Two Blue America Candidates Speak Out On Healthcare: Dana Balter And Tom Guild

The pandemic has forced progressive candidates to change their means of reaching voters. David Wasserman, writing yesterday for the Cook Report, noted "As the COVID-19 outbreak forces more states to delay spring primary and runoff dates, it's had another, more subtle effect: it's all but frozen the House recruitment process in place and curtailed fundraising, benefiting incumbents and candidates who had already built large war chests and disadvantaging recent entrants." It's especially helpful to conservatives-- on both sides of the aisle. Dana Balter is battling Trump boot-licker John Katko, who had already raised $1,545,336 by the December 31 FEC reporting deadline. Balter's haul-- before the pandemic struck-- was $519,225. Similarly, Oklahoma City Blue Dog Kendra Horn-- a conservative who votes with Trump more than nearly any Democrat in Congress-- had raised $2,277,970 both the end of the quarter and before her progressive primary challenger, Tom Guild jumped into the race.

This week, both Balter and Guild worked to get their core messages on healthcare out. Guild sent an e-mail to Oklahoma City voters. "In this time of national crisis," be began, "we must achieve a degree of isolation, interrupted by an occasional trip to the grocery store, to the pharmacy, and to fill up our vehicles with gas. We do our best to care for others at a distance by contributing to charities and via social media. During this stark and sober time let us reflect on how to improve America as we eventually resume some semblance of normalcy. This emergency is partially a result of a health care system, that really isn’t an integrated system, but a patchwork of institutions and industries focused on maximizing profits. As we transition to universal healthcare in America via Medicare for All, we will put in place an integrated system that is not profit-driven but focused on the health and wellbeing of every American. Deductibles and co-pays will be phased out and the per capita spending for healthcare will very likely be reduced." He continued:

“A government-run, single-payer system may be run with just enough resources for normal times... but unlike the patchwork, for-profit ‘system’ we have, a publicly run system can be ramped up much more quickly to meet crises such as this one.” (Paul Crist)

We face the current crisis woefully unprepared to meet the tremendous challenge before us. We can learn from this experience and redouble our efforts to not be placed in this situation again. As the only candidate for Congress in Oklahoma’s Fifth Congressional District embracing universal health care coverage by adopting MFA, it makes a difference which candidate we nominate and that we elect to represent our district.

Stay safe. Keep your distance. Keep the faith. Take care of yourself and others.

If you would like to financially support our effort to achieve systemic and meaningful change for the future you can do that [by clicking on the Medicare-For-All thermometer on the right].


Vote like your life and health and that of your fellow Americans is at stake.

Yours in the cause,

Tom Guild

Balter was more fortunate, as the Syracuse Post Standard decided to publish her commentary with its message to NY-24 voters and it was able to reach far more voters and potential contributors.

We’re experiencing a crisis unlike anything in our living memory; the toll on our health, lives, and economy will be immense. We all need to do our part to keep our communities safe and we need our leaders to step up and take action to limit the pandemic’s impact.

I have talked with countless people across central and western New York whose lives are being turned upside down. There was the friend who found an elderly couple in their car in the grocery store parking lot, crying because they needed food but terrified to go inside and be exposed to COVID-19. Then there was the owner of a 45-year-old family business who’s afraid it might not open again. Then there was the man recently diagnosed with stage 4 kidney cancer for whom the world is now unimaginably dangerous. These heartbreaking stories make clear that we must do everything we can to curb the effects of this crisis.

As individuals, we need to take social distancing seriously and closely follow expert guidelines from the CDC. Thankfully, as New Yorkers we have Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s steady leadership. His navigation of this near-impossible situation is extraordinary and will save lives and livelihoods. He exemplifies what we need from our leaders in this moment: calm, confidence and competence.

The governor’s example is made all the more remarkable by a complete absence of leadership from President Donald Trump. His failure to lead us through this crisis is staggering. At every stage, his response has made the situation far worse than it needs to be.

