[Peace-discuss] Congressional Democrats Betray Voters

[David Johnson]

Published on 

Saturday, March 13, 2021

by 

 <https://www.commondreams.org> Common Dreams

Perfidy Meets Putty-Congressional Democrats Betray Voters

Where is the outcry among Democratic politicians to reverse completely the
corporate takeover of Medicare?

by

 <https://www.commondreams.org/author/ralph-nader> Ralph Nader

 
<https://commons.commondreams.org/t/perfidy-meets-putty-congressional-democr
ats-betray-voters/88996> 48 Comments

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer speak
after a press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer speak
after a press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Tasos
Katopodis/Getty Images)

Do you remember the promises made by the Democratic Party's presidential and
Congressional candidates on universal health insurance? You can forget their
pledges and somber convictions now that your votes put the Democrats in
charge of the House and the Senate. The Democrats' leaders are abandoning
their promises and retreating into a cowardly corporatist future.

Here is the present scene. Leading Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, have decided to spend tens of billions
of taxpayer dollars to subsidize the giant health insurance companies like
Aetna and United Healthcare to "cover recently laid-off workers and those
who purchase their own coverage," as The New York Times reported. There are
no price restraints on the gouging insurance premiums or loophole-ridden
policies. That is why giant corporate socialist insurers love the "American
Rescue Plan," which gives them socialist cash on the barrelhead. The law
lets insurers decide how and whether they pay healthcare bills with co-pays,
deductibles, or grant waivers. All these anti-consumer details are buried in
the endless and inscrutable fine print.

"A modified Obamacare, with no price ceilings, will hardly reduce the tens
of thousands of American deaths every year because people cannot afford
health insurance to get diagnosed and treated in time to prevent
fatalities."

Whatever happened to the Democrats' (Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren,
Pramila Jayapal, etc.) demand for single-payer - everybody in, nobody out -
with free choice of doctors and hospitals instead of the existing cruel, and
profiteering industry for which enough is never enough? Senator Sanders
often mentioned a Yale study, published on February 15, 2020, that found:

Although health care expenditure per capita is higher in the USA than in any
other country, more than 37 million Americans do not have health insurance,
and 41 million more have inadequate access to care. Efforts are ongoing to
repeal the Affordable Care Act which would exacerbate health-care
inequities. By contrast, a universal system, such as that proposed in the
Medicare for All Act, has the potential to transform the availability and
efficiency of American health-care services. Taking into account both the
costs of coverage expansion and the savings that would be achieved through
the Medicare for All Act, we calculate that a single-payer, universal
health-care system is likely to lead to a 13% savings in national
health-care expenditure, equivalent to more than $450 billion annually.."
(See the study:
<https://nader.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c5cfd22327c3214afb5955d02&i
d=456ec4b546&e=8e411e9705> Improving the Prognosis of Health Care in the
USA, February 15, 2020).

Well, House Speaker Pelosi is discouraging House Democrats from supporting
Representative Pramila Jayapal's H.R. 1384, Medicare for All Act of 2019,
the gold standard for single-payer. News reports indicate that
Representative Jayapal (D-WA) and Representative. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) will
reintroduce their Medicare for All bill next week. Speaker Pelosi is telling
Democrats in the House to focus instead on the modest expansion of Obamacare
with its corporate welfare, utter complexity and seriously inadequate
coverage. Almost eighty million Americans are presently uninsured or
underinsured - a level that will not be significantly reduced for deprived
workers by tweaking Obamacare during the Covid-19 pandemic.

A modified Obamacare, with no price ceilings, will hardly reduce the tens of
thousands of American deaths every year because people cannot afford health
insurance to get diagnosed and treated in time to prevent fatalities. The
Yale study also found that: "ensuring health-care access for all Americans
would save more than 68,000 lives and 1.73 million life-years every year
compared with the status quo." Tweaking Obamacare does little to stem the
relentless surge in healthcare prices and profits in our country, which is
unique for not placing billing ceilings on medical procedures and drugs.
This "get whatever you can" behavior by the vendors is so uncontrolled that
healthcare billing fraud and abuse is costing people one billion dollars A
DAY! Malcolm Sparrow, who is an applied mathematician at Harvard, estimates
medical billing fraud amounts to at least ten percent of all healthcare
expenses each year.

