People say we'll never get Medicare-For-All while McTurtle is Senate Majority Leader or while Trump is in the White House. True. And we'll never get it while Pelosi is Speaker. All those obstacles must be removedJust before Congress adjourned for another long holiday week, I asked Pramila Jayapal, who wrote the new and improved Medicare-For-All legislation (H.R. 1384), if there are any new cosponsors aside from Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) and David Price (D-NC), who were both reported last week-- numbers 109 and 110. Happily, she said there are several members getting closer and she was pretty sure there would be a few next week. But the opposition is ferocious. Since then, George Goehl asked at The Hill Who's Blocking Medicare-For-All? "Decades of corporate-friendly politics and policy," he wrote, "have decimated communities throughout the country. Centrist Democrats who have chosen corporate profits over people’s needs have aided and abetted this decimation. People are hungry for big ideas to improve their lives and to change the rules that serve only to make the rich richer."Big ideas? Well, Bernie has them; Elizabeth Warren has them. A few other presidential hopefuls are trying to glom onto them. But most of them come from corporate-friendly centrist groupings Goehl referred to, worst all, of course, being Status Quo Joe Biden, who has no ideas and no policies except that he should be president and that things were better before so we should move backwards. As for Medicare-For-All, that isn't something Biden would fight for and probably something he would fight tooth and nail to stop if-- God forbid-- he ever became president.Yes, Goehl wrote that "Nowhere is this hunger more apparent than in the demand for improved Medicare-for-All. During a hearing at the House Budget Committee this week it was also apparent that the center-right and their wealthy donors won’t go down without a fight when it comes to health care. With guns-a-blazing, they are out to block an incredibly successful and popular program: Medicare, from being improved, expanded and provided to everyone." Of all the 20-some-odd Democrats running for the presidential nomination, there is no one, at least not within reasonable reach of the prize-- more opposed to Medicare-For-All than Biden. He's as likely to help achieve it as any garden variety Republican.
Yet polling shows that across party lines, a majority of Americans are in favor of Medicare for All. And why not? Right now, nearly 30 million people in this country are uninsured; 40 million can’t afford health-care co-pays and deductibles and 45,000 die annually as a result of not having access to health care. [Note: a majority of ordinary people are in favor, but not a majority of the GOP's or Biden's campaign donors, the people who have underwritten their political careers for decades of ease and privilege.]Those reaping the excessive profits from our illnesses and injuries are in a panic. They’re laying all their chips on the table to make sure Medicare for All never becomes reality. It would mean the end of private insurance companies that profit mightily off the most costly and least effective health-care system in the industrialized world.So, to continue to rake in their profits, they’ve created the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, a partnership of corporate hospitals, insurance and drug companies. They must have a lot to lose: last year alone, the group spent $143 million developing attack ads and launching fear campaigns to kill Medicare for All.It’s time to admit it, while nearly every modern country in the world provides quality, accessible health care for free or very inexpensively to their citizens, the United States stands alone in its willingness to let corporations suck the last pennies out of sick or injured people.Well, the jig is up. Decades under a corporate-run private health insurance system have proven that we can’t rely on profiteers to provide access to quality health care. We need a publicly held system that is accountable to the people who rely on it. We are able to do so and save trillions of dollars over the next decade.Medicare for All would reduce national health-care spending by anywhere between $2 trillion to $10 trillion over ten years. Research shows that countries with single-payer systems spend much less on drugs.Yet opponents continue to decry the “costs” of Medicare for All. They will continue to focus on the cost to taxpayers, conveniently avoiding the truth that already we pay excessive health care costs through insurance premiums, co-pays and deductibles.Americans suffer from poor health outcomes because they can’t afford to see a doctor until their illness becomes catastrophic. Many weigh the choice between financial ruin and life-saving medicines and treatment. In one of the richest countries in the world that is nothing short of shameful.The U.S. is a country with abundant resources and more than enough wealth to go around. It’s time to share the wealth in America. It’s a new day and it starts with Medicare for All. Buckle up-- because the fight is just beginning.
A number of Democrats got into bed with the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future stooges and campaigned on the PAHCF planks, notably Senators Bill Nelson and Joe Donnelly, both of whom were defeated in the midst of a blue wave cycle primarily due to a refusal of Democratic base voters to bother coming-out to vote from either of them. They also worked with the Danny O’Connor campaign in OH-12, an open seat. Danny who? Yeah, he lost as well. A volunteer who worked in the O'Connor campaign told me that his Medicare message-- which came directly from the PAHCF-- killed the campaign. "Activists were nonplussed by the campaign. Danny's refusal to back Medicare-For-All disincentivized too many voters... We weren't offering the activists what they wanted and what they saw other candidates offering." Despite outspending Republican Troy Balderson $8,241,164 to $2,512,715 (not even counting the close-to-a-million more spent by the DCCC and Pelosi's House Majority PAC), O'Connor and his status quo messaging on healthcare were defeated 104,328 (50.1%) to 102,648 (49.3%). "I know we would have won," the O'Connor volunteer told me, "if Danny had backed Medicare-For-All."Not that easy for some Democrats to turn them away. After all, the PAHCF folks have good political pedigrees, having come from the Clinton and Obama administrations and the Hillary campaign. Forbes-Tate is a slimy lobbying form filled with Clintonites and Blue Engine Message & Media is filled with Obama staffers. Former members of Congress-- take former Democratic Senate leader Tom Daschle-- are included on the team, as are anti-progressive organizations like Third Way, the New Dems and the Blue Dogs, all of whom have been paid off by PAHCF.These are some of the deceptions and lies that the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future are putting out:
