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July 10, 2020 at 10:33 am #117826
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July 10, 2020 at 3:42 pm #117836znModeratorHow Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders joined forces to craft a bold, progressive agenda
Where Biden and Sanders’s policy-focused task forces go from here.https://www.vox.com/21317850/joe-biden-bernie-sanders-task-forces-progressive-agenda
Democratic presidential hopefuls former US Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders greet each other with an elbow bump as they arrive for the 11th Democratic Party 2020 presidential debate in a CNN Washington Bureau studio in Washington, DC, on March 15, 2020. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
A “unity” task force created by Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders has released a detailed set of policy recommendations for an incoming Biden administration, if he wins the November election.The administration it imagines — while not so progressive that it would embrace plans like Medicare-for-all or a jobs guarantee — would push for one of the largest public sector investments in decades. On Wednesday night, a senior campaign aide described Biden’s forthcoming economic plan as the “largest mobilization of public investments in procurement, infrastructure and [research and development] since World War II.”
It’s also a sign of Biden’s success in his ongoing push to unite the party: Numerous progressives on the task force chosen by Sanders told Vox they were happy with the mark they made on the final product.
The final report weighs in at over 100 pages, covering six key domestic policy areas: health care, the economy, climate change, criminal justice, education, and immigration.
Perhaps one of the most ambitious goals in the report, released Wednesday, is its commitment to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, plus more immediate benchmarks on climate — including a national goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions for all new buildings by 2030, and eliminating carbon pollution from power plants by 2035. The report also advocates the creation of a postal banking system to expand banking access for low-income families, and a ban on for-profit charter schools.
Progressives see a list of ideas “that goes beyond a status quo and goes beyond where Biden had campaigned in the primary,” Faiz Shakir, Sanders’s presidential campaign manager in 2020 and an integral member in creating the task forces, told Vox. “If you look across all these documents, you’re going to see a massive public sector investment in job creation.”
Numerous people Vox interviewed said Biden’s thinking about how bold to be is being pushed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the resulting economic woes, and the national conversation around systemic racism in America.
The convergence of all three things has pushed Biden to adopt the mantle of New Deal President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in recent months. On Thursday, Biden will deliver a speech unveiling the first plank of his campaign’s economic plan — expected to be its policy centerpiece.
“Much like FDR faced a structural crisis of economic insecurity, we’re at a similar place,” said Jared Bernstein, Biden’s former chief economic adviser in the Obama White House and a member of the economy task force. “The vice president recognizes that the extent of market failure here is not something you can fix with a Band-Aid, and that structural reforms are necessary.”
Biden and Sanders each praised the report in a joint statement on Wednesday.
“Though the end result is not what I or my supporters would have written alone, the task forces have created a good policy blueprint that will move this country in a much-needed progressive direction and substantially improve the lives of working families throughout our country,” Sanders said.
Biden said that President Donald Trump’s current response to the still-raging coronavirus in America means that “this election offers the chance to usher in a stronger, fairer economy that works for our working families.”
“I commend the Task Forces for their service and helping build a bold, transformative platform for our party and for our country,” Biden added.
What’s in the task force report — and what’s next for the task force
While it’s still unclear how many of these specific policy recommendations Biden’s campaign will adopt or work into their official policy, Democrats will know soon. The next concrete step for the task force report is for participants to advocate for it to be incorporated into the Democratic Party’s platform at the 2020 Democratic National Convention, which starts on August 17.But Sanders’s allies are clear that they don’t see the report as the final stop. They are lobbying Biden’s campaign to make sure any incoming transition team or administration contains a number of progressives.
“Phase two is continuing to shape and alter the Biden campaign’s positions,” Shakir told Vox. “We obviously are advocating for some of these members to be involved in transition planning. They send a symbolic message of what kind of administration are you trying to form. Here, you’ve got a progressive policy blueprint; now you need the progressive policy personnel to make it happen.”
Progressives told Vox they felt especially good about the wins they secured on two task forces: education and climate. On the economy task force, a big sticking point was a federal jobs guarantee program, which did not make it into the final list of recommendations (even though language saying the “government must enact measures to create jobs and jobs programs like those effectively used during the New Deal” did).
“Particularly on climate, I think we actually made far more progress than I think I even anticipated,” Sunrise Movement co-founder Varshini Prakash, who served on the climate task force and was a Sanders pick, told Vox. “In large part, that was because many of the advisers on climate on Biden’s side were also equally amenable to ambitious action as many people on the Bernie side.”