Obamacare does nothing to limit the perverse incentives of a fee-for-service
system that includes unnecessary operations, over-diagnosis, and
over-prescribing all of which increase the risks of preventable casualties.
A Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine peer-reviewed study in 2016
estimates that close to 5000 lives are lost weekly due to such "preventable
problems" just in hospitals (see:
<https://nader.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c5cfd22327c3214afb5955d02&i
d=f3c5523bf8&e=8e411e9705> Study Suggests Medical Errors Now Third Leading
Cause of Death in the U.S., May 3, 2016).

It gets worse. Year after year, the corporate Democrats, along with the
Republicans, are facilitating expanding corporate takeovers of Medicare and
Medicaid. The giant and widening attack on Medicare is called "Medicare
Advantage," which more accurately should be called "Medicare
[Dis]advantage." Our corporatized government, under both Parties, has been
allowing deceptive promotional seductions of elderly people to take Medicare
[Dis]advantage - now fully 40% of all Medicare beneficiaries - which is just
a corporate insurance plan with multiple undisclosed tripwires.

Former President Trump worsened what he inherited from the Democrats in
outsourcing Medicare. He launched something called "direct contracting"
that, "could fully turn Medicare over to private health insurers" declared
Diane Archer, former chair of Consumer Reports, in her article on March 8,
2021. Medicare Advantage premiums can be pricey. According to Kay Tillow,
Executive Director of the Nurses Professional Organization, "The Medicare
Advantage Plans are smiling all the way to the bank. In 2019 each Medicare
Advantage beneficiary cost taxpayers $11,822 while those in original
Medicare cost $10,813 each - that's over $1,000 more and over 9% more per
person for the for-profit insurers!"

Where is the outcry among Democratic politicians to reverse completely the
corporate takeover of Medicare? Last year, many Democratic candidates
pontificated about the need for single-payer health insurance, but now in
Congress, we are scarcely hearing a peep about this vital human right. Their
campaign rhetoric is just distant memory. Tragically, it is now harder than
ever for the elderly to get out of Medicare [Dis]advantage and go back to
traditional Medicare.

Millions of elderly people are deceived by televised marketing lies and
slick brochures.  The hapless Federal Trade Commission (FTC) should
investigate and end the deceptions. Congressional investigations and
hearings are long overdue. As the authoritative Dr. Fred Hyde says about the
so-called Medicare Advantage: "It's not what you pay, it's what you get."
That is, the corporate health plan works until they get sick, until "they
want their doctor and their hospital." Dr. Hyde was referring to the narrow
networks where these companies park their beneficiaries.

More astonishing in this story of the rapacious corporate takeover of
Medicare is that AARP promotes these flawed plans to their members, takes
paid ads by big insurers in AARP publications, and derives income from this
collaboration.

Imagine, over 50,000 SEIU retirees are automatically placed by their unions
in these Medicare [Dis]advantage traps without first being allowed to choose
traditional Medicare.

This whole sordid sabotage of the nineteen sixties Democrats' dream, under
President Lyndon Johnson, of taking the first step toward universal
healthcare coverage for everyone, begs for more exposes. It begs for more
clamor by the progressive Democrats in Congress who are strangely passive so
far. I'm speaking of Representatives Jayapal, Raskin, Ocasio-Cortez (AOC),
and the receding "Squad," as well as Senators Warren and Sanders. If we
can't expect these stalwarts to start the counterattack that will save
lives, save trillions of dollars over the years, focus on prevention not
just treatment, and diminish the anxiety, dread, and fear, that the citizens
of Canada and other western nations do not experience because they are
insured from birth on, who is left to defend the American people against the
arrogant health insurance corporate barons?

I'm sending this column to these self-styled progressive Democrats along
with a two-page specific critique of corporate Medicare from the Physicians
for a National Health Program (PNHP) website. PNHP's membership counts over
15,000 pro-single-payer physicians. In a comment on the PNHP site, Don
McCanne, M.D., says, "Remember, the mission of private, for-profit Medicare
Advantage insurers is to make money, whereas the mission of our traditional
Medicare program is to provide health care. We are supporting a program that
deferentially caters to the private insurers and their interests when we
should be supporting a program that is designed to take care of patients.
Those being deceived by the private Medicare Advantage marketing materials
really do not realize the bad deal they may be getting until they face the
private insurer barriers to needed care. Silver Sneakers won't take care of
that." (See:
<https://nader.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c5cfd22327c3214afb5955d02&i
d=71d27e89e1&e=8e411e9705>
https://pnhp.org/news/russell-mokhiber-explains-why-private-medicare-advanta
ge-plans-are-a-bad-deal/)

If you care about this issue, tell your Members of Congress it is time to
pass Medicare for All represented by H.R. 1384.

 

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