Bernie's Ready To Fight It Out On Medicare-For-All-- Are Status Quo Joe And Kamala?

When I was growing up, there weren't a lot of women's voices in the media. I'm old. But I remember always wanting to read Eleanor Clift in Newsweek, not so much because I agreed with her but because she was the only woman around writing about politics. She's even older than I am-- and older than Biden, Trump and Bernie. Now Newsweek has her writing for the Daily Beast and she's still a media representative of an establishment point of view. Yesterday, her post was sadly lame: Embracing Medicare for All Will Put the Democratic Party on Life Support. She doesn't understand and insists "Democrats must steer clear of this disaster waiting to happen." What disaster? People learning the details of Medicare-for-All. She calls it "a nice catchphrase, but... a poison pill that the Democratic candidates should not swallow whole." She's getting her information from from lobbyists and publicists paid handsomely by the Medical Industrial Complex to kill Medicare-For-All. Poor old Eleanor was an easy mark. She should watch this brand new Secular Talk video to see where she's been misled:




Asked for a show of hands which Democrats support Medicare for All, Elizabeth Warren led the charge to declare, “I’m with Bernie.” New York Mayor Bill De Blasio joined her. On the second night, Kamala Harris raised her hand to back Sanders, then following the debate thought better of it, saying she misunderstood the question.

So should the whole "I'm with Bernie" contingent of fake progressive candidates who aren't really with Bernie, don't really understand Medicare-for-All and don't really embrace Medicare-for-All-- and won't fight for it if they get elected. Let's start with the shallowest-- policy-wise-- of the candidates: Kamala Harris. She's also the least serious of the top Democratic candidates-- good actor but no core-- none. "Kamala Harris Says Medicare for All Wouldn’t End Private Insurance," wrote Sahil Kapur, who added "It Would." If she was paying attention instead of worrying about political positioning, she's know that. Kapur's use of "but" is a dead giveaway: "She favors single payer but wants a role for private insurance. Kamala Harris says she supports Medicare for All, and she has cosponsored legislation with Bernie Sanders. But unlike her Democratic presidential rival, she says the plan wouldn’t end private insurance. That’s misleading. The measure would outlaw all private insurance for medically necessary services but allow a sliver to remain for supplemental coverage. It would force the roughly 150 million Americans who are insured through their employer to switch to a government-run program.

Harris is trying to find a narrow path between two competing constituencies in the Democratic Party. On one side are progressives who passionately support so-called single payer insurance and are pushing the party to the left. On the other is the party establishment [+ establishment, or corporate, media], which believes that calling for an end to private insurance for millions would be political suicide against President Donald Trump in 2020.

...The issue has tripped up the California senator almost from the moment she began her candidacy. During the debates in Miami last week, Harris and Sanders raised their hands when NBC’s Lester Holt asked which candidates would “abolish their private health insurance in favor of a government-run plan.” She retreated the next day, saying she thought Holt was referring to her personal insurance plan and answered “no” when asked if private coverage insurance should end.

She ran into a similar problem in January, when her campaign walked back a comment she made at a CNN town hall calling for getting “rid of” private insurance structures.

Larry Levitt, a health policy expert at the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, said the intent of the Sanders bill is clear.

“As a practical matter, Senator Sanders’ Medicare for all bill would mean the end of private health insurance,” he said. “Employer health benefits would no longer exist, and private insurance would be prohibited from duplicating the coverage under Medicare.”

Sanders last week criticized Harris for splitting hairs, without mentioning her by name.

“If you support Medicare for All, you have to be willing to end the greed of the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries,” he said. “That means boldly transforming our dysfunctional system by ending the use of private health insurance, except to cover non-essential care like cosmetic surgeries.”

In an email, Harris spokesman Ian Sams responded: “Kamala’s position is and has always been every American would get insurance through the single payer plan, and private insurance would exist to cover anything supplemental, as is expressly outlined in the Medicare for All bill. Seems like Bernie is saying that, too.”

Other 2020 candidates-- Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand-- also cosponsored Sanders’s bill.

Warren has given a far more direct endorsement than Harris of the idea of eliminating private insurance.

“I’m with Bernie on Medicare for All,” she said on the first night of the Democratic debates. “There are a lot of politicians who say, oh, it’s just not possible, we just can’t do it, have a lot of political reasons for this. What they’re really telling you is they just won’t fight for it.”

At the other end of the spectrum is former Vice President Joe Biden, who said he wants to build on Obamacare by adding a government-run plan to the menu of options, a provision that progressives tried and failed to add in 2009 amid opposition from centrist Democrats.

“Everyone, whether they have private insurance or employer insurance and no insurance, they, in fact, can buy in the exchange to a Medicare-like plan,” Biden said in the debate.

Hedging her position, Harris has also cosponsored “Medicare X” legislation by Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, another Democratic presidential candidate who’s running as a moderate. That measure would preserve private coverage while allowing Americans to buy into a government-run plan. But she said Friday on MSNBC she favors single payer with only supplemental private insurance.

Harris continued to defend that position in West Des Moines, Iowa, on Wednesday, saying that losing one’s private insurance doesn’t mean losing one’s doctor.

“I am for Medicare for All,” she told reporters. “I think that that if you talk with people extensively enough, nobody’s in the position of really trying to defend their insurance company. What they want to know is that they’re going to be able to keep their doctor under Medicare for All. They will be.”

Single payer proponents argue that a “public option” isn’t feasible as it would attract only the sickest people and drive up costs; they say a national program that covers everybody is necessary to pool risk and keep prices down. But Democrats who prefer a government option argue that it’s the most pragmatic way to extend coverage.

At a campaign stop in Waterloo, Iowa, on Wednesday, Biden seemed to take aim at Harris and others who he said wanted to “start over” on health care.

“I fundamentally disagree with anyone who says scrap Obamacare,” he said. “I’m against any Republican who wants to scrap it, I’m against any Democrat who wants to scrap it.”

Over the weekend, House Medicare for All lead sponsor, Pramila Jayapal, wasn't playing any of Harris' word games. She launched a damn righteous tweet storm to set the record straight, especially on Biden's lies and misinformation.

In his CNN interview Friday, the hapless Biden said he supports allowing Americans to buy into Medicare instead of going all the way to Medicare for All, which he slammed as disruptive and costly despite studies showing it would save the U.S. trillions of dollars in overall healthcare spending, something he clearly can't wrap his frozen old brain around.

Biden: "If they like their employer-based insurance, which a lot of unions broke their neck to get, a lot of people like theirs, they shouldn't have to give it up. If you don't go my way and you go their way you have to give up all that. What's gonna happen when you have 300 million people landing on a healthcare plan. How long is that going to take? What's it going to do?"

I can only imagine Pramila's brain exploding when she heard the clueless and increasingly senile doofus regurgitating Republican Party talking points that have been used against Social Security and Medicare for decades. "This argument that 'unions broke their neck to get employer-based insurance' is an OLD argument that isn't relevant today," she tweeted.

Unions understand what's at stake even if the completely out of touch Biden doesn't and never will. After all, Bernie-- and Pramila's-- Medicare for All legislation cover every medically necessary service, including dental, vision and long-term care, leaving virtually no room for private insurers to cover anything except nose jobs and tummy tucks.