On education, American Federation of Teachers president and task force member Randi Weingarten, a Biden pick, told Vox she thinks the task force recommendations could encourage Biden’s education plan to go much further than either the Trump or Obama administration did.
“It’s a paradigm shift from the tearing down that you have right now with Trump and [Education Secretary Betsy] DeVos and their defunding, destabilizing, undermining philosophy,” Weingarten said. “But it’s also different than ‘accountability is the be-all, end-all’ of the Obama administration.”
While the Biden and Sanders teams may have started out in more agreement on climate, there was a clearly differing view on health care, with Sanders supporters in favor of Medicare-for-all and Biden’s campaign favoring a public option. And on issues like this — and criminal justice — the campaign didn’t move as far left.
“Though we have disagreements, I believe we’ve come together with something that reflects the average of where we stand and allows us to fight for a health care policy that would extend health care for millions of people,” said Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a single-payer advocate who was a Sanders pick for the health care task force.
“I feel they made a constructive contribution to that end,” said Chris Jennings, who was a health care policy adviser during the Obama administration and was a Biden pick for the health care task force. “I do believe the outcome is a stronger product and a more unified party.”
Here are some of the most notable policy recommendations it contains; the full report can be read here.
Economy
Broad public investment into infrastructure like America’s roads and bridges, in addition to retrofitting American homes and buildings to be more energy-efficient. Biden is expected to release more details and numbers on a green infrastructure plan in the coming weeks.
Encourage more publicly owned and municipal broadband networks.
Expand public and private caregiving jobs in health care, child care, and elder care; and increase compensation, benefits, bargaining power, and training in these jobs.
Create a postal banking system to expand banking access for low-income families.
Health careA public option plan administered by Medicare. This plan would cover a range of people, including low-income Americans who are not eligible for Medicaid, and anyone who elects to choose the public option from the Affordable Care Act exchanges. Those who currently get health insurance from their employers would also be eligible.
Medicare would directly negotiate the cost of prescription drug prices for all public and private purchasers.
The age to enroll in Medicare would be lowered from 65 to 60, and older Americans could choose between their employer-provided health insurance, Medicare, or a public option.
ClimateSet a national goal of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions for all new buildings by 2030, in an attempt to create a 100 percent clean building sector.
Commit to eliminating carbon pollution from power plants by 2035 through new technology-neutral standards for clean energy and energy efficiency, including the installation of 500 million solar panels and 60,000 made-in-America wind turbines.
Commit that all jobs in the clean energy economy will be unionized.
EducationEstablish universal prekindergarten for 3- and 4-year-olds.
Ensure early childhood educators have the right to organize and collectively bargain.
Triple Title I funding and fully fund the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act.
Ban for-profit charter schools, and appoint a federal task force or committee to study the effects of charter schools on public education.
Criminal justiceCreate a federal civilian corps of unarmed first responders including as social workers, EMTs, and trained mental health professionals to handle nonviolent emergencies in communities, so as to cut down on the use of police in those situations.
Reduce the militarization of police by reinstating a rule to limit the sale and transfer of military weapons to police departments and domestic law enforcement agencies.
Decriminalize marijuana and legalize medical marijuana at the federal level; the report recommends individual states have the discretion to legalize recreational marijuana use.
End the use of private prisons and detention centers, including for immigration-related offenses.
ImmigrationTerminate the Trump administration’s discriminatory travel and immigration bans.
Extend Affordable Care Act benefits to DREAMERs, immigrants with temporary legal status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
Support legislation to treat the spouses and children of green card holders as immediate relatives and end family separation, and work with Congress to eliminate the 10-year waiting period for waivers to the permanent bars that keep families separated.
Support the Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights to give immigrant workers in the US expanded rights.July 10, 2020 at 3:44 pm #117837znModeratorWhat’s Missing From the Biden-Bernie Task Force Plan? Medicare for All.
The recommendations are an improvement on Biden’s previous healthcare plans, but a public option won’t cut it. We need free, universal coverage.However beefy a public option turns out to be, there are things it can never do.
On Wednesday, the “unity task forces” set up by presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden rolled out a set of policy recommendations for the candidate, and, by extension, for the party writ large. Launched in May, the group behind the proposed platform was comprised of a core of establishment-aligned politicos as well as allies of Bernie Sanders, the primary’s runner-up whose campaign advanced an agenda squarely to the left of Biden.
