Attacks on Medicare For All guided by lobbyists

[Morphine Prince 81,954]

Lobbyists were heavily involved in the writing of opinion columns critical of "Medicare for All" by state lawmakers, according to The Washington Post, which cited emails obtained by the newspaper.

Montana state Rep. Kathy Kelker (D) and state Sen. Jen Gross (D) both acknowledged in interviews that lobbyist and consultant John MacDonald provided proposed language for their respective columns, according to the Post.

Gross told the newspaper that MacDonald reached out to her on behalf of the industry group Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, which is funded by hospital groups, drugmakers and private health insurers, among others.

The advocacy group Medicare for All Now obtained industry emails detailing messaging against the proposal through a Freedom of Information Act request and provided them to the Post.

The emails show MacDonald apparently excising three paragraphs from Kelker’s piece that concede the U.S. spends more on health care per capita than other developed nations, and also removed a graph depicting the differences in per capita spending between the U.S. and several European nations with universal health care.

“I know most newspapers are going to have trouble formatting the graphic you provided and will likely ask us to hold off on that,” MacDonald told Kelker in a June email. “The client had trepidations that it might also come across to the ‘less-discerning’ reader that because foreign single-payer markets cost patients less, they are superior.”

An aide to Ohio state Sen. Steve Huffman (R), meanwhile, confirmed in an interview that Ohio-based lobbyist Kathleen DeLand helped him write an op-ed criticizing Medicare for All, according to the Post.

Source: https://thehill.com/regulation/healthcare/472598-state-lawmakers-acknowledge-lobbyists-helped-craft-their-op-eds

 

Edited December 3, 2019 by Morphine Prince

[OG Gaga Stan 21,934]

Shocking. 

[ItsTommyBitch 12,639]

@Morphine Prince

Should I @ the centrists who think "Medicare will force 150 million off their health insurance!" is a genuine point for the average american and not a health insurance funded talking point?  

[HorusRa2 3,977]

2 minutes ago, ItsTommyBitch said:

@Morphine Prince

Should I @ the centrists who think "Medicare will force 150 million off their health insurance!" is a genuine point for the average american and not a health insurance funded talking point?  

[Economy 30,595]

19 minutes ago, ItsTommyBitch said:

@Morphine Prince

Should I @ the centrists who think "Medicare will force 150 million off their health insurance!" is a genuine point for the average american and not a health insurance funded talking point?  

Tho I'm versatile on the political spectrum (I don't always stick to the same philosophy depending on the circumstances) overall I guess centrist is the closest definition to what I am...

 

And I fully support universal care, a step beyond just Medicare

[gabeoz 5,121]

9 minutes ago, ItsTommyBitch said:

@Morphine Prince

Should I @ the centrists who think "Medicare will force 150 million off their health insurance!" is a genuine point for the average american and not a health insurance funded talking point?  

I just don’t get how people seriously take that argument seriously  the entire point of nationalized health care is to not need private insurance 

[Economy 30,595]

29 minutes ago, gabeoz said:

I just don’t get how people seriously take that argument seriously  the entire point of nationalized health care is to not need private insurance 

Healthcare is the worst industry ever to privatize for many different reasons:

 

1. It's literally your life and health at stake... It's not a luxury you can put a bid or price on that should be profited from like an apple iPhone or a new laptop

 

2. It's not a service that is as elastic as most products. Many goods and services if they get too pricey people buy less so companies can only raise prices so much... But you will pay your last dime and then some if it involves your life. This means gauging is hard to control... Also there's only so many hospitals and centres per city so competition is limited

 

3. It adds to its cost because you have to pay a profit margin for the treatment, plus another profit margin for the middle man (insurance companies) not to mention their operating costs

 

Capitalism and the Free Market are great for innovation and industries coming up with better products etc... Healthcare tho shouldn't be a part of that

 

The cost per capita of US Healthcare vs other developed Nations speaks for itself tbh

Edited December 4, 2019 by Economy

[ItsTommyBitch 12,639]

5 hours ago, Economy said:

Tho I'm versatile on the political spectrum (I don't always stick to the same philosophy depending on the circumstances) overall I guess centrist is the closest definition to what I am...

 

And I fully support universal care, a step beyond just Medicare

American "centrism" is really center-right at this point tbh. 

Supporting Medicare for All (or any proposed single-payer health system) is common sense for all of the reasons you have posted in your next comment, and that is why it polls highly. It is not very hard to understand: everyone has health insurance regardless of income from death to birth just by being an American. It is full coverage, and funded by a  progressively scaling income tax and other supplemental means. Supplemental insurance (private insurance) is still available to purchase and not "illegal" or "abolished." Duplicative insurance (like two insurers covering dental care) however is made illegal because it creates unnecessary competition and strain.

It's polling has only gone down because private insurance and pharma lobbyists have spread these asinine talking points all over MSM and even Democrats like Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, and Joe Biden are repeating them. They have spent millions and will spend more and more. Unfortunately, those candidates are more concerned about winning than actually doing what is best, and other than flipping Joe Biden, I don't think anyone actually sincerely sees how it isn't the best plan forward. Even Pete Buttigieg knows its the best plan, he just refuses to fight for it.

Imagine if every candidate was fighting for it as a united front and not pretending to believe half-assed attempts are suddenly better than the real deal - the evidence supporting it as the best proposed option is absolutely overwhelming.

