Go Fund Me is Not a Health Insurance Plan!
I cried watching this, thinking of my beautiful son Henry and his final weeks at home. Thank you, brave, beautiful @AdyBarkan. I will honor your incredible work & continue the fight for #MedicareForAll. PLEASE watch this in full & RT. pic.twitter.com/jNNb8PnqIz
— rob delaney (@robdelaney) April 30, 2019
Ady Barkan spoke to the House Rules Committee today on why we need to have Medicare for all or even better single payer like every other normal country does. Ady has ALS and even with his insurance he pays $9,000 a month to stay alive. He has to depend on the kindness of strangers like hundreds of thousands other people in this f'cking country through GFM.
Bernie has been talking about how we can afford to spend $6 trillion on our wars of choice, but he doesn't mention the $16 trillion that Obama's administration gave the banks after they deliberately crashed the global economy.
Much of what will be said against Medicare for All at the hearing will be based on something people in the propaganda business call FUD. FUD stands for fear, uncertainty and doubt. The industry and its allies want Americans to fear Medicare for All, feel uncertain about it and doubt that it will be in patients’ best interests.
Here is some of the FUD lawmakers are likely to hear — courtesy of the entrenched special interests in health care — followed by the truth the industry’s allies aim to obscure.
FUD:We can’t afford Medicare for All.
Truth: We can’t afford the status quo.
One of the witnesses at the hearing will be from the corporate-funded Mercatus Center, which published a report last year that estimated the cost of Medicare for All would be something like $32 trillion over 10 years. That number is intended to strike fear in citizens’ hearts. But here’s the thing: That number obscures the fact that the U.S. already spends more than $3.5 trillion a year on health care — twice as much as the average of other developed countries. Do the math. Even if health care costs didn’t rise a penny over the next decade, we’d spend $35 trillion. Factor in the expected 5.5% annual increase in spending and Medicare for All would cost less, not more.
FUD: Medicare for All will be too disruptive.
Truth: Insurers and employers have been disrupting Americans for years to protect profits.
Back in the ’80s, employees across the U.S. had health benefits diminished when they were forced into restrictive managed care plans. By the early 2000s, those plans were no longer profitable enough, so workers were forced into high-deductible plans. And millions of Americans every year find their access to health care disrupted when they lose or change jobs. Every one of us with employer-sponsored health insurance is just a layoff away from being uninsured.
FUD: Americans don’t want “one-size-fits-all” health care. They want choice.
Truth: It is not choice of health insurance plans that Americans want, it is choice of doctors and hospitals.
That clever “one-size-fits-all” talking point obscures the reality that before and after the Affordable Care Act was passed, employers were reducing insurer and health care provider options. A common feature of most of today’s health plans is a constantly changing and shrinking network of doctors and hospitals. Under Medicare for All, Americans would be able to choose doctors and hospitals of our choice, not those imposed on us by insurers and employers.
FUD: Americans who have employer-sponsored health insurance love it and don’t want anything to replace it.
Truth: The truth is that Americans are paying more and more every year for their employer-sponsored coverage and getting less and less value for the money they and their employers are spending for it.
There is a term for that, but I’m betting you’ve never heard it before, and I’m certain the industry’s allies won’t bring it up at the congressional hearing. That term is “benefit buydown.” Members of Congress and the media should ask witnesses about it — and then investigate it.
Benefit buydown is a term that describes the many ways insurers have methodically devalued coverage while charging more and more for it, year in and year out.
The truth that the health insurers’ allies will try to obscure at tomorrow’s hearing is this:
Medicare for all is still not what we need. If we would rely on an existing insurance system then Medicaid would be the one we need. Very low if any copays for doctor visits. Small copays for prescriptions and special tests.
Of course we can afford to have a decent health care plan. Congress just doesn't want to go against their donors.
Comments
that video makes me cry, makes me angry and
makes me hate your country's political representatives for their amorality.
The (health) insurance industry
has spent decades obscuring the lines between health care and insurance. It's funny, but in the end Obama inadvertently did help create death panels.
And advertently.
Much as both leftists and establishment Democrats mocked Sarah Palin for the term "death panels," there was a speck of truth to it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_panel
I debated inadvertently
with myself and figured Obama had his eyes on the future Benjamins after his 2 terms, rather than the republican glee at the sight of suffering. Sarah Palin is very mockable though.
