When it comes to Congress’s health care, money is no problem

One of the things that the current pandemic has exposed is the utter cruelty, inefficiency, and inadequacy of the private, employer-based health care system in the US. If you are well-to-do and don’t mind dealing with the tedious paperwork or have other people do it for you, this may not be a concern, because you can buy good health care. It turns out it is also not a problem if you are member of Congress since, as Lee Fang reports, they have an excellent system and in the recently passed pandemic stimulus bill, they quietly included additional funding for themselves. Even those Republicans who rail against any proposals that seek to provide universal health care are more than happy to take advantage of their tax-payer funded health care system. So is Democrat Nancy Pelosi, an adamant opponent of Medicare For All.
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If only there was a better health care system to deal with emergencies …

After relentlessly attacking the idea of a universal, single-payer, health care system such as Medicare For All, that Bernie Sanders has been pushing for so long against even the opposition of the Democratic party establishment, as a Utopian, pie-in-the-sky, fantasy that would bankrupt the country, the corporate media is suddenly realizing that such a system would have resulted in a much better and more coherent response to pandemics that the utterly inept, confusing, and chaotic system than what the current US system is able to provide.
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Medicare For All would boost wages and create new jobs

A new analysis shows that Bernie Sanders’s’ signature proposal of Medicare For All would be a net positive for the economy and jobs.

A new analysis of the economic impact of a Medicare for All health care reform, like the signature policy proposal of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, suggests that such a plan would not only increase wages for workers but also create additional jobs.
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John Oliver on Medicare For All

He does an excellent job of explaining what it is and addresses the three main criticisms that opponents make against it: that it will cost too much, that it will increase wait times, and that it will eliminate choice. He also makes the important point that that while Bernie Sanders calls it Medicare For All, his proposal is actually much better than Medicare now, covering eyeglasses and dental needs and not requiring any premiums.

This is something that everyone should see so that they can better argue against those who criticize the proposal or pretend, like Pete Buttigieg, who claim that they have a better one, whose faults Oliver points out.

Medicare For All is generally popular

Despite Bernie Sanders coming a distant second to Joe Biden in South Carolina, his signature proposal of Medicare For All did well there, winning majority support, making it four in a row. Why it did not translate into votes for him in that state is unclear since Sanders’s landslide win in Nevada was boosted by the popularity of Medicare For All. It will be interesting to see what role it plays in the Super Tuesday contests.

In Nevada, as in both Iowa and New Hampshire, about 6 out every 10 voters in both entrance and exit polls said they supported eliminating private insurance and creating a single-payer system like the one Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren both support. Among Nevadans who supported a single-payer plan, according to entrance polls from Edison Research, 49% said they were backing Sanders — more than three times that of any other candidate. Even as the leaders of the powerful Culinary Union, the state’s largest, opted to publicly oppose Sanders’ Medicare for All plan without endorsing another candidate, he won 34% of caucus-goers from union households, and crushed other candidates among culinary workers specifically.

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Medicare For All sure looks like a winner

It seems like Bernie Sander’s’ landslide win in Nevada was boosted by the popularity of his signature proposal Medicare For All.

In Nevada, as in both Iowa and New Hampshire, about 6 out every 10 voters in both entrance and exit polls said they supported eliminating private insurance and creating a single-payer system like the one Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren both support. Among Nevadans who supported a single-payer plan, according to entrance polls from Edison Research, 49% said they were backing Sanders — more than three times that of any other candidate. Even as the leaders of the powerful Culinary Union, the state’s largest, opted to publicly oppose Sanders’ Medicare for All plan without endorsing another candidate, he won 34% of caucus-goers from union households, and crushed other candidates among culinary workers specifically.

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Every American should live for a while in a country that has a single-payer health system

Here is Jon Shore responding a year ago to someone who asked him the question: “How do countries that have a single payer system handle people with preexisting conditions and special needs specifically?”

Shore’s answer is very simple.

I am an American and have lived in 4 EU countries over the past 19 years. All of them have single payer systems. Most people in countries with single payer systems do not even know what a ‘pre-existing condition’ is or why it would matter. They are shocked when I explain it to them. The only person who needs to know your medical history is your doctor. If you or someone in your family has a special need then they get the special treatment necessary. It is really that simple.

As an American expat, even after all these years I still have a subconscious fear of telling a doctor about a pre-existing condition because it might raise my health insurance premium or cause me to lose my coverage. I have to remind myself that I live in a civilized country now and that my right to high quality healthcare is guaranteed no matter what. [Read more…]

All along, Sanders has been right and his critics wrong

One repeatedly finds the complaint among establishment media analysts that Bernie Sanders keeps saying the same things over and over, whether it be at debates, rallies, in interviews, or whatever. It seems like they want a candidate to be like a stand-up comedian, coming up with fresh material every so often and get bored by the same material, however important it might be.

It is true that Sanders stays relentlessly on message that health care is a basic human right and that the current levels of wealth inequality are obscene and about his proposals such as Medicare For All, free college, higher minimum wages, massive tax increases on the wealthy and corporations, and so on. Whenever he is asked about things that he thinks are distractions from his core message, he perfunctorily responds to it before immediately pivoting to the issues that he thinks are important. We saw that intense focus again last night which is why the consensus seems to be that he emerged from the debate unscathed by the attacks launched against him by everyone, while Michael Bloomberg seemed to be taken completely off-guard by a similar blitz.
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Investigative journalism that gets results

For the Christmas holiday, I thought I would post a good news story.

I am a financial supporter of the investigative journalism outfit ProPublica and today comes a news item that makes me glad that I am doing so. Some months ago, they had an expose of a nonprofit hospital affiliated with the Methodist church in Memphis, Tennessee that was suing poor people for not paying their bills, even going to the extent of garnishing their wages which is devastating for people who live paycheck to paycheck. The hospital was essentially using the courts as a collection agency by threatening people with severe legal penalties. Thanks to that expose, the hospital and the church was shamed into canceling the debts and in a follow up story today, we hear about the results, starting with the case of Danielle Robinson.
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The future Johnson-Trump deal following Brexit

Lee Fang of The Intercept writes that US health industry lobbyists are just waiting for a Conservative victory on Thursday to shred British consumer safeguards and raise drug prices as part of their demands in the trade deal that the US will agree upon with a Conservative government following Brexit.

Departing the EU could mean that British consumers would no longer be protected by broad EU-wide regulations on chemicals, food, and cosmetics, among other products. Several international corporate groups have pushed to ensure that in the event of Brexit, such safeguards are abandoned in exchange for a regulatory standard that conforms to the norms of the U.S.

Consultants working directly on the Brexit deal in London and in Washington, D.C., have asked to limit the ability of British regulators to set the price for pharmaceutical drugs, lift safety restrictions on pesticides and agricultural products, and constrain the ability for the U.K. to enact its own data privacy laws.
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Dean Baker, a senior economist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, noted in an email to The Intercept that such regulatory demands by industry are “always part of trade deals.” Baker said that U.S. trade to the U.K. is relatively trivial, at around 2.5 percent of GDP, making incentives for rushing a trade agreement relatively small.

“On the other hand,” Baker wrote, “paying higher prices for drugs and being unable to regulate the Internet is likely to impose very substantial costs.”

“A government weighing these factors carefully would almost certainly refuse a deal, but a Johnson government that made Brexit front and center is likely to feel strong political pressure to have a deal with the hope few people will pay much attention to the content,” Baker noted. “Johnson could tout the deal as a big success. People would only see the negative effects years down the road.”

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