Medicare

More Deceptive Reporting On Medicare For All

February 6, 2019 Ben Spielberg, Peoplespolicyproject.org Educate! Health Care, Medicare

Jonathan Martin and Abby Goodnough discuss a brewing Democratic Party debate about Medicare For All in The New York Times. Does it mean a single-payer system in which the government covers everyone’s health care costs? Or is it just rhetoric intended to mean “I support a better health care system” without a commitment to challenging insurance industry power? Martin and Goodnough helpfully note that only one likely 2020 presidential candidate is committed to a single-payer system: Bernie Sanders. But their article is also misleading in its discussion of Medicare For All policy, politics, and polling.

Nancy Pelosi Tells Health Insurance Executives Not To Worry About Medicare For All

February 6, 2019 Ryan Grim, Theintercept.com Educate! Health Care, Health Insurance, Medicare

LESS THAN A month after Democrats — many of them running on “Medicare for All” — won back control of the House of Representatives in November, the top health policy aide to then-prospective House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met with Blue Cross Blue Shield executives and assured them that party leadership had strong reservations about single-payer health care and was more focused on lowering drug prices, according to sources familiar with the meeting. Pelosi adviser Wendell Primus detailed five objections to Medicare for All and said that Democrats would be allies to the insurance industry in the fight against single-payer health care.

Two Medicare For All Plans: HR676 And S1804

December 28, 2018 By Lambert Strether, Nakedcapitalism.com Educate! Health Care, Medicare

Again, if O’Rourke — harder to type than Beto, dammit — has drafted a Medicare for All bill, it’s still resting comfortably in his desk drawer. But speaking of S1804, O’Rourke’s opponent in the 2018 Texas Democrat primary, Sema Hernandez, says he supports it (letter dated September 3, 2018). However, Hernandez may be far too generous; Current Affairs has a fine summary of O’Rourke’s crawfishing on the issue. And if O’Rourke does in fact support S1804, why doesn’t he say so on his mushy site?

Lobbyist Documents Reveal Health Care Industry Battle Plan Against “Medicare For All”

November 24, 2018 Lee Fang and Nick Surgey, Theintercept.com Educate! Health Care, Lobbying, Medicare

NOW THAT THE midterms are finally over, the battle against “Medicare for All” that has been quietly waged throughout the year is poised to take center stage. Internal strategy documents obtained by The Intercept and Documented reveal the strategy that private health care interests plan to use to influence Democratic Party messaging and stymie the momentum toward achieving universal health care coverage. At least 48 incoming freshman lawmakers campaigned on enacting “Medicare for All” or similar efforts to expand access to Medicare. And over the last year, 123 incumbent House Democrats co-sponsored “Medicare for All” legislation — double the number who supported the same bill during the previous legislative session.

Lobbyist Documents Reveal Health Care Industry Battle Plan Against “Medicare For All”

November 21, 2018 Lee Fang and Nick Surgey, Theintercept.com Educate! Health Care, Lobbying, Medicare

Medicare For All Should Be Free Of Profit Takers

October 5, 2018 Kay Tillow, Healthoverprofit.org Resist! Health Care, Medicare, Profit

It’s the best of times and the worst of times for the advocates of national single payer health care in the United States. So good because the vast majority in the US have embraced the concept of improving Medicare and expanding it to the entire population. So bad because corrupting influences threaten to steal the goal before we can get there. Let’s take just one issue—for-profit hospitals, nursing homes, and other health care institutions. Shall we allow the profit takers to remain in the new system, like the flawed Senate Medicare for All bill S 1804, does? Or shall we look at the data, save money while giving superior care, and remove these investor-owned, for-profit institutions from our system?

Jake Tapper’s Faulty Medicare For All Fact-Check

August 21, 2018 By Matt Bruenig, Peoplespolicyproject.org Educate! Media, Medicare

To understand where Tapper went off the rails, it is necessary to first explain the Mercatus Center paper at the center of all these controversies. On July 30, the Mercatus Center released a report by Charles Blahous scoring Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All bill. The report says that under our current health care system, Americans as a whole will spend $59.7 trillion on health care between 2022 and 2031. Blahous then goes on to find that under Sanders’s Medicare for All bill, Americans will only spend $57.6 trillion, for a savings of roughly $2 trillion. The study also finds that, because the federal government will take on almost all health care spending under Medicare for All, its share of total health spending will rise from $21.9 trillion to $54.6 trillion, an increase of around $32.6 trillion.

Why Won’t The Mainstream Media Tell The Truth About ‘Medicare For All’?

August 20, 2018 Jacob Sugarman, Truthdig.com Educate! Healthcare, Media, Medicare, Propaganda

At the end of a segment posted Friday in conjunction with factcheck.org, CNN’s Jake Tapper issues a playful warning to the country’s politicians: “You’re perfectly entitled to your own opinions,” he quips, “not to your own facts.” It’s a piece of advice the correspondent would be wise to heed himself. As a pair of essays published in Jacobin this week demonstrate, his comprehensive fact-check of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s claims about the cost-efficiency of “Medicare for all” is misleading at best and willfully dishonest at worst. The subject of Tapper’s report is a study from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, a libertarian think tank underwritten by the Koch brothers. More specifically, he focuses on Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez’s contention that the study’s findings indicate universal health care would save money over a 10-year period.

Improved Medicare For All Means Something. Don’t Dilute It.

