Medicare for All attacks are coming from all sides. Activists and supporters must not disengage lest they cede ground to those whose sole interests are easy profits from a patently corrupt healthcare system.
Republicans taught Democrats and Progressives an important lesson. Repetition and message discipline is not only important, but it is also effective. Most importantly, in a vacuum, in a space where a repeated message remains unchallenged repeatedly, it is not even necessary that the message is truthful. In fact, the dissemination of disingenuous messaging flourishes in the repetitious environment.
To be clear, math is absolute. It is impossible for (Cost of Healthcare) to be more expensive than (Cost of Healthcare + Cost of Multiple Executives + Cost of Shareholder Profits + Cost of Duplicate Services + Doctor Cost to Interface with Multiple Insurance Companies + more). That is an absolute statement. Opposers of Medicare for All would like you to forget that basic mathematical fact.
No fiscally responsible politician who has the interest of their poor and middle-class constituent could continue to support a model designed solely as a method to enrich a few while providing absolutely no service. In fact, private insurance adds inefficiency to delivering healthcare.
Private insurance fiduciary responsibility is to its shareholders and implicitly its overpaid executives. That dictates that it performs two immoral tasks. The first is to market to the healthy as it puts up obstacles that leave those with preexisting conditions without insurance. Secondly, they make every attempt to deny service. These two acts maximize profits to shareholders and exorbitant salaries to their executives. Profits are not a bad thing if one is providing a necessary service in an efficient manner or one needs to be innovative. Private insurance provides neither. Their innovation consists of finding ways to maximize wealth extraction for paying a bill.
Americans are starting to get it even if some Democrats and Republicans make believe they don’t — wink-wink. They are wards of the Plutocracy. The Hill reported the following.
Seventy percent said they supported providing “Medicare for all,” also known as single-payer health care, for Americans, according to a new American Barometer survey.
The poll, conducted by Hill.TV and the HarrisX polling company, found that 42 percent of respondents said they “strongly” supported the proposal, while 28 percent said they “somewhat” supported it.
Fifteen percent said they “somewhat” opposed the measure, while another 15 percent said they “strongly” opposed it.
The results mirrored a Reuters-Ipsos poll released in August, which also found that 70 percent of Americans supported “Medicare for all.”
These numbers are well known. It is no surprise then that a Joe Biden linked firm has started doing the Trumpian thing, that which is expected of the GOP to confuse Americans about Medicare for All.
A new poll by a firm linked to Joe Biden is testing messages designed to undercut support among Democrats for Medicare for All, one of the most contentious issues splitting the party’s top presidential contenders.
The survey, commissioned by the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way, found that primary voters start off favoring the government-run health care system by a margin of 70% to 21%, but can be persuaded to oppose it. The study showed that Democrats are most swayed by the arguments that the program would impose a heavy cost on taxpayers and threaten Medicare for senior citizens.
The poll was conducted by Lisa Grove of Anzalone Liszt Grove Research. Her partner, John Anzalone, is the chief pollster and an adviser to Biden, who opposes Medicare for All and wants to make government-run insurance optional.
In effect, the above organization is suggesting the same modus operandi of the Republicans. They used it to make Obamacare less than what it could have been. And now Centrist Democrats are doing the same thing.
Buttigieg’s Medicare for All Who Want It is not acceptable because it opens the door to dump sick people unto Medicare for All using many legal techniques even if the law dictates that insurance companies take everyone. In other words, they continue to immorally manage risk for profit maximization for the shareholder and executives.
It is clear that the purported Liberal and Mainstream Media is complicit as well. At one of the debates, ABC’s George Stephanopolous tried to frame Medicare for All as a huge tax increase. He then tried to force Senator Elizabeth Warren to acquiesce to the corporate narrative. She held her ground. And then there was MSNBC’s Chris Matthews trying to bully Warren into giving him that coveted soundbite of her saying she would increase taxes for Medicare for All. She did not budge.
Now Warren, the candidate that has a written plan for everything, said she will release exactly how she will pay for Medicare for All shortly. I hope she gets just as clever but from a moral perspective, unlike the opponents. I made the following suggestion in a recent blog post.
Elizabeth Warren must continue answering the question that should be asked and not provide the soundbite that is effectively a virtual lie. Health insurance premiums are taxes not to the government but to insurance companies.
Progressives are on the right side of history. Moreover, it is clear the health insurance and health care pilfering is unsustainable. The Partnership for America’s Health Care Future has been investing millions to confuse Americans into opposing Medicare for All. It is clearly not working. The moderate Democrats on the stage, Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg more than most along with some who did not make the debate stage seemed to be informed by tenets of the above-mentioned organization. It must be made clear that non-support for Medicare for All is anathema to rank & file support and candidates who know better but are simply towing a line will pay at the ballot box.
The directional change Bernie Sanders has brought to the Democratic Party and the body politic gives me hope. But Medicare for All activists cannot go into a lull. They must be out there enlightening and informing their local and national neighbors.