Why Does The Right Lie About Medicare For All? Ans.: To Make Medically Bankrupt 'Muricans Feel Better!

Image accompanying latest WSJ propaganda piece ('The False Promise of Medicare for All')

First, let's grasp that the character who got us into the Great Depression was none other than President Herbert Hoover.  It stands to reason then that his latter day acolytes embedded in the Hoover Institution would be front and center in carrying out his regressive economics and continuing to make the lives of millions miserable today as well.  They, e.g.  Dr. Scott W. Atlas -  in his hit on Medicare for All in yesterday's WSJ ('The False Promise of Medicare for All', p. A17)-  keep at it because it serves their  "profit over people" purpose. It also keeps their rich donors (like the Koch brothers) at the center of continuing political power plays, dramas - and the infusion of their money pays for the PR attacks..

The lies reeled off  in Scott Atlas' piece are so prodigious that if I recited them all they'd consume most of this post - apart from giving them further currency-   so that I will not do. I will just present one of his damned lies, because it invokes our Canadian neighbors, i.e.

"In Canada last year the median wait time between seeing a general practitioner and following up with a specialist was 10.2 weeks, while the wait between seeing a doctor and beginning treatment was about five months. According to a Fraser Institute study, the average Canadian waits three months to see an ophthalmologist, four months for an orthopedist, and five months for a neurosurgeon."

All of which are bald faced lies.    Besides, do we trust the offerings of the "Fraser Institute" or any of its "studies"?  I think not, given they are a creature of the Koch brothers, e.g.

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Fraser_Institute

Excerpt:

The Fraser Institute is a libertarian think tank based in Vancouver, British Columbia. The Fraser Institute is an associate member of the right-wing State Policy Network (SPN), and was featured in SPN's Associate Member Updates in July/August 2017. ^[1] Additional reports, ranking and index information about the Fraser Institute are featured in SPN's Associate Member Updates.  The Koch brothers -- David and Charles -- are the right-wing billionaire co-owners of Koch Industries. As two of the richest people in the world, they are key funders of the right-wing infrastructure, including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the State Policy Network (SPN)

So are you really going to believe this bunch, OR anyone who cites them?  I think not, nor should you given THEY are the lot selling the real snake oil.    Indeed, the Canadians we spoke with in our last trip to Alberta (Sept. 25- Oct. 6) unanimously agreed they would not change their single payer  health care  for the world, and certainly not with Americans and their pathetic patchwork system with dozens of insurance companies, continually increasing premiums, and drug prices that are more like continuing extortion.

Our niece Inge, a naturalized Canadian (originally from Trinidad),  has lived in Toronto for over 3 decades. She has also had occasion to use the Canuck single payer system multiple times for back issues. Never has she experienced waiting times cited by this kook, Atlas.  (She did acknowledge in certain provinces, an ingrown toenail - which has lesser priority  - may have you waiting a bit longer to see a specialist than say, a broken big toe.)

While the Right and its Libertarian cohort (including the Kochs) likes to baffle with bullshit concerning Medicare for all, its basis is really quite simple and sensible.  It would basically take the existing successful Medicare system, strengthen it and extend it to all Americans. Thus, we would see:

- From birth everyone, every American citizen, will be insured and have access to any doctor or hospital in the country no matter the size of their bank account. (Unlike today when a private insurance corporations dictates which doctor you can see.)

- Unlike today when a high deductible or lack of coverage prevents it, people will be able to see a doctor when they first become ill. This will save on much larger costs down the road when conditions worsen.

- Prescription drug prices will be cut by as much as 40 percent simply by repealing a federal law that prevents Medicare from competitive bidding for lowest drug prices.

But make no mistake that 'Medicare for all'  would be the for profit  medical industry's biggest nightmare because they'd no longer be able to reap profits by invoking  pre-existing conditions or medical loss ratios - preventing sick people from getting care instead of delivering it. Hence, they and their  political lackeys and extremists will be prepared to fight like junkyard dogs to prevent it, including the perverse use of propaganda.