 

[thedirtymonster 402]

Single payer didn't even work in liberal Vermont, where they pretty much had zero opposition. The costs proved to be too much, and they abandoned the idea. Perhaps Bernie could try to perfect it in his own turf before he tries it for the entire country.

[TheQueenEnthusiast 920]

1 hour ago, thedirtymonster said:

Single payer didn't even work in liberal Vermont, where they pretty much had zero opposition. The costs proved to be too much, and they abandoned the idea. Perhaps Bernie could try to perfect it in his own turf before he tries it for the entire country.

You sound so privileged it hurts. Literally every other 'developed' nation has its own national healthcare. Even my poor little home country doesn't have the inflated ass prices for healthcare this country has. This is literally only a US phenomena. It's literally because pharmas, insurance companies, and hospitals (and all their lobbying) have been able to wreck havoc because of some false sense of CAPITALISM. It's so sad that *you* who's probably LGBTQ doesn't support this considering the chaos that was and is the AIDS epidemic and how much it greatly defined and hurt the community. Shame. 

[ItsTommyBitch 12,639]

1 hour ago, thedirtymonster said:

Single payer didn't even work in liberal Vermont, where they pretty much had zero opposition. The costs proved to be too much, and they abandoned the idea. Perhaps Bernie could try to perfect it in his own turf before he tries it for the entire country.

First of all, Bernie isn't the governor of Vermont, he was a mayor there and is now a Senator, so this is not his plan at all. Secondly, "Single-Payer" is not "Medicare for All." Single-payer refers to the system where everyone pays 1 entity for healthcare (the entity being the government as opposed to multiple competing private insurers or a combination of private/public methods like we have in the U.S.)

The point of "MEDICARE" for All is to take an already successful and highly popular social program - Medicare - and to just expand it to cover everyone (and cover more things) and save money in the process. The "Green Mountain Care" proposed here had less lofty goals and much less the means of doing so successfully. It wasn't about wealth distribution and equaling the playing field, it was - like many state wide programs for health insurance in the past - just about maximizing the number of people covered - with the added benefit of removing some administrative costs. 

https://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2017/sep/20/sean-duffy/vermont-single-payer-was-scrapped-because-it-was-g/

^This article pretty much explains why it was abandoned - they decided not to implement it because the governor didnt have enough political capital coming up to his re-election to be able to push through with it because the taxes required were high and they hadn't explained the benefits well enough to people to justify them. It was still economically possible to do and to run successfully, but they decided the risk of him losing  and being unable to maintain the program's popularity w.o him at the helm wasn't worth it. Not the same thing.

Also, this is just one state. There was not a significant wealth tax in this plan as I'm aware, and it is also missing the the collective bargaining power of 320 million people, which is the strength of the M4A plan. Vermont is one of the only places in America where there are not billionaires or even many multi millionaires there in the first place, so this isn't even an option. It also has less than 1 million people living in it - both of which are reasons why the potential tax increase (something like 9.5% income and an 11% regressive payroll tax) would have had to be higher than what Bernie is proposing, which is a progressive tax scaling up to 8% on wealth. 

If you are really interested in the success of single-payer systems, there are several countries in the world that use some form of it - it can be implemented in many ways

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_system#International_comparisons
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-payer_healthcare#Countries_with_single-payer_systems

This graph is especially noteworthy, even if its old (the trend continues, so its accurate in that sense)

The left axis is health care spending per capita, the right is life expectancy. The inefficiency of our system is very clearly shown here, as we are spending more than a **** ton of countries ("we're spending more than any other developed country on earth") and getting worse results. Sometimes, we're spending twice as much. The reason? Administrative costs, prices of pharmaceutical drugs, and the price of labor and goods, all of which are entirely the product of a private health care dominated system  

Edited December 4, 2019 by ItsTommyBitch

[affection 464]

America can be so incredibly absurd  Even some the poorest countries have universal healthcare.

[ItsTommyBitch 12,639]

1 minute ago, affection said:

America can be so incredibly absurd  Even some the poorest countries have universal healthcare.

Yep

It's really common sense. There is no testing needing to be done on its effectiveness, it works everywhere else for a reason, and the reason it isn't here already right now is just because of corporate greed and corruption on both sides of the aisle. The evidence is just damning. As to why a "public option" like M4AWWI won't work (Despite mixed systems existing in other countries), it's a longer conversation, but its also NOT a new proposal or issue - people have been writing about single payer vs public option viability in America and around the world for decades.

[affection 464]

15 minutes ago, ItsTommyBitch said:

Yep

It's really common sense. There is no testing needing to be done on its effectiveness, it works everywhere else for a reason, and the reason it isn't here already right now is just because of corporate greed and corruption on both sides of the aisle. The evidence is just damning. As to why a "public option" like M4AWWI won't work (Despite mixed systems existing in other countries), it's a longer conversation, but its also NOT a new proposal or issue - people have been writing about single payer vs public option viability in America and around the world for decades.

Another problem is that the health system in the U.S. is not regulated enough and companies are aloud to charge infinite amounts for medication and services, it’s literally a health business.

[Lilmonzter 2,621]

M4A

M4A who want it

M4A but with private insurance 

You can't name your plan medicare for all and then put selective caveats like who want it or with private insurance and all that bs.

It should be M4S medicare for some.

If Canada can successfully implement why not the US!