Oh, Vox. Are your writers just young? Or intentionally deceptive?

[walkitout]

So I ran across this piece over at Vox.

http://www.vox.com/2016/2/3/10899790/single-payer-americare

I've gotten kind of interested in the health care proposals being batted around on the Democratic side for several reasons. (1) (Statistically) Nobody gives a fuck. There's a ton of polling being done about whether the American electorate cares about ACA/Obamacare/etc. this election cycle and they don't. So it's interesting that so much candidate time is devoted to it this cycle. (2) Vermont has abandoned single payer/Medicare for all, and Sanders is conspicuously not talking about that. (3) Any modification to ACA to extend coverage is likely to trigger middle class tax increases. And that may very well be a third rail at the moment.

This Vox article digs back into 2006 for a Pete Stark proposal. You can read the details. They don't matter. If you're kinda old, like me, and you were paying some attention to the first time we went round on health care with the Clintons, you are probably thinking, um, Pete Stark. Gimme a sec. There should be something in my memory about him, I just

OH WAIT THAT IS WHAT GOOGLE IS FOR

Pete Stark is a crazy asshole who sniped at health care from the left back in the 1990s.

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/28/business/hillary-clinton-s-potent-brain-trust-on-health-reform.html

http://articles.latimes.com/2014/mar/14/news/la-pn-clinton-documents-no-lunch-20140314

If you think that you are going to sell Clinton on a Pete Stark proposal, you are an idiot with a short memory. And HRC is a very smart woman with a long memory.

Give it up. We're gonna have ACA for a long, long while. And that's not such a bad thing.

Now if we can just convince the people over at Vox to start googling people before they go around blathering about their brilliant ideas, things could really improve.

ETA: I think it's okay to call Pete Stark names, because Pete Stark doesn't have any problem calling other people names.