Some of the myths peddled by the Right and the likes of the denizens of the Hoover Institution as well as CATO Institute, American Enterprise Institute, Manhattan Institute etc. are the following - with their knockdowns:

Myth: Single payer is government run health care.

Fact: No, that would be the Veterans Administration system. Under single payer you get a health ID card and can see any doctor or go to any hospital in the U.S.  Doctors are NOT employees of the government and hospitals remain in private hands.

Myth: Single payer will lead to rationing like in Canada:

Fact: No, because right now in the U.S. it is PRIVATE health insurance which rations care by using medical loss ratio calculations to determine how much care must be disallowed to earn x % profit


Myth: Costs will skyrocket under single payer.

Fact: By eliminating the for profit system we can save $350 b a year or more in administrative costs.

Myth: Drugs will be more costly and difficult to get under single payer.

Fact:  Drugs will be cheaper because single payer will be able to bargain for lowest prices - like the VA does.

 All of these points show that too many Americans have been fed a bill of goods about single payer, and we call such tactics propaganda.  It is time to start rationally responding every time the term "single payer"  or "Medicare for all" surfaces in media attacks or PR hits.

We all need to begin to think rationally about how we can make our system much better by adopting it, and also rigorously arguing against the assorted spurious attacks by media know - nothings, their lackeys and the pro-capitalist exploiters.   As a relatively recent example, both Charles Blahous and  CNN's Jake Tapper were exposed as not completely truthful in a   pair of essays published in the journal Jacobin.

Also not surprising is that Tapper echoed the Neoliberal twaddle of The Washington Post which (Jacobin writer) Matt Bruenig points out has regurgitated the untruths in  a separate fact-check  of Ocasio -Cortex, as well as a video segment accompanying an editorial entitled  “The cosmically huge ‘if’ of Medicare for all."   Interestingly, the editors removed the video soon after the exposure.

This led Bruenig to write:

"In some ways, the undead nature of this falsehood is a perfect microcosm of the problems our society faces in dealing with fake news.  Once a false report is out there, it is devilishly difficult to undo the damage it has caused because, even if it is corrected, few people ever recognize the correction and so many people wind up repeating the false report.”

Sometime later, a medical specialist (John Perryman) wrote in a response letter to the WSJ (Aug.  17th):  

"The U.S. pays more for health care, whether measured on a per capita basis or as a proportion of GDP than every other nation on Earth".



So no wonder so many Americans have to file for medical bankruptcy (i.e. file for bankruptcy because of crushing medical debt.)   Why then all these persistent attacks on single payer systems? Obviously to make overburdened Americans believe they don't have it so bad after all! They have access to the "greatest medical system" in the whole world"... for a price!

See also:

Healthcare Policy

Time For Medicare For All

by Robert Reich | November 14, 2018 - 7:15am |

Excerpt:


"Over 70% of Americans–and even 52% of Republicans–now support Medicare for All, a single-payer plan that builds on Medicare and would cover everyone at far lower cost than the current system."

  
  

Corporate Media Pushes Socialism Bogey To Scare Voters - But Will They Be Smart Enough Not To Bite?

The asinine brainwashing of the American masses has occurred in many forms, but no where as consistently and insanely as the campaign against socialism (as embodied, for example,  in the cartoon above which appeared in Monday's Denver Post).  With the midterm elections now merely 62 days away, the bogey meme of mad, liberty destroying socialists is again being circulated.  Never mind real U.S. Socialists are among the sanest and most rational of D-candidates, such as Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, e.g.

Brane Space: 28-Year Old Democratic Socialist Beats The Dem .

In a recent NY Times op-ed piece, columnist Paul Krugman queried how it is the corporatists and conservos repeatedly manage to game the American voter on the issues of Medicare for all, Social Security and other socialist programs. He wrote:

"Why do they imagine they can get away with such brazen fraud, because that’s what it is? Do they imagine that voters are stupid?  Well, yes. In recent rallies Donald Trump has been declaring that Democrats want to “raid Medicare to pay for socialism.”

