Tag: Medicare for all

The “Gift” that Never Stops Taking —U.S. Healthcare Profiteers Racking in the Dough

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US Medical Costs

Hope may spring eternal but some things are guaranteed never to change. Add to the list of inevitables like death and taxes, the one-of-a-kind American corporate, profit-obsessed healthcare industry. Did I say industry? Right, that’s what it has become. Gone are the trappings of what used to be called the healing profession that came complete with the committed doctor who made house calls. In its place, the U.S. government has allowed a cabal of profit and non-profit operators to make healthcare a colossus rivaling in power and profit other industrial behemoths in defense, tech and energy. Which brings us to the heart of the dilemma confronting the American people. What do you do when you live in a rich country that can afford to lavish oodles of dough on one of the most corrupt countries in Europe but can’t afford a national health care system that would restore healthcare to its original calling and provide a cost-effective solution to the millions without insurance or healthcare, others who go bankrupt even with insurance from sky-high medical bills and saddest of all the women and their infants who die in childbirth because they cannot afford medical care. The answer of the American public is a general sense of apathy and disinterest. A recent effort to “force the vote” which in 2020 called on what passes for democratic progressives in the House of Representatives to withhold their vote on Nancy Pelosi’s bid for the Speakership (the speaker is second line to replace the president) until she agreed to bring a Medicare-for-all proposal up for a floor vote. They didn’t and she didn’t. Business as usual in the swamp that U.S. politics has become. Has people power become obsolete in a corporate controlled oligarchy? The answer may be found in a little-noticed but powerful signal coming out of the election results in Oregon. Check out The Gift That Never Stops Taking — U.S. Healthcare Profiteers Racking in the Dough and you decide.

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What They Won’t Tell You About the U.S. Pandemic

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Greed

The cacophony of voices and heavy breathing coming from the corporate media are the latest con — trying to convince you that the U.S. catastrophic response to the pandemic is the fault of one man — President Donald Trump. The movers and shakers including the five billionaires who own the lion’s share of U.S. media don’t want you to know the truth: that unlike every other developed nation in the world, the U.S. does not consider healthcare a human right but another way to make billionaires and their corporations richer. It’s been that way for decades. The evidence is glaring —the worst healthcare statistics in the world, Americans dying earlier than people in much of Europe, Asia, and even South America. With the advent of the pandemic, things have gone from bad to catastrophic. The U.S is number one in COVID cases and deaths — barred from entering almost every country in the world and facing dire economic consequences (12 million people were unable to pay their rent in July and August). No, it’s not just one man, it’s a whole corrupt system. Check out “What They Won’t Tell You about the U.S. Pandemic” and put the peoples’ revolution at the top of your to-do list.

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Shafted: American Workers Lose Their Jobs and Their Health Insurance

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Unpaid Bills

“The state will bear the financial burden of the people who have to stay home. We won’t add fear of bankruptcy or unemployment to the health crisis.” Wouldn’t it restore your faith in America’s leaders if one of them had actually made those promises? Prepare to be disappointed. That was the message the president of France delivered to his people. He wasn’t the only European leader to announce life-saving programs. In Denmark, in Sweden, in advanced economies all over the world, leaders are scrambling to protect their citizens. Even Vladimir Putin. The one thing citizens in most European countries (and other parts of the world) don’t have to worry about is keeping their healthcare whether or not they have a job. The citizens of the exceptional nation are not so fortunate. For at least 17 million who have filed for unemployment (and many uncounted millions more), the fear of getting sick is another burden keeping them awake at night. In a system where 56% of the American workforce receives their insurance on the job, no job equals no insurance. Want to know why we need Medicare-for-all? Read “Shafted: American Workers Lose Their Jobs and Their Health Insurance”

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Single Payer Healthcare or a Public Option? 159,000 Doctors Got It Wrong

