Hillary Clinton does not get it. Hillary Clinton came out guns a blazing as the polls tighten up in Iowa and nationally and as Bernie Sanders’ lead in New Hampshire grows. She is misleading Americans about Single-payer health care / Medicare for all.
Instead of fighting on her merits and on contrasts, Hillary Clinton is using Right Wing Carl Rove tactics to reverse the trend. It is unlikely to work. Clinton’s tactics may actually turn out to be costly. She just may make this 100% accurate mock election poll that predicts a Bernie Sanders’ president a reality.
Chelsea Clinton maligns Bernie Sanders single-payer plan
Americans, liberals, moderates, and conservatives are upset. Both Democrats and Republicans are angry. They are angry because they are realizing that both party establishments take them for granted. Most promises are unrealized. Yet when some attempt change from within they are marginalized.
Democrats had a filibuster proof Senate during a small window in which they had an opportunity to include and pass a public option to the Affordable Care Act. The only real reason a public option did not pass was that arithmetic held true. Public plans without the inherent need for profits would be much less expensive. Obamacare would have morphed into Bernie Sanders’ single-payer Medicare-for-all health care plan. Americans have been polled and they support single-payer. 81% of Democrats support single-payer, as well as 58% of all Americans.
This quick personal short is likely something that occurs thousands of times a day. While running the board for the ThinkWing Radio w/Mike Honig Show at KPFT 90.1 FM, a Pacifica radio station in Houston, Texas, I had a potentially fatal blood pressure rise. 911 was called. Some great paramedics came, gave me oxygen, took me into the ambulance, gave me an EKG, and continued to monitor my pressure. It went down some though still at a dangerous level. When it was time to leave the paramedics asked if I wanted to go to the hospital in the ambulance, which one, or if I wanted go in my own vehicle. I immediately inferred that they were cognizant that many folks are justifiably concerned about cost.
Since my EKG was perfect and the blood pressure had dropped some I told them I would drive to an emergency room. My insurance encourages urgent care centers. I drove to a private emergency center not knowing that it wasn’t an urgent care center for my medical issue. After stabilizing my pressure, they told me to see my primary care physician.
The next day my primary care physician was completely book. Another doctor in the office had an opening but since she was not my primary, I would have needed a referral. After going back and forth with the insurance company and the doctor’s office I got an appointment that would be two days later. They told me if there was an emergency I should go to the emergency room. I relayed to the office of my primary care physician with the insurance company on three-way that a system that requires one to go the emergency room not because of lack of capacity or doctors but because of an ill-conceived structure is the problem with our healthcare. An hour later I got a call from the office of my primary physician to come in.
Since I do not get a subsidy for insurance, I purchased my insurance from a broker. All insurance whether on the Obamacare exchange or elsewhere must have the protections defined in the affordable care act. Sadly, while the safeguards are there, they are useless if you are unable to use the system because of the controls that are clearly designed for profit maximization.
The complexity of using healthcare even under Obamacare is a travesty. Many are more concerned about finances in times of illness or injury when all they should be thinking about is getting healthy or getting lifesaving treatment. The number of decisions our system asks a patient to make at the time of need is immoral. What hospitals can I go to? Which doctor will take which plan? Can I afford a copay? Can afford that ambulance or should I risk driving?
A single-payer / Medicare-for-all system is the next step in our journey to a real humane health care system, a moral system and an arithmetically provably less expensive system. When one removes the chaos multiple insurance companies partitioning our health delivery system for profits, health care becomes much less expensive. The sole purpose of an insurance company is to skim some of the premiums paid for a profit. They do that by managing risk. Managing risk ensures you get as little health care services as possible. The monies skimmed pays exorbitant executive salaries, duplicative administrative services like database management, advertising, capital costs, and much more. A single-payer system eliminates all of that.
Hillary Clinton and her team is characterizing Bernie Sanders support for a Single-payer health care system as one that would kill many social programs including the Affordable Care Act. The inference the Clinton team would want one to make is much different than the reality. In a single-payer / Medicare-for-all system, all are covered. Health care becomes a right.
As more Americans understand the realities, even Clinton supporters may balk. Why, folks will see further improvements to Obamacare as an appeasement to insurance companies as opposed to a bold middle-class centric policy position that helps us all. It will tie into the narrative of her being owned by the corporatocracy.
I covered this topic on my Politics Done Right show here.