But the more important target is the news media, many members of which still haven’t learned to cope with the pervasive bad faith of modern conservatism."

I don't necessarily accept that the conservatives assume that voters are stupid, and neither do the corporate media. What I do believe is that they exploit the vast ignorance of most Americans regarding different economic systems, especially socialism.   A huge part of this ignorance relies on the typical American's inability to discriminate between the different forms of socialism.

For example, democratic socialism applies to limited control of the means of production, and services and is specific to democratic states. By contrast, neither Marxist Socialism or National Socialism were peculiar to democratic states. Indeed, in the latter, Reich Laws replaced the democracy and democratic legal infrastructure of the Weimar Republic, so in many ways the term - confected by Hitler and the Nazis - is really a cynical  distortion of true socialism. 

In the case of Marxist socialism or Marxism (as manifested in the old USSR) one beheld  total state control of ALL goods and services. This was to the extent nearly all jobs were created by the state, wages set by the state and pseudo-markets created where there were no genuine needs to fulfill and others (especially for growing food) left under-developed. In addition, no such entities as stock markets or commodities exchanges existed.

In other words, there was scant choice or latitude to act outside the limited purview dictated by state control. THIS is what today's hysterical socialism critics (like the WaPo cartoonist Lisa Benson) are really about, i.e. showing a clueless voter about to insert his 'Bill of Rights'  ballot  into the  slot designated "insert freedom here".  Then asking himself,  "What could go wrong?"

Well, a lot if he was voting on behalf of old -style Soviet socialism!  But that's not what we're about!  We're about democratic socialism which even Oprah had to be educated about not too long ago,  when even she raised misbegotten fear of socialism and the welfare state.e.g.

• Oprah got perfect response from Danish woman on their social welfare state 

As Oprah rumbled on  about "socialism" with a fearful expression, a Danish citizen on Skype quickly informs her: "We think of it as being civilized. As taking care of each other...the elderly, the sick."   The Danish woman had clearly exposed Oprah's brainwashing - and Oprah is not a dumb American.

Want to see a "welfare state?"  Look at the billions now being given to soy, dairy, hog, sorghum, corn, cotton and other farmers to compensate them for the losses sustained via Trump's tariffs!

My first exposure to democratic socialism in fact came about while living in Milwaukee in the 1950s. At that time, Frank P. Zeidler was the city's  last Socialist Mayor,

 I  thank my mother for educating me on the contributions of Mayor Zeidler - who was a member of the Socialist Party of America. On assorted streetcar trips in the early 1950s (back from her night school - teaching English to the foreign-born)  she'd point out special landmarks and places in Beer City and inform me how these were there thanks to the efforts of Milwaukee's Mayor.

Before Mayor Zeidler, Emil Seidl became Milwaukee's first Socialist Mayor in 1910, followed by Daniel Hogan who lasted from 1916-1940 keeping the city out of debt during the Great Depression. Zeidler,  in his mayoral election campaign, noted the problem of ethnic division in other parts of the country and how this was exploited – especially by wealthy Republicans- to keep working class people divided. Zeidler vowed, if elected, he’d ameliorate these divisions and ensure all Milwaukeean Working class folks benefited – whether Croatian, German, Polish or whatever. Zeidler ended up winning three terms, enduring from 1948 until 1960 and turning Milwaukee into a prosperous post-war city.

Jobs proliferated, especially in major manufacturing (Allis –Chalmers etc.) while the Breweries hired thousands with excellent pay and benefits, including health care. Housing abounded as well, affordable housing off of Greenfield Ave. and Teutonia and in other suburbs to the north and west. Parks, meanwhile, were the envy of many other cities for their beautiful layouts, amenities and services. I can still recall going to Washington Park (across the street from where my family lived on W. 48th and Cherry Streets) on the 4th of July for band performances and later fireworks. 