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Patients Not Profits

Read all about it. Headlines trumpet a revolutionary about-face among thousands of doctors on how to fix U.S. crumbling healthcare. “Major Doctors’ Group Calls for U.S. to Read all about it. Headlines trumpet a revolutionary about-face among thousands of doctors on how to fix U.S. crumbling healthcare. “Major Doctors’ Group Calls for U.S. to Assure Coverage for All (The Washington Post and The New York Times); “In Historic Shift, Second Largest Physician’s Group in the U.S. has New Prescription: It’s Medicare-for-All (Common Dreams). It sounded like a dream come true and though we hate to admit it, Suspicious Angels swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. Until we actually read the report and realized it was another attempt to “make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” The author of the report, The American College of Physicians, is the second largest medical society in the U.S. with a membership of 159,000 internists (aka primary care physicians). You might say they didn’t really take a position coming out somewhere between single payer and a public option. In contrast, the largest medical society, the American Medical Association with 218,000 members, in June, 2019 voted to oppose single payer or even its second-class cousin, a public option. Thoughts of an approaching revolution called single payer is having another effect. The billionaire class is in a tizzy. Howard Schultz, founder of Starbucks, declared that single payer was “un-American.” So Assure Coverage for All (The Washington Post and The New York Times); “In Historic Shift, Second Largest Physician’s Group in the U.S. has New Prescription: It’s Medicare-for-All (Common Dreams). It sounded like a dream come true and though we hate to admit it, Suspicious Angels swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. Until we actually read the report and realized it was another attempt to “make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” The author of the report, The American College of Physicians, is the second largest medical society in the U.S. with a membership of 159,000 internists (aka primary care physicians). You might say they didn’t really take a position coming out somewhere between single payer and a public option. In contrast, the largest medical society, the American Medical Association with 218,000 members, in June, 2019 voted to oppose single payer or even its second-class cousin, a public option. Thoughts of an approaching revolution called single payer is having another effect. The billionaire class is in a tizzy. Howard Schultz, founder of Starbucks, declared that single payer was “un-American.”

So what’s the real deal? Will we settle for a public option or go whole hog like the rest of the developed world with single payer? It’s time to rally around the flag. But which flag? You may find the answers in “Single Payer Healthcare or a Public Option? 159,000 Doctors Got It Wrong”

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That Sound You Hear is the Stampede of Democratic Hopefuls Running Away from National Health Insurance

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That Sound You Hear is the Stampede of Democratic Hopefuls
Running Away from National Health Insurance

Medicare For All

National health insurance was MIA in the first Democratic debate. Over two nights 18 of the 20 candidates declined to get behind it. Make that 19 as one, Kamala Harris, seeing which way she thought the wind was blowing, walked back her support the next day. Their excuse: 158 million Americans who get their health insurance at work and are allegedly invested in corporate healthcare. And what a great deal they’re getting — premiums up 55% in the last decade, rising twice as fast as wages and three times as fast as inflation. Workers forced to give up 10 to 12% of their pay to cover their health insurance premiums and 85% paying deductibles as high as $2,000. What’s not to like? Thanks to corporate media the lies and misstatements of the corporate health industry get widespread coverage. More than one-half of Americans believe they will still have to pay premiums, deductibles, and copays under a national health plan. Thanks to the hundreds of millions of dollars the healthcare lobby showers on Congress, many of them sing from the same hymnal. We make the case for national health insurance with every sector of the economy paying their fair share: wealthy individuals and corporations, the finance industry, and taxpayers. It’s time for America to join the rest of the world and deliver healthcare to anyone who needs it.

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How Healthcare Went from a Healing Profession to a Profit-Driven Business

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Hospitals Buy Prctices

EMAIL Will Americans ever wake up to the shoddy treatment they receive in their doctor’s office? Will they ever say “no mas” and give a collective heave-ho to a system run by the rich for the rich that costs each American $11,212 every year but ranks near the bottom of the barrel at 27th in effectiveness among 36 of the most economically developed countries in the world? It’s a $3.75 trillion boondoggle done up to make you think there’s really a wizard behind a magical curtain instead of a fraudster behind a piece of cloth. Read “How Healthcare Went from a Healing Profession to a Profit-Driven Business” and guaranteed you’ll be shouting “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.”

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