I wonder if we could get more agreement from people if the proposal involved selling Medicare through 3rd party companies. I.e. the public option could do what it does well, which is negotiate down prices with a large provider network, and the private companies could buy the plan wholesale and re-sell it, doing what they do well, providing customer service, putting things behind slick online portals, and customizing shit for enterprises. We'd all have cheaper healthcare and you could shop for insurance with the same kind of filters you use to buy wireless coverage or a bank--whose service sucks the least. I doubt the private companies would object. They'd get a free provider network and can focus on competing with each other on service, cost, and convenience.

Why don't the wealthy like to pay taxes?

You can SUPPORT Medicare for All all you want, but you CAN'T HAVE Medicare for all... not now anyway. You can't have it in the current climate of public opinion, trust in government, political structure and willingness to raise revenue. And you can't have it in the foreseeable intermediate term.

You can't have it without a sea change in sentiment and organization. You can't have it without holding the White House, and supermajorities in both houses of Congress -- and for more than just one term. Even then, it's conceivable you can't have it without a friendlier Supreme Court.

And even then you probably can't have it all in one bite, since opposition will be intense and dilatory/diversionary tactics will be artfully crafted and amply funded.

And you can't have it if it's strongest proponents balk at compromises and imperfections.

But you can whine forever about not having it,and keep undermining people who are reaching for improvements that might be in reach sometime soon, and might move the current patchwork in a universal direction.

Ron is right. Given the choice between putting Blue Shield in charge of my healthcare 100% of the time or the GOP 50% of the time, I choose Blue Shield, and it's not even close.

The people who want to condemn our elected leaders for not supporting single-payer ("Medicare for All") are probably much the same people who like to talk about how we have to reduce our carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 but who would balk at any substantive measures to combat climate change that might impinge on their lifestyles and freedom, in other words any substantive measures to combat climate change. You know who you are.

The shame of it all is that, rather than serving as a bargaining position, single-payer becomes a distraction from the real and at times painful improvements we can make to our health-care/health-insurance system, improvements which by and large move us closer along a continuum toward single-payer. I'm talking:
* Weaning America off the anachronistic oddity that is employer-provided health insurance. See @6 above.

* Offering a public option in insurance markets lacking competition.

* Strengthening the individual mandate.

* Addressing the stratospherically high cost of medical care in America relative to the rest of the industrialized world.

* Using the federal government's bargaining power to rein in drug prices.

Of course, Maria Cantwell is not going to be the spokesperson for any of these reforms because (except for that last one on drug prices) they involve telling the electorate something they don't want to hear. Just like she's not going to be the truth teller to tell it to us straight why "Medicare for All" is a waste of political energy.

Damn this past two years have taught me how dumb some on the Left are.

This enduring idea that what matters is not what you can do, but the opinion you hold, is simply stupidity embodied. Take a civics course. Read some history. Actually do some work to understand how politics works.

Bernie Sanders is leading in the Senate? I wish I didn't have to point out how bag-full-of-rocks dense this article is...well, you know what? I suppose I don't.

Medicare for all is not feasible because it's not affordable. Health care for all is a great concept, but under Medicare, the Medical Industrial Complex has excelled at providing the least amount of care for the most amount of money. It's like saying "Comcast for all." Universal internet access is great, but not through a system that would drive GDP through the roof.

We have all the tools to achieve equitable health care for all, we just need the nerve to socialize what needs to be considered a social good, just as much as water and electricity. Hospitals and nursing homes should be owned by, and managed for the benefit of, the people. Physicians and administrators will have to settle for salaries in the hundreds of thousands instead of millions. Drug makers will have to settle for annual profits in the millions instead of billions. Don't cry for them. They've had their run.

"Because she still believes Democrats can work with Republicans to fix Obamacare."

It's so inspirational that someone who apparently suffered a serious brain trauma erasing her memory of the last 9 years is still able to hold such an important job. But someone ought to catch her up on what the Republicans have been doing since Obama won his first presidential election.

@3- So the way to reach your goals is to not state them out loud, not work towards them, and compromise a lot with the people actively working in the other direction....Right. That sort of thinking is exactly why the Democrats have been losing power for decades while support for left wing positions has actually grown. Learn something from the recent past, please. You're giving the country to Trumpistas.

Basically, we're going to have Trump for 8 years.

Work with the gop? It is it about the gop that makes any dem think they'll work with em?

@9 -- State your goals? Sure.

Work TOWARDS them? Absolutely -- as opposed to sitting around complaining that you don't get them all at once.

Compromise? Yes. You might give some thought to the way the Right clambering back INCREMENTALLY from their 30's/40's Waterloo to their dominant position today.