August 9, 2018 Kay Tillow, Healthoverprofit.org Educate! Health Care, Medicare

On July 13, 2018, in an article1 on Vox, Tim Higginbotham and Chris Middleman of the Democratic Socialists of America’s (DSA) Medicare for All campaign condemned Paul Krugman, Adam Green, the Center for American Progress, and Andy Slavitt for their efforts to co-opt and water down the “Medicare for All” slogan into meaningless vague principles and inadequate programs. They are absolutely right! Higginbotham and Middleman’s analysis of those who seek to use and abuse the growing popularity of “Medicare for All” while abandoning the struggle for a real national single payer program is excellent. The door-to-door grass roots proposal of the DSA is compelling with its plan to reach into the heart of every community. But there is a problem embedded in Higginbotham and Middleman’s core principles that threatens to destroy all of their good work and do damage to the robust and growing single payer movement.

Happy Birthday Medicare!

July 31, 2018 Mark Dudzic, Labor Campaign for Single Payer Educate! Medicare, National Improved Medicare for All, Single payer health care

On July 30, Medicare turned 53. For over half a century, it has provided healthcare as a right to all Americans over 65 and many disabled Americans. It has saved countless lives and kept millions out of poverty. Together with Social Security, it has been the most popular and successful social program in U.S. history. As we honor their achievement, let us rededicate ourselves to building a diverse grassroots movement, backed by the resources and organizing capacity of America's unions, that is powerful enough to take on the medical industrial complex and establish an expanded and improved Medicare system that covers everyone from the cradle to the grave.

An Unhappy Birthday For Medicare And Medicaid

July 27, 2018 By Martha Burk, Otherwords.org Educate! Health Care, Medicaid, Medicare

July 30 marks a very important anniversary in our modern political history. Fifty-three years ago in 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare and Medicaid into law, creating two programs that would disproportionately improve the lives of older and low-income Americans — especially women. Fast-forward to 2018, and both programs are very much under siege. Nowhere is the struggle starker than in the House Republican budget — titled “A Brighter American Future” — now on Capitol Hill. The importance of Medicare as a source of women’s health coverage can’t be over-emphasized. Older and disabled women make up more than half the total beneficiaries, and two-thirds of those 85 and over.

The Myth Of Medicare’s Projected Insolvency

June 10, 2018 Don McCanne, PNHP Educate! Medicare, National Improved Medicare for All, Single payer health care

Every year the Medicare trustees project the year in which the funds for Part A of Medicare will be inadequate to pay the full costs for that year, based on anticipated revenue and spending. Each year the media then report the pending insolvency of Medicare. This is nonsense. Although revenues and demographics may change, adjustments are made to keep the program fully funded. Only if Congress were to decide to destroy Medicare would funding be reduced below sustainable levels. This is particularly ironic since this year the Republicans in their budget have already made a statement that we do not have to have adequate revenues to pay our bills - producing a budget with a trillion dollar deficit. Our job is to elect representatives who support Medicare - not just for current beneficiaries but for everyone, in an improved version. The inevitable political support would ensure full funding forever.

Let’s Not Negotiate Against Ourselves: Demand Medicare For All

May 9, 2018 Staff, Laborforsinglepayer.org Strategize! Class Struggle, Health Care, Medicare

Like Medicare and Social Security, the proposals in the House (HR 676) and Senate (S 1804) for Expanded and Improved Medicare for All are social insurance programs. All Americans would receive comprehensive cradle to grave coverage. Healthcare would be equitably financed through taxes with no significant financial barriers to care. Choose Medicare, on the other hand, would create a “Medicare Part E” plan that would effectively be a private insurance product purchased in the marketplace. Access would be limited to those who choose to buy it (and can afford to do so) or whose employer deigns to offer it as a benefit. Except for those currently eligible for Medicaid under the ACA, its costs would be fully paid for by premiums–with, as in the ACA, some income-based subsidies– not public financing.

Ten Million Americans Could Bring H.R. 676 Into Reality Land—Relief For Anxiety, Dread And Fear

March 24, 2018 Ralph Nader, Nader.org Create! Health Care, Medicare

Polls show that over 125 million adults in our country already favor full Medicare for all, with free choice of doctor and hospital without stifling networks. I say ‘already’ because, as of yet, there is no major national campaign underway showing that an ‘everybody in, nobody out’ system of health insurance costs less, with better outcomes, is simpler, without maddeningly inscrutable or fraudulent bills, co-pays, deductibles and additional trap doors set by a bunch of greedy corporations. The campaigns that exist today are receiving too little on-the-ground assistance for such a widely-supported issue. A super-majority of only 535 members of Congress—Senators and Representatives—can make that decision. The bill—H.R. 676, the ‘Expanded & Improved Medicare for All Act’—is now supported by 121 House Democrats—two thirds of all the Democrats in the House of Representatives. So that’s a good start.

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Daily movement news and resources

Daily movement news and resources

Medicare

More Deceptive Reporting On Medicare For All

Nancy Pelosi Tells Health Insurance Executives Not To Worry About Medicare For All

Two Medicare For All Plans: HR676 And S1804

Lobbyist Documents Reveal Health Care Industry Battle Plan Against “Medicare For All”

Lobbyist Documents Reveal Health Care Industry Battle Plan Against “Medicare For All”

Medicare For All Should Be Free Of Profit Takers

Jake Tapper’s Faulty Medicare For All Fact-Check

Why Won’t The Mainstream Media Tell The Truth About ‘Medicare For All’?

Improved Medicare For All Means Something. Don’t Dilute It.

Happy Birthday Medicare!

An Unhappy Birthday For Medicare And Medicaid

The Myth Of Medicare’s Projected Insolvency

Let’s Not Negotiate Against Ourselves: Demand Medicare For All

Ten Million Americans Could Bring H.R. 676 Into Reality Land—Relief For Anxiety, Dread And Fear

Daily Movement News And Resources.

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