The Health Care Bait-and-Switch

Glenn Ford has a great take down of the new Medicare for All legislation that the democrats have been talking about. This is nowhere near Single Payer health care that people want congress to pass. It's not universal health care, it's universal health coverage. It's like telling us that we can all have access to a Cadillac. If you have enough money to buy one.

The Health Care Bait-and-Switch

On the campaign trail in January of 2016, Hillary Clinton told Iowa voters that Bernie Sanders’ single payer health care proposal was an idea whose time would never come. “People who have health emergencies can’t wait for us to have a theoretical debate about some better idea that "will never, ever come to pass,"said the presumed shoo-in for president. Two years later, one-third of Democrats in the Senate have endorsed Sanders’ Medicare for All Act and half the Democrats in the U.S. House have signed on to Rep. John Conyers’ Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, HR 676. Polls show 75 percent of Democrats favor “expanding Medicare to provide health insurance to every American,” and 31 percent of the public at-large wants health care to be the first problem the Democrats tackled if they win the White House in 2020.

Anyone really believe that Her has faded from being involved in the Democratic Party and is walking in the woods and playing with her grandchildren?

Predictably, however, Hillary Clinton’s favorite think tank is still trying to make sure single payer health care never happens. The lavishly funded Center for American Progress (CAP) last week unveiled their counterfeit, sound-alike health care plan, dubbed Medicare Extra for All, whose sole purpose is to distract and confuse a public that is demonstrably “ready” for single payer. The CAP scheme, like Obamacare, keeps the private insurance corporations at the center of the money-stream, doesn’t cover everyone, charges fees, co-pays and premiums, doesn’t save much money, and would fail to provide millions with adequate coverage. “CAP’s plan maintains the current tiered system in which some people have private health insurance, those with the greatest needs have public health insurance, some people will have inadequate coverage and others will have no coverage at all,” writes Dr. Margaret Flowers, of Health Over Profit. “By offering a solution that sounds good to the uninformed—‘Medicare Extra for All’—but continues to benefit their Wall Street donors,” said Flowers, “Democrats hope to fool people or buy enough support to undermine efforts for NIMA,” or National Improved Medicare for All, the comprehensive single payer plan supported by the activists like Flowers.

The CAP scheme would leave the link between employment and health coverage intact, keeping workers ultimately dependent on the whims of their bosses for healthcare coverage. “When people who have private health insurance lose their job or move, they risk losing their health insurance,” said Flowers. “NIMA creates a health system that covers everyone no matter where they are in the United States and its territories.”

This is what we thought we would be getting when we voted for Obama and why wouldn't we have thought that after he had campaigned on it. Oh yeah I've been told that he didn't actually say that he wanted Single Payer, just something like it. Glenn interviewed him during his campaign and he explains what Obama told him during the interview.

Here's a taste.

The Obama-Scam, Repackaged

The Center for American Progress is running the same bait-and-switch con that Barack Obama played in the set-up to his Affordable Care Act. Bruce Dixon and I were introduced to Obama’s healthcare scam in June of 2003 when we engaged the then candidate for the U.S. Senate in a month-long telephone and email conversation, at The Black Commentator. At the time, Obama was trailing the field of candidates and in need of every Black vote in Illinois. Dixon and I had just learned that Obama had joined the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), the corporate money-bag operation for the right wing of the party founded by white southern Democrats including Bill Clinton and Al Gore. On top of that, he’d recently removed his 2002 (mildly) anti-war speech from his campaign website, apparently to get in line with George Bush’s triumphal “Mission Accomplished” speech, the previous month. Obama denied that he’d become a member of the DLC, and claimed his website was undergoing “routine” updating. (Years later, when the war was clearly lost, Obama’s team would resurrect “The Speech” as proof of his early anti-war credentials.)

A year and a half later, in the week before Obama was sworn into the Senate, he told me that the country was not “ready” for single payer. But, if he really believed that, he would not have spent the next four years misleading the people through his calculated misuse of the term “universal.”

I guess that is kinda like knowing what the definition of is is.

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Daenerys's picture

Not. We don't need another health insurance scheme, but who cares what we want?

Feh. I was looking up our political candidates for MN tonight. Mark Dayton is not running again and the only governor candidate I like is Berniecrat Rebecca Otto. There are no good candidates for our congressional district--just Collin Peterson and some other Republicans. BARF. Also, oh gawd I'm in Collin Peterson's district. D: Welp, guess I'll write in myself.

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This shit is bananas.

Bollox Ref's picture

@Daenerys

who thinks he's a Democrat.

Watch out for the November match-up. The Two Tims. Walz v. Pawlenty. Only in Minnesota.

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

Meteor Man's picture

Make believe Medicare for All is almost as good as the real deal and fools gold is just as valuable as gold bullion too. I'm sure that will make perfect sense to the MSM. Nope. No bait and switch here folks. Nothing to see here, just move along.

I can't decide if Democrats or health insurance executives are the worst enemy of the American healthcare system. Too close to call.

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"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn

snoopydawg's picture

@Meteor Man

The democrats are the protectors of the insurance companies as well as the other companies that are in business to make money from us while pretending to provide us with what we need.

I'm seeing more people being aware of this Trojan horse that the democrats are building. We need to make sure that more people are aware of this. This would set single payer back for years.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg insurance companies and politicians are the switcheroos. I'm seeing more professional liars (politicians) running on 'single payer' platforms. Dig into the details, and it is doublespeak for another clintonesque 'you are the change you pay us for'.

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snoopydawg's picture

@QMS

who is going to believe that they are serious? The ole saying about "fool me once..."
Besides, as long as Schumer and Pelosi are running the DP, nothing is going to get passed. On top of that, the PTB do not want this country to have single payer because if people start having nice things they won't be stressed out enough and might start thinking about having other nice things. Her was right about this. "Single Payer will never, ever happen here.."

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

The Aspie Corner's picture

And from what I understand, HeritageCare already partially privatized Medicare via Medicare Advantage.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

the deductibles and co-pays were either eliminated or on a fair, sliding scale and the poor got full coverage at no cost. And by Medicare for All, I mean the kind of Medicare that is currently available to seniors, the disabled and "widows and orphans," not some mess mislabeled as Medicare.

I don't want a national health service. I don't think they'll ever institute one anyway. If they did, they'd start privatizing it within weeks. Look what they did--and continue to do--to the US Post Office and, as Miracle on 34th Street reminded us, that is one of the few federal agencies that is in the US Constitution.

And even if they didn't privatize, who would want either neoliberals or Republicans to be in charge of funding, building, equipping hospitals or hiring medical staff?

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Alligator Ed's picture

@HenryAWallace include health care rationing. Not all ills can be be cured, in fact most can't, a fact which has nothing to do with Big Pharma. As far as rationing is concerned, the amount or degree of such determination of what diseases or which people get treated is in the end dependant upon national budgetary constraints. In our current Way-At-All-Costs, there isn't that much to work with. We seem to be a nation predisposed to kill and not to save. Rationing will be determined by the "crumbs" (thank you, Nancy P) left over from the war budget.

The name game of the different sounding Medicare for All will be eminently successful in confusing most voters. Access? Coverage? Universal? Cosmic? Galactic? WTF?

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@Alligator Ed

Your comments on rationing are welcome. Do they relate to my post?

I think almost all Americans are familiar with Medicare, but not with single payer. That said, nomenclature is the least of my worries about health insurance or health care.

Nice to see you!

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