democratic presidential primary.Top IssueHealth-care coverage consistently ranks as the top issue for Democrats and helped drive the party’s electoral gains in 2018. But polls show that voters harbor deep concerns about the possible disruption from a policy as far-reaching as Sanders has proposed.The two-night gathering in Detroit made clear that the biggest fight in Democratic politics right now is whether the party should press ahead with remaking the health care system, which accounts for 18% of U.S. gross domestic spending, or instead pursue more limited reforms along the lines of front-runner Joe Biden’s proposal to “build on Obamacare,” the signature legislative achievement of President Barack Obama.“At the level of the bumper sticker or talking points, proposals are very popular, but when you start filling in the details and the trade-offs become clear, it becomes more apparent that there are losers as well as winners,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “At the bumper sticker level, it seems that everyone is a winner.”A PBS NewsHour/Marist poll of U.S. adults conducted July 15-17 highlighted the Democrats’ dilemma. It found that while 70% of respondents favor a Medicare for All option, only 41% support doing away with private health insurance. A recent tracking poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed overall favorability for a Medicare for All system dropped to 51% in July from 56% in April. It also found that more Democrats, 55%, prefer to expand coverage by bolstering the Affordable Care Act than the 39% who believe in replacing Obamacare with a Medicare for All system.During the debates, Booker and Gillibrand both dodged questions about the role of private insurance under a Medicare for All regime. Instead, they sought to re-frame the conversation about health care in broader terms, drawing a contrast between Democrats and Republicans.“This pitting progressives against moderates, saying one is unrealistic and the other doesn’t care enough, that to me is dividing our party and demoralizing us in face of the real enemy here,” Booker said. Forest Versus TreesGillibrand said the intra-party squabbling risked “losing the forest through the trees.”Harris, in particular, has struggled to stick to a clear position on Medicare for All. The California senator was the first Democrat to co-sponsor Sanders’ bill and raised her hand when moderators at the June debates asked which candidates would be comfortable abolishing private health insurance. Harris later backtracked, saying she’d misheard the question.“She violated a rule I’ve promulgated in politics: if you’re caught in a bind and can’t think of any way out of it, don’t say something that no one will believe,” said Barney Frank, the former Democratic representative from Massachusetts, who’s not endorsed a presidential candidate for 2020.On July 29 Harris introduced her own, less ambitious Medicare for All plan that also allows private insurance coverage and would be phased in over a decade.Kate Bedingfield, a spokeswoman for former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign, assailed it as a “have-it-every-which-way approach” that would raise middle class taxes. Biden amplified that charge during the debate by saying, “You can’t beat President Trump with double-talk on this plan.”Valuable BrandHarris shot back that the Biden campaign was “probably confused because they’ve not read it.”Harris’s plan was also attacked from the left. Weaver said Harris was seeking to co-opt the Medicare for All “brand name” while offering her own, scaled-back plan. “It’s not Medicare for All -- at all,” Weaver said.The most extreme flip-flop belongs to Ryan, who’s still listed as a co-sponsor of Sanders’ Medicare for All legislation in the House but laced into the plan during Tuesday night’s debate. The next day, Ryan continued to warn about the political consequences of eliminating private insurance.“I think we’d lose 48 states, and I’m having a hard time figuring out what the two states are we’re going to win if our lead message is, ‘We’re going to confiscate health care from people,’” he said.Aly Javery, a spokeswoman for Ryan’s campaign, said he remained a cosponsor of Sanders’s plan despite his misgivings because Ryan would like to see the country move toward a Medicare for All system.‘Sucking Value Out’Warren, who hesitated to say she wanted to completely eliminate private insurance in the early months of her campaign, has since leaned into Sanders’ vision of a single-payer Medicare for All system that eliminates private insurance.“Every developed country on earth has moved to a single-payer system because it produces better outcomes at lower cost,” Warren said in a July 17 interview with Bloomberg Businessweek. “The markets, they’re sucking value out without delivering the health care we need.”But even Warren has shied away from acknowledging that a Medicare for All system would raise taxes on the middle class, which Sanders admits. Asked twice by debate moderators in Detroit if the plan she’s endorsed would raise middle class taxes, Warren dodged by replying that “total costs will go down” to obtain health coverage.With the presidential field expected to narrow in the coming weeks as low-performing candidates potentially drop out before the September debates, the health-care discussion will come into sharper focus as proponents and critics of Sanders’ Medicare for All plan meet on a single stage.Even as many of the original sponsors back away, Democratic strategists worry how a nominee like Sanders or Warren, who support the most ambitious version of Medicare for All, would fare in the general election.“Medicare for All’s biggest drawback is that it destroys choice and that it takes away private health insurance from people who have it and like it,” said Bob Shrum, a veteran Democratic strategist who now runs the Center for the Political Future at the University of Southern California.“You could turn an issue that works for Democrats around into an issue that hurts Democrats by telling tens of millions or 100 million people who may like the insurance they have now that they’re going to go into something unknown.”To contact the reporters on this story: Tyler Pager in Washington at [email protected];Joshua Green in Washington at [email protected] contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at [email protected], Ros KrasnyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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