Plutocracy uses major newspapers in an attempt to turn public opinion against Medicare for All.

The Medicare for All fight will not be a fair or balanced one. We are talking about taking away billions of dollars from corporations whose sole existence was tantamount to legal theft. Here is the reality.

The thing is, the Plutocracy commands our mainstream media, print, and broadcast. They control a plurality of our elected officials judged by the fact that Congress votes against the will of the people a substantial percentage of the time.

Support for Medicare for All is growing. Why? Americans are tired of being ripped off by the Healthcare Industrial Complex. Let us recall all the tricks they use to take your money ensuring you can never get ahead. If I have forgotten any leave me a note and I will add it.

• You go to the hospital that the insurance company permitted you to go to (remember private health insurance control where you can and cannot go). You follow the rules. You assume that all the doctors who will attend to you then are in-network. A few weeks later you get a huge bill from the doctor and your private insurance tells you they are not responsible for it since the doctor is not in your network.
• You go to an approved emergency room that your private health insurance supports. Guess what? They assess a large facilities fee and the insurance says you are responsible for it.
• Your doctor prescribes a particular drug you need. Your private insurance tells you that you are on your own with the bill and they won’t pay it.
• You pay thousands of dollars a year in premiums that seem like just a black hole since your deductible and copays are so high the actual payment from the private insurance company never kicks in.
• You are diagnosed with spreading cancer that requires a particular drug that is curable. The private insurance company prefers you to remove the body part and decides not to pay for the drug. You appeal as you get sicker it costs you more even as they are forced to approve the drug in the long run.
• There are scores more scams from the Healthcare Industrial Complex.

It would seem like Medicare for All would be a slam dunk. After all, you will have no deductible, no copays, and no premiums. Is it free? Absolutely not. It is paid for with our taxes based on one’s income. So everybody has a stake in their healthcare. The bottom line is that for most in the middle-class and the poor, they will have substantially more money in their pockets because the ripoff will end. The transfer of your wealth to corporations whose existence is to make money for doing nothing substantial will end. Think about it. Private insurance created a structure to make a windfall simply to pay a bill. Their profits, shareholder dividends, and highly paid executives’ salaries come from denying or limiting service to you.

It is for this reason that the mouthpiece of the Plutocracy, much of the mainstream media print and broadcast, are intent on obfuscating, misinforming, and lying in order to create doubt. You see, Medicare for All is polling now at seventy percent. In that light, an editorial article in the Chicago Tribune caught my eye mostly because of the title “Column: Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders deny the costly deceptions of ‘Medicare for All’” which in reality is the description of today’s private health insurance scheme.

The article correctly states the benefits of Medicare for All.

To begin with, their plan is extravagantly generous. In his vision, Sanders boasted in the debate: “Premiums are gone. Copayments are gone. Deductibles are gone. All out-of-pocket expenses are gone.” Medicare, by contrast, has those features, which serve to restrain not only federal spending on health care but all spending on health care. Medicare for All would also cover things that Medicare doesn’t — vision care, dental care, hearing aids and long-term care.

… The government would have to start paying expenses that patients previously had to pay — not only the patients who would gain coverage but also those already on Medicare.

Chicago Tribune

The article then goes into the scaremongering modal.

The second consequence would be to stimulate consumption of medical care. If the cost of seeing a doctor, getting an X-ray or trying some mildly promising therapy is zero, the demand for such services will jump. That would lead to yet another effect: longer wait times for appointments — because the immediate supply of doctors and dentists would remain the same.

The above statement shows the disconnect from humanity those opposing Medicare for All display. They want to consider healthcare as if it is a product. The demand for x-rays will go up only to meet the health level of society not because it is cheap. If that demand goes up it is because there are people who need it today who are currently dying or getting sicker from not having it in the first place. And if providing x-rays is not for profit, then there is no reason for someone to prescribe it for the sake of accessing it. Do you know anyone who wants to have an x-ray just because it is cheap?

The sponsors claim their plan will lower overall health care costs. But the savings would not come without pain. Medicare reimburses hospitals for about 87% of the cost of the patients it covers — a burden hospitals can bear because private insurance reimburses them for about 145% of the cost of its patients. A knee replacement covered by Medicare might bring in $17,000, while a private insurer would pay $37,000.

Chicago Tribune

This illustrates that the current system is, in fact, a fraud. Those who are paying private insurance premiums are currently subsidizing not only the shareholders who own the insurance companies, the overpaid executives, the extra employees in doctors’ offices who must navigate the different private insurance schemes, but those who service current Medicare claims (NOT Medicare for All). And one wonders if the cost for most will go down? From a mathematical standpoint, the per person cost without the thievery cannot help but go down.

I mentioned the following in a recent article I hope we all heed.

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. …

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.

Let’s keep our eyes on the ball. Do not accept the smears, fears, or misinformation from the corporate mainstream media about Medicare For All. Independent Media and grassroots activism are imperative in more important now than ever. That is how our healthcare system has not only remained bad for most but one that is getting worse as it makes most of us poorer and most of those fighting to keep this fraudulent system rolling in your money.