Thread: So Buttigieg is finally out with his health care plan which is basically the Biden health care plan plus a few very good but minor additions, like a Japanese style retroactive enrollment to get de facto universal coverage and better OON solution 1/ peteforamerica.com/policies/healt…
My first thought is "why isnt this the Biden plan?" The changes Pete made are important but minor. They deal with the making sure every American is covered/not medical bankrupt problem. It makes the Biden team seem lazy and like they don't care 2/
My second thought is Pete plan is basically everything I said in 2010 ACA needed to be a minimum function health care system by international standards (at least quasi All-payer, public option, full subsidies, retroactive enrollment). All the issues were 100% obvious in 2010 3/
Biden plan would still leave us outside international norms in terms of health care protection, Pete's plan would move us into the pack at the bottom. 4/
Biggest different from Biden and Buttigieg is interestingly the rhetoric given how very similar their plans are. Biden claims his plan is a way to stop Medicare for All, Buttigieg claims his is a glide path to Medicare for All. This could just be rhetoric or not. 5/
One of the most interesting thing about a public option plan like Buttigieg is how theortically easy it would be for a state to go to de facto single payer if the Admin allowed (one reason I thought the lose of the 2010 Public Option was a huge betrayal) 6/
If Buttigieg is serious about his plan being a glide path to Medicare for All (which he could be lying) it would be easy to let a state ban all insurers but the Public Option, have all state employees on it, and make all state provider charge that rate. Basically single payer 7/
The state could even make a state run universal supplimental plan for the Public Option creating the no cost sharing vision of some Medicare for All activists. It doesn't seem a Biden admin would even pretend to allow something like that though 8/