The GOP is going to kill a lot of people in the near future, but it will be the nadir of their push back against the best achievement of industrial society in the post WW II period.

It is silly to suggest there is any other direction for the Democrats to go in after the twisted festival of cruelty and greed we are witnessing in Washington DC right now. Clearly Obamacare didn't go far enough, because all of its compromises made it vulnerable to exactly what the GOP are trying to do to it right now. Cantwell is a corporate Dem's corporate Dem. The rest of the party will push her along in the next few years - unless she envisions her future as awesome vacations with the Liebermans!

@13 or zenith, depending on your perspective....

I haven't voted for Cantwell since she gave Bush authority to invade Iraq. Washington deserves better. I hope someone gives her a run from the Left in 2018.

Why wont Cantwell support medicare for all? How much money does she get in donations from the medical industrial complex? (Following the money often reveals many answers in our complex political world.)

maybe she actually knows how shit works, and that idealist bullshit doesn't.

by all means, sandernistas, have sawant primary her, divide the left again, and have someone like bill bryant take the seat away. grow the fuck up. 2018 is about gaining the majority, even by 1 vote. we need cantwell.

Hey writer, you're really out of touch with public sentiment on Medicare For All, a.k.a. single payer:

"And despite all the enthusiasm on the Bernie-Warren-Jayapal end of the party, Medicare for All just isn't that popular yet. Though support is growing, a recent poll from Pew shows that 33 percent of Americans favor a single-payer system. A Morning Consult poll puts that number at 44 percent."

The first poll you mention says that government funded universal health care is overwhelmingly supported by the public - so how they got only 33 percent on single payer only means that people didn't understand the term. On the second poll you mention, you leave out the fact that this 44 percent represented a 'plurality of voters."

Didn't you read the articles you cited?

Not to mention that, single payer has LONG been supported by a majority of Americans. Before the ACA passed, single payer support polled nationally and consistently AT LEAST as high as 65% of the public as well as a majority of the medical profession, hundreds of labor and business groups, and all human rights organizations.

More recently than those polls you cite, single payer, polled in two separate polls - is much higher than both of those articles - most recently at over 80 percent of Democrats, a majority of independents, and now, a majority of Republican voters. Overall, public support is at 65%.

I wonder why you are misleading the public. The support is even higher in Washington State where caucuses went overwhelmingly with Bernie Sanders, not Hillary Clinton, because she sold out to the insurance and pharmaceuticals.

We are no longer supporting establishment Democrats who don't get on board the single payer train. Every country in the developed world has universal health care It's not radical - it's normal. What's radical is what we have this country - radically perverse. And if Maria Cantwell can't get behind it - then all of you poll-twisting b.s.'ers can fight the Republicans on your own.

We have nothing to lose but our chains. You, on the other hand, are no longer holding as many cards as you think..

P.S., Writer: 114 House Democrats are now signed on to John Conyer's bill for improved, expanded Medicare for All - HR 676. That's a MAJORITY of House Democrats supporting single payer universal health care. The clock is ticking on these House representatives in Washington State who STILL have not signed on while pretending to be oh-so-liberal. While their districts are overwhelmingly in support of improved, expanded Medicare For All. We see through your B.S.!

Did anyone ask her about voting against Amy Klobuchar and Bernie Sander's prescription drug importation bill?
She must have a good explanation why she decided instead to vote with Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton and Mitch McConnell....

Forsooth on all the hard-bitten, pragmatic political strategizing, as far as it goes. I mean, as if anybody posting here has any actual influence on Democratic strategy. Maria Cantwell is a pro politician and she's going to stake out the maximally advantageous position. There has to be some sort of pressure on her from the left or the only voices she'll ever hear are the corporate flacks who pay good money for access.

If the blog of a alt-weekly newpaper in one of the most liberal cities in the country isn't an appropriate venue for pressure from the left (however feeble it may be), then what is?

I support @18's comments:
"Every country in the developed world has universal health care.
It's not radical - it's normal. What's radical is what we have this country "

Corporate-controlled health care, e.g. the most expensive, least comprehensive healthcare.
And in the so-called "richest nation on Earth" too. It's not like we don't have the money.

Seriously, what are these fucks waiting for?
Oh, right, the real "third party" in this country, the corporations, got one of their own elected.

No, no. Cantwell won't come out in support of Medicare for All because she doesn't have to. Her seat is safe, so she can maintain the centrist position that Democrats can work with Republicans to find market-based solutions.

She could be challenged in a primary. She has enough pro-corporate skeletons in her closet (including being pro-TPPP) that a challenge from her left has good chances to rattle the cage.