Now they tell us

Premature anti-fascists, via The Typescript.

Not sorry to see they're aware of the magic wand problem, but kind of annoyed that they let Elizabeth Warren take all the heat for acknowledging it first, then start admitting it weeks later.

— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) February 18, 2020

In fact downright pissed off, as I start to think about it, given that the heat was coming primarily from them, and has gone on for the whole three months since 15 November, when Warren finally explained, after tons of pressure to which the Sanders camp was never subjected, that her method for achieving Medicare For All was going to take some time to implement,

beginning with passing a bill at the start of her presidency that would create a new government health plan that would cover children and people with lower incomes for free, while allowing others to join the plan if they choose. It’s a particularly expansive version of a public option.

Only later, in her third year in the White House, does Warren say she would pursue Medicare-for-all legislation that would actually prohibit private health insurance, as would be required for the single-payer program that she says she, like Bernie Sanders, wants.

Which I loved, of course, as evidence that she really did have a plan for that, that she meant to achieve it, not just represent it, like a totem animal, as a branding element, the way the other guys did, with Sanders's preposterous assertion that all it would take to pass the bill would be staging rallies in Kentucky, and the total absence of ideas on how the nation would transition into the new system. Not only did Warren chart a timetable for getting to the single-payer ideal, she had staged it in such a way as to ensure that even if she failed at any given point, the nation would still be better off in terms of healthcare accessibility than it had been at the time of her inauguration.

But not everybody loved it. Like Krystal Ball, writing for The Hill:

For the Record: M4A

I feel as if I may have been getting confusing lately on the subject of health care coverage, speaking positively about a "Medicare For All" model I've never liked that much, but then you have to ask, compared to what?

For instance, compared to the chaos that will commence if the Supreme Court finds for the plaintiff in Texas v. Azar (for which we should be getting a ruling from the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court sometime fairly soon) and the entire Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act is voided overnight, we won't have any ACA around to improve, and Medicare For All looks pretty good. Not that it's at all likely to happen. It would be a worse economic disruption than hard Brexit, and John Roberts wouldn't let it happen. And I don't think he could lay down some kind of structured settlement in which the ACA is gradually disassembled rather than being wiped out instantly; he'll just have to find it's constitutional, which is not that much of a stretch, because it clearly is constitutional.

Hi It's Stupid: Medicare For All

The Doctor's Visit. Jan Steen, 1663-65, via Hetkoen International.

Hi, it's Stupid to say you shouldn't call it Medicare For All just because it isn't Medicare. Or at least that was the upshot of a conversation with Nathan Newman, probably the smartest person I know on Rose Twitter, who was rosesplaining why I was wrong until I had to give up and come over here before he decided I was stupid for real.

So why use the brand name "Medicare"? This has bothered me from the start.

— Purview From the Bridge (@Yastreblyansky) July 31, 2019

That's why it gives me the willies. "Smart" isn't the first word I'd choose.

But seriously people are going to find out it isn't Medicare long before they get a chance to find out they like it.

— Purview From the Bridge (@Yastreblyansky) July 31, 2019