The stunning Democratic shift on single-payer

Many thanks to the wild-eyed radical Senator from Vermont for dragging the Democratic Party into a winnable position.
In 2008, no leading Democratic presidential candidate backed single-payer. In 2020, all of them might.
For a bill that does not exist yet and whose details are not public, Bernie Sanders’s new single-payer health care bill sure is popular. First, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) announced her plans to co-sponsor it; then Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) joined in. According to reporting by my Vox colleague Jeff Stein, Cory Booker (D-NJ) has staff working with Sanders and others on formulating the bill. Warren, Sanders, Harris, and Booker are arguably the most famous and most-admired Democratic senators in the country among the party’s base; the betting markets give a 55 percent chance that one of them will be the 2020 nominee for president. Other contenders are getting on board with single-payer — or “Medicare for all,” where the federal government would provide health insurance for every American financed through taxes — as well. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) declared, “We should have Medicare for all,” at a rally against Republican attempts to roll back Obamacare. Meanwhile 117 House Democrats (over 60 percent of the caucus) have co-sponsored HR 676, the Expanded & Improved Medicare For All Act offered every Congress by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI). This is what an emerging party consensus looks like. Over time, some issues become so widely accepted within a party as to be a de facto requirement for anyone aspiring to lead it. No Democrat would run for president, or even for House or Senate minority leader, without supporting the DREAM Act. No Republican would try for a leadership position without supporting repeal of the estate tax.

Trump’s Secret Plan to Save DACA

Can this shit show get more ridiculous? Trump's lawless AG and magical elf Jeff Sessions, says it is all about following the law (as Joe Arpaio nods in the backround), and having Congress "act" (like that is going to happen.) Then the Republican President folds on that plan and says that he'll fix it in six months when Congress inevitably fails. WHAT THE HOLY FUCK?

Free Market Idiocy on Steroids

If every dollar of tax revenue collected from a successful business corresponds to a dollar decrease in potential economic growth, (and conservative "thinkers" tell us there is a direct correlation while reality tells us no such relationship exists), then the looming explosion in health insurance premiums that will ripple out of the destruction of the ACA should really hit the economy hard.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it will cut 90 percent of its budget for advertising Obamacare’s open enrollment period and will nearly cut in half the funding for hundreds of navigator groups across the country who provide in-person assistance to people signing up for health insurance. Former HHS officials and health care experts predict the sharply scaled-back outreach effort will significantly depress insurance signups this fall, especially among the young and healthy, causing premiums to skyrocket. “The people who are sick will navigate any obstacle in order to obtain insurance,” Josh Peck, the former chief marketing officer for HHS, told TPM. “They don’t need a reminder because their illness is their reminder every day. But healthy people need and respond to reminders, so this clearly will have a negative impact on the risk pool.”