Three million dollars and counting. That’s what the healthcare industry has donated to the Bernie Sanders campaign as of February 3rd (Open Secrets). In case you’re hoping that represents thousands of small gifts from lower-level health care workers, you’ll be disappointed. All the gifts were in the range of $200 or more. Politicians may lie but the facts don’t. Here’s a troubling fact—the candidate who has fought to bring the privatized healthcare industry to heel has raised double the money from that sector than the Trump campaign.
How can that be? To bolster his promise to do away with private healthcare, in July Bernie made another promise — “It seems to me that if we are going to break the stranglehold of corporate interests over the health care needs of the American people, we have got to confront a Washington culture that is corrupt that puts profits ahead of the needs of the people… I am calling on every Democratic candidate in this election to join me in rejecting money from the insurance and drug companies.
Right on Bernie. In case you don’t know, Bernie has fought tooth and nail for four decades to make single payer healthcare the law of the land. Over and over again he has drummed it into our heads — “We say to the private health insurance companies: whether you like it or not, the United States will join every other major country on earth and guarantee healthcare to all people as a right.”
How to square that with the millions Bernie has received from the moneyed denizens of healthcare land more than candidates opposed to single payer like Biden, Buttigieg and Klobuchar have received. What’s more Bernie’s stock with the health care fat cats has been on the rise. From being the third largest recipient of healthcare money on June 30, 2019, he claimed the top spot in the February 2020 report
This influx of medical and pharmaceutical money seems at odds with Bernie’s pledge “…to not take contributions from the health insurance or pharmaceutical industry and instead prioritize the health of the American people over health industry profits.” (and to return contributions his campaign had already accepted). Past experience has demonstrated that political promises are part of every candidates’ toolkit. Fulfilling these promises is a whole different kettle of fish. Counting on the short attention span of voters, most candidates relegate promises to the circular file when they get elected.
Obama perfected the technique of making heartfelt promises he had no intention of keeping. Little noticed at the time (2008) was Obama’s promise to return money from lobbyists. Without pressure from the media or the public, he “forget” to do it. How about his promise repeated endlessly when he was candidate Obama to deliver a healthcare plan every American could afford? Instead President Obama delivered Obamacare and thirty million Americans are still uninsured with millions more under-insured.
Once bitten, twice shy. We trusted Obama to live up to his game-changing promises, like including a public option in his healthcare plan. That promise bit the dust after $20 million healthcare dollars landed in his campaign coffers. Bernie has made the same noises about giving all Americans’ a better deal. But the $2½ million he has raised, just as a competitor for the nomination, from the health industry since his July pledge gives us pause. Have we been snookered again?
Turning to the other Democratic candidates, lofty rhetoric and soaring promises have been front and center this election cycle. Taking their cue from the DNC (Democratic National Committee), lavishly funded by the same healthcare bandits, the centrist Democratic candidates are running on a pledge (here’s one they will keep if elected) to preserve a privatized health system throwing in some minor modifications to appease an aroused and angry public.
Take Joe Biden’s claim that single payer health insurance “would cost more than the entire federal budget that we spend now [2019 federal budget $4.1 trillion]” Wow, is that true? According to Kaiser Health News, not known as a big supporter of single payer, “based on the numbers and interviews with independent experts, Biden’s comparison of Medicare for All’s price to total federal spending misses the mark because the calculation is flawed.” Translation: Biden was lying through his teeth to serve the interests of his wealthy paymasters.
Like Obama, the master of deceit, Joe Biden, the recipient of over $2 million (as of 2/3/20 Open Secrets), is obviously making the same compromises with Americans’ health and welfare. The only difference? He admits it. Beyond trashing single payer, a program that is the gold standard in developed countries all over the world, Joe’s corporate-friendly healthcare platform is composed of health industry talking points and fairy tales — “the Biden Plan will give you the choice to purchase a public option health insurance option like Medicare…by negotiating lower prices from hospitals and other health care providers.”
Lies and misstatements proliferate in this election season. Joe isn’t the only candidate trying to lie his way into the good graces of his corporate benefactors. That polished chameleon Pete Buttigieg is running a classic big money campaign masquerading as a peoples’ campaign. When he jumped into the race, survey after survey documented the growing popularity of single payer among Democratic voters (and even a majority of Republicans and Independents). That was enough for Buttigieg to hop on the Medicare-for-all bandwagon— “Most affirmatively and indubitably, unto the ages…I do favor Medicare for All.”
Soon all bets were off. With the infusion of gobs of healthcare money into his campaign, in mid-2019 he became healthcare’s top recipient ($548,000). In short order, Buttigieg renounced single payer, instead proposing an industry-friendly “Medicare for all who want it,” a Jerry-rigged contraption that he describes as a “pathway to Medicare for All. In reality his plan is more of the same malarkey we were fed in Obamacare, maintaining the same corrupt, privatized healthcare system where care goes to the wealthy and everyone else is left to fend for themselves.
Pete, Joe and Amy have inserted into their stump speeches the promise that private health care with a public option will cure the ills of the present system. Not surprisingly, the facts refute their phony claims. A study released in 2020 found that even since the passage of Obamacare “most measures of unmet need for physician services have shown no improvement, and financial access to physician services has decreased … [the rise of] “narrow networks, high-deductible plans, and higher co-pays” has contributed to the growth of unmet medical needs in the U.S. since the 1990s… In Canada, only 1% of adults 45 years old or older with a chronic disease reported a cost-related unmet health need—compared with 18.7% of adults with a chronic medical condition in our U.S. sample.” (2020 Harvard study)
What Biden, Buttigieg and Klobuchar are offering is business as usual — big profits for the fat cats in the health industry while millions of Americans are struggling to make do with increasingly unaffordable health insurance. Only Bernie Sanders has remained true to the dream of a healthcare system for all Americans from birth to death.
But there’s a fly in the ointment. Hard to explain why the leaders of an industry Bernie has vowed to abolish would shell out $3 million for his campaign to become the Democratic nominee. Do they have a death wish? Or do they know something that voters who have a bad habit of believing the lies politicians tell them don’t? Meanwhile, single payer advocates have no other choice but to wait…and hope.
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