While the task forces provided recommendations on issues ranging from climate change to criminal justice, the healthcare group attracted much attention as observers wondered how the group would square the wide gap between Sanders’ unwavering calls for a single-payer Medicare for All system, and Biden’s commitment to maintaining the private insurance system enshrined by the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
Unsurprisingly, the task force did not endorse Medicare for All, which would essentially liquidate the existing version of private health insurance and replace it with a single public system that covers everyone and provides all necessary and effective care free from the point of use. But the presence of former Michigan gubernatorial candidate and single-payer advocate Abdul El-Sayed as well as Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—who each endorsed Sanders, and the latter of whom is the lead sponsor of the Medicare for All bill in the House—was evident in more left-leaning measures than Biden has previously embraced. If the healthcare platform as presented were to be fully implemented under a future President Biden, it would amount to a significant improvement on the status quo—albeit with persistent gaps that can’t be resolved without abolishing private health insurance as it’s currently constituted.
The recommendations front-load a temporary phase of coronavirus-related emergency measures, many of which have emerged as consensus demands from Democrats—including free coronavirus testing irrespective of immigration status, federally-bankrolled expansion of contract tracing, and a period of 100% premium subsidies for those eligible for COBRA coverage throughout the duration of the pandemic. The document also calls for a special enrollment period for ACA marketplaces, which will include a stopgap low-fee platinum option for people who run out of, or don’t qualify for, several months of full COBRA subsidies.
More broadly, the task force seeks to reinvest in critical public health infrastructure at the local and state level, much of which was financially hollowed out during the Great Recession and has been left in disrepair since. It also calls for permitting Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices, funding for research into racial health inequities, repealing the Hyde amendment and securing protections for LGBTQ people that were rolled back under President Trump.
The task force also advances a blueprint for a public option, which includes critical details that gesture toward left-wing activist pressure, as well as ambiguities that could bolster the sort of profit-seeking gamesmanship that renders the current system so dysfunctional.
For starters, the proposal hints that the public option may actually be a set of options, à la Medicare, which offers “consumer choice” while in practice curbing access to care while lining insurers’ pockets. Still, according to the proposal, at least one public option plan available on the marketplaces must be publicly administered and have zero deductibles, which is far preferable to the kind of privately-administered “public option advantage” plans these recommendations leave the door open to. The public option, as laid out here, would also be extended for zero premiums to individuals who qualify for Medicaid but live in non-expansion states, automatically enroll low-income people who earn too much for Medicaid, and be available as an alternative to employer-based coverage. Meanwhile, the Medicare eligibility age will be lowered from 65 to 60, and barriers will be lowered for states seeking waivers to build state-based single-payer programs.
All of these changes would be an improvement upon the healthcare system as it exists now, an abysmally low bar that Republicans are nonetheless desperate to limbo beneath. In the wake of their unsuccessful attempts to repeal and replace the ACA in 2017, the GOP has consistently chipped away at the law however possible, through pushing Medicaid work requirements, bottoming out budgets for navigators and advertising to help inform and guide patients through enrollment, and loosening restrictions on short-term junk plans. Even more gravely, the Trump administration recently encouraged the Supreme Court to strike down the entire ACA.
But assessing just how much Biden’s task force’s plan would improve the lives of patients depends on details we simply don’t have. The proposal stipulates that premiums will be capped at 8.5% of income (more for a family), which could potentially mean that a slate of relatively robust public option plans would force private plans to improve substantially to compete. Or, more likely, private insurers could take a cue from Medicare Advantage and find ways to cherry-pick healthier patients while off-loading sicker ones onto the public program.
Cost-sharing is also partially unresolved—a public option plan with zero deductibles, for example, may well entail higher copays and coinsurance, perhaps going so far as to foist enrollees into private supplemental plans parallel to “Medigap” coverage for Medicare recipients.
Furthermore, the crucial issue of provider networks goes unmentioned. As networks have narrowed in recent years with insurers trying to save money by covering fewer and fewer providers, many ACA plans have failed to adequately cover certain types of care, like mental health. Traditional Medicare, by contrast, doesn’t have networks and thus affords patients free choice of providers. What kinds of benefits and cost-sharing will be applied to which public option plans will make a world of difference—and will require even more expertise to suss out than the notoriously confusing ACA exchanges already do.
Ultimately, however beefy a public option turns out to be, there are things it can never do. By offering one more insurance product to a list of several others—even if it’s the best of the bunch—the public option does little to alleviate the misery of navigating the administrative quagmire endemic to our healthcare system. It still leaves gaps for patients to fall into, and forces them to beg claims assessors for coverage by phone. And it still casts us as healthcare consumers, shopping for the best-valued access to a foundational human need that shouldn’t be commodified to begin with.
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