The Houston Chronicle made itself complicit with much of the Republican Party and a corporate sect of the Democratic Party (candidate Michael Bennet, John Delaney, & Joe Biden) by allowing the deaths of thousands of Texans and by extension tens of thousands of Americans every year. The article by their editorial board has an impressive title, “Why Obamacare trumps Medicare for all [Editorial]” but devoid of any comparison or fact that justifies the statement.
This is a classic example of an institution that should be the fourth estate ceding its reputation and credibility to a Plutocracy that aims maximal extraction from the middle-class. The article intrigued me.
My mind is made up about Medicare for All from simply the mathematical certainty of removing huge profits from the simple task of paying a bill. Remember that the high salaries for private insurance executives are from the premiums you must pay. Remember as well that those dividends to insurance company shareholders and kickbacks to doctors and hospitals are coming off the top of the premium you pay. But I was still intrigued. With a title that stated Obamacare trumps Medicare for All, the Houston Chronicle had to have some new angle to justify such a title.
Despite Republican attempts to bleed it to death, there are new signs that the Affordable Care Act can survive. The question now is whether Democrats will abandon it for some form of Medicare for All.
Among the positive signs, premiums for most ACA plans offered in the Houston area will go down about 1 to 2 percent in 2020. In contrast, premium rates for Obamacare plans across the country are expected to go up about 3 percent, but even that is good news given premiums nationally increased about 30 percent last year.
I find it amusing that the Houston Chronicle is praising a 1% to 2% increase after a 30% increase from the previous year as something that is working as opposed to the erratic nature of private insurance for profit maximization at all cost. Have these guys not been “insurance-ing” for centuries? They went on to blame Trump for getting rid of the mandate. But they immediately put their tail between their legs and said the president cannot be blamed for all the failures of the Affordable Care Act.
No kidding, the above is the core of the article. It is mostly about the Affordable Care Act’s dysfunction and that it needs fixing. But then they end with the following two paragraphs.
With only 10 candidates qualifying to participate in the Sept. 12 Democratic presidential debate at Texas Southern University, health care should be a larger part of their conversation. After all the effort it took to pass Obamacare and fight off legal attacks, voters need to know whysome Democrats argue the ACA should be abandoned for a different massive program that would be subjected to the same gauntlet.
Encouraging signs suggest an improved ACA is the better choice for America right now, even if it becomes a bridge later to something even better.
This is an embarrassing article. It mostly says that the Affordable Care Act in its current form does not work well but somehow it is a better choice than Medicare for All which covers everyone with more than they have now at a lower cost. The problem is that articles like this coming from a major newspaper is too often believed by too many not realizing it is a bunch of editors doing their jobs as wards of the Plutocracy that is sucking the wealth out of you.
If these Houston Chronicle editors wanted to really make a difference, they would start by challenging the Texas Legislature and Legislatures in all the Red States that have refused their citizens the healthcare they would be afforded if they accepted the Medicaid Expansion to the Affordable Care Act. These Republican Legislatures are effectively murdering many of their citizens on the order of thousands a year. And instead of newspapers like the Houston Chronicle calling them out ad-nauseam to be the fourth estate for their readers, they play the game, They protect the Plutocracy at the expense of the poor and middle-class.
If the Houston Chronicle wanted to make a difference they would go through the mathematical calculations which are not all that complex that proves it is an impossibility for multiple payers for-profits can be less expensive than a single-payer system. Their dereliction of duty denies the reality even a Right-Wing Koch study confirmed, Medicare for All is more efficient, less expensive, and covers everybody.
The complicity of the mainstream media with Corporatocracy, the Plutocracy, kills. America, WAKE UP.