So my appreciation for a respectable, beneficial socialism commenced at a very early age, and was reinforced by further study of many different socio-economic systems as part of a wide-ranging liberal arts education..Unlike today's  "steeples" of specialization which turn academics into isolated practitioners of their craft - unable to communicate across disciplines -  Loyola's liberal arts emphasis lent itself to the formation of latter day "Renaissance men" - and women. True critical thinkers who would definitely be an asset in much of today's media.

But instead, more often than not,  when conservos take egregious shots at socialism, for example, the corporate media almost always parrot what's circulated from Right think tanks. Whether the press or electronic media, there is too much of a rush to fall in line in "monkey see, monkey do"  fashion.  They fail to question the conservative tropes and memes circulated and all citizens suffer as a result - especially in perpetuating citizen ignorance.

What we desperately need is more eye opening "Eureka!" moments such as encountered by Oprah visibly  and markedly seen in the previous link.

At the same time there may well be cause for some hope. In a recent FOX News poll, it was found that 46 percent favored a Medicare for All health care system, far in excess of the 31 percent who didn't. That is a clear majority who favor the most socialist of all medical program options, and one being articulated by a number of Dem candidates, including Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.

Now, if we can just get more of the mainstream media to be supportive, or at least less prone to scribbling codswallop like a recent WaPo  Neoliberal editorial entitled  “The cosmically huge ‘if’ of Medicare for all." . 

At least in this (WaPo) case, a serious fact check  (and debunking) was made thanks to Matt Bruenig’s  Jacobin journal article here. But one wonders how many of those who read the editorial also read the takedown of its lies, distortions in Jacobin or ancillary sources.  What we need is to get to a place of citizen education where critical thinking enables them to pierce the veil of misinformation on mere reading and parsing of the claims made.

As can be seen from the circulation of the socialism cartoon that day may well be a long time off. 

Medicare For All IS Financially Feasible - Contrary to the Neoliberal Pundits' Codswallop

The CNN star pundit Jake Tapper is normally a steady and sane voice amidst the current insanity and turmoil affecting the country thanks to Brand Trump.  But he stumbled badly recently in attempting to hold the claims of Sen. Bernie Sanders and  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez   to scrutiny, warning that the Democratic Socialist Duo  were "not entitled to their own facts" i.e. in respect of their claims concerning the cost efficiency of Medicare for All.  But could it be that Jake is the one being dishonest here, and those he seeks to castigate in his Neoliberal myopia are correct? 


The point to be made here is that it matters what source or sources one selects in challenging the claims of others.  Sometimes this is like shooting fish in a barrel because the source is a fraud through and through. Hence those citing it are also frauds or woefully ignorant of the contaminated,  fake nature of  what they're citing. A case in point is the Warren 'Whitewash' Commission's 'Warren Report' -  so replete with lies, omissions, outright fraudulent exhibits, etc. that anyone who cites it for support has already lost his or her case.  

The financial issues to do with Medicare for all are much less obvious because they depend not only on the integrity of sources but assumptions made, as well as financial projections.  I already posted (June 12, last year) on Bloomberg columnist Megan McCardle's financial objections as well as giving my responses to them. For example, in terms of her arguments for "asymmetric insurance" for a given risk pool managed by health insurance, I wrote:   

I argue, as does David Jessop, that this kind of economic concept has no place in health care delivery because people are not cars, homes, or fancy jewels. Look, if populations are continually growing that logically  means sick conditions and diseases must grow with them-  whether cancers, Alzheimer's, kidney disease or whatever. Even the healthiest person following a rigorous diet  can get cancer or be injured in an auto accident. Hence, the notion of "asymmetric insurance" for a risk pool managed by a health insurer is ludicrous. There can be no such thing because one will know from the get go that every manner of sickness and disability can only expand, especially for older age groups.


What Jake Tapper pulled on his CNN segment was arguably a lot worse.  In the Tapper case, he honed in on Sen. Sanders' and Alexandra Ocasio- Cortez' claim that one study from the Mercatus Center (at George Mason University - a libertarian strong hold)  showed that a universal health care plan would actually save money over a ten year period. 