Of course, she's mockable. So is Obama, for that matter,
even though he managed to get a degree (two, actually) and I don't think she ever got one, despite attending six colleges, or whatever the correct number was. Nonetheless, she was not entirely wrong, which fact got lost in all the mocking.
As all of us who read NCTim's Friday open threads
during the illness of his late wife and/or have witnessed ALS IRL can attest, it's an awful, awful affliction. I guess there is no good way to die slowly but this robs you of your abilities, one at a time, so that you cannot even say "thank you" to a beloved caregiver.
Because ALs affects relatively few people, compared with cancer or heart disease, for example, ALS research has been woefully under funded by government. (The relatively recent idea by a sufferer of the ice water challenge was a boon for donations from private sources, but it is not enough to compensate for decades of underfunding.) I am not sure why this brave man doesn't qualify for Medicare or Medicaid, but that is beside the point.
I know the topic of single payer is much bigger than this one man and even bigger than ALS, but putting a face on the problem and giving it even a simulated voice is the reason for this video. Of course, I assume all caucusers are in favor of single payer, or, at the very least, something far better than Obamacare (which may soon be declared unconstitutional in whole or in part, anyway). So, none of us needs to preach to the choir.
It's so many things wrong.
The drive to find drugs that maintain an illness, rather than cure, to keep a steady flow of profits. So much so that manufacturing old drugs that actually are curative are dropped because there isn't enough profit in them. More money going to advertise a drug than to research. Publicly funded science going to private companies for a pittance to come back at us as astronomically priced drugs.
All very true.
That $32 trillion is a scary number.
But W. Potter breaks the math down and then that number becomes funny. According to him, we already spend $3.5 trillion/year. So $3.5 trillion x 10 = 35 trillion. We will be spending more if we leave things as they are. Who knew? We can toss that argument out the window. What a con.
Love the FUD reference, there was a book written a few years back called Merchants of Doubt which is all about how the con works.
Yes of course.
I also saw something about this in the Current Affairs summary on Pete Buttigieg.
"the reason you need a new class to come into power in the United States is because this one is useless" -- Vijay Prashad
The Current Affairs
article was really good. Thanks for that, saved me the agony of having to wade through that book. It seems like deja vu. When things become too formulaic, we should learn. It's a formula, it's corporate media...beware...nuff said.
I've had two friends
that had to rely on Gofundme to pay medical bills.
We live in an immoral country.
"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott
I'm lucky the local health department covers my meds.
How much are they, you ask? 1000 dollars a bottle out of pocket. I'm even more difficult to deal with if I don't have it.
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.
Agree about GoFundMe--but, not about Medicaid! In
some states, it (Medicaid) is but a skeletal "managed care" program.
See excerpt below.
[Pushed for time--sorry, didn't clean this blurb up.]
Will be back later to post a Jayapal-like FUD (or, propaganda) that Bernie was espousing yesterday, on CNN. Just like he did during the Fox Town Hall, he indicates/insinuates that his MFA proposal 'is' the Traditional/Original Medicare program signed into law by LBJ in 1965.
It is not.
I've already posted an excerpt at EB from Bernie's Bill which states that upon the signing of MFA, benefits will no longer be paid from Title XVIII, Social Security Act.
Again, Title XVIII "is" the Original/Traditional Medicare program.
Guess I'll incorporate it into my sig line, so folks will realize that it's a "bait and switch."
My question to all lawmakers who are sponsoring and/or supporting these two MFA Bills--
My time will be very limited over next couple weeks, but, will incorporate two screenshots of blurbs from the bills--which spell out that the MFA Proposals dismantle/replace the current Traditional/Original Medicare program--in my signature line, by June. Also, I'll include links to the proposed Bills.
As I see it, too many people don't read the actual legislation. I hope that will change if/when awareness is raised.
Thanks for the essay.
Mollie
I think dogs are the most amazing creatures; they give unconditional love. For me they are the role model for being alive.
~~Gilda Radner, Comedienne
Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.
That sounds a lot like Utah
"Primary Care Network", at least with the prescription limit. They knew the moment I changed jobs too, before I could even report that I no longer qualified. I wonder if it's even still a thing there.
This shit is bananas.