“Is that true?” Tapper asked incredulously. “Did a study funded by the Koch brothers indicate that Medicare for All would actually save the U.S. government trillions of dollars? No, it’s not true, at least not according to the author of the study.”

After carefully noting an Associated Press investigation that exposed the Koch brothers’ control over the hiring and firing of educators at George Mason University, Tapper then proceeded to quote at length from the Mercatus Center’s Charles Blahous, who refuted Sanders’ assertion that the proposed legislation would lower the projected cost of all health care expenditures by $2 trillion. From the segment:

It is likely that the actual cost of [Medicare for all] would be substantially greater than these estimates, which assume significant administrative and drug cost savings under the plan, and also assume that health care providers operating under [Medicare for all] will be reimbursed at rates more than 40 percent lower than those currently paid by private health insurance.

This is where it gets interesting because Blahous' contentions and arguments also appeared in the WSJ ('Even Doubling Taxes Wouldn't Pay For Medicare For All'. Aug, 2nd), wherein he claimed that over ten years the bill would rise to $32.6 TRILLION if the U.S. adopted Medicare for All. Which is pure poppycock, as well as myopic. As one medical specialist (John Perryman) wrote in a response letter to the WSJ (last Friday, the 17th):

.  "The U.S. pays more for health care, whether measured on a per capita basis or as a proportion of GDP than every other nation on Earth.   What Blahous fails to mention is that vast costs are already happening and our worsened by the structure of our health care system. Single payer is an economically viable alternative."

In effect, if you run the numbers for the money shelled out for private insurance by all Americans over the next ten years, including premium increases, drug increases, costs increasing due to inflation and others (co-pays, out of pocket outlays for high deductible plans), it easily surpasses $32.6 trillion and is probably closer to $40 trillion if ER visits by the uninsured are factored in - which costs have to be paid by taxpayers.

Blahous' wild claims  -  based in part on the false assumption of a 40 % cut to provider reimbursements-  were also trounced in a separate letter (same date, issue)  by a Univ. Of Michigan medical professor  who wrote:  "A 25 % federal VAT plus a 3 %  increase in the top federal tax rate (from 37 % to 30%) would be adequate to fund Medicare for All even under Mr. Blahous' assumptions."

Blahous and Tapper were also exposed as not completely truthful in a   pair of essays published in the journal Jacobin.   In effect, what the Mercatus study actually indicated is that Medicare provider rates would come in at 40 percent below private insurance rates. Not totally surprising given  Medicare provider reimbursements  are not affected to the 40 percent level - contrary to Blahous' blather, i.e. as exposed in the Jacobin essays . 

 As  Matt Bruenig writes: 

“This is because only 56 percent of Americans have private insurance.  So, while private insurance patients would see their payments reduced by 40 percent, Medicare patients would not see their payments reduced at all, and Medicaid and uninsured patients would actually see their payments increase.”

Tapper's obsession - typically Neoliberal  - is also on the savings for government ($2 trillion) but in fact that's irrelevant as it is the savings for We the people - as Sanders and Ocasio -Cortex had belabored.  Also not surprising is that Tapper echoes the Neoliberal position of The Washington Post which Bruenig points out has regurgitated the untruths in  a separate fact-check  of Ocasio -Cortex, as well as a video segment accompanying an editorial entitled  “The cosmically huge ‘if’ of Medicare for all."   Interestingly, the editors have appeared to have removed the video - maybe conscious of exposure of their Neoliberal lies, after the appearance of the Jacobin piece.

This led Bruenig to write:

"In some ways, the undead nature of this falsehood is a perfect microcosm of the problems our society faces in dealing with fake news.  Once a false report is out there, it is devilishly difficult to undo the damage it has caused because, even if it is corrected, few people ever recognize the correction and so many people wind up repeating the false report.”

The takeaway here is that any claims you see or hear regarding how Medicare for All is "too costly" or "financially impractical" must be taken with a grain of salt.  Look especially at the sources cited and don't be fooled by any superficial institute's name cachet. 

Watch Jake Tapper’s CNN segment here.

Read Matt Bruenig’s articles here and here.