Trump ignored early warnings from his own intelligence agencies that the COVID-19 pandemic was coming. Despite knowing how bad this situation would get, for months he minimized the threat to the public and refused to take necessary action to prepare for the impending danger. The president has continued to downplay the seriousness of this crisis, last Tuesday suggesting that things will be back to normal in a matter of a couple of weeks while health experts have agreed that this will take months to address. Most disturbing is that he actively spreads misinformation about COVID-19, which is incredibly dangerous.

The idea that this is the leadership this country needs is not only absurd, it’s dangerous. And yet, this is the man Rep. John Katko endorses. This is the man John Katko insists has made us better off. This is the man John Katko tells us is the leader we need for another four years.

Trump’s calling himself a wartime president. Would a wartime president leave generals without stocked bases? While Trump dithers, hospital administrators and doctors, left without ventilators and personal protective equipment (PPE), are facing unimaginable ethical decisions about whom they should save and whom they should let die. Absurd. Would a wartime president send soldiers into battle without helmets and body armor? While Trump dithers, we are leaving our front-line healthcare workers unprotected without PPE. So we are sewing face masks at home to donate to hospitals and clinics and nurses are wearing garbage bags because “it’s better than nothing.” Dangerous.

Government must prioritize the health and safety of our people. The president should immediately use the Defense Production Act to direct companies to manufacture ventilators and PPE and distribute that equipment. This is necessary to address two dire circumstances: 1. there isn’t an adequate supply of this vital equipment, and 2. currently states are competing with each other for access to the scarce supplies available.

Thankfully, Congress has turned its attention to addressing the economic fallout of this public health crisis. The response must include substantial cash assistance to individuals and families. We have to ensure speedy arrival of funds and recognize that a one-time payment is unlikely to be enough. We should institute a freeze on all mortgage payments, rent, debt collection, and student loan payments without interest or penalty. We must give massive support to small businesses to help them survive the weeks and months ahead. We do not need to bail out giant corporations; they have huge profits and bankruptcy protections that will see them through. Any assistance that is given to corporations must be contingent on: no bonuses or dividends for the duration of the loan; no stock buybacks; no lay-offs; honoring of collective bargaining agreements, a $15 minimum wage.

We’re dealing with the biggest public health crisis we’ve seen in a century and the resulting economic crisis. Both have been made worse by a stunning failure of leadership by the president, whom John Katko endorses. We have to rise above that failure in leadership. And we can. We have a long way to go but if we come together, we will get through this crisis. We all know that we are better than Donald Trump and now is the time to prove it.

Wendell Potter, was formerly vice-president for corporate communications at Cigna, a crooked insurance outfit. Today he's president of Business for Medicare for All. Yesterday The Guardian published a chilling piece he wrote, Millions of Americans are about to lose their health insurance in a pandemic. "The tragic effects of our battle with the novel coronavirus are seemingly endless. But arguably the most mind-blowing is this: the very pandemic that threatens to infect and kill millions is simultaneously causing many to also lose their health coverage at their gravest time of need." And he explained how and why:

Here’s how: the virus has caused a public health crisis so severe that people have been forced to stay home, causing businesses to shutter and lay off workers. And with roughly half of Americans getting their health insurance from their employer, these layoffs mean not only losing their income but also their medical coverage. In other words, just as our need for medical care skyrockets in the face of a global pandemic, fewer will have health insurance or be able to afford it. According to one recent report, the cost of treatment for Covid-19 can run around $35,000. As the patient in the report exclaimed: “I was pretty sticker-shocked. I personally don’t know anybody who has that kind of money.”

So, how did we get to such a dire place? Many will sadly lose their jobs over the coming weeks-- with one estimate projecting as many as 30%. And as they do, Americans are about to learn something horrifying: how irrational and irresponsible it is for so many to be dependent on employers for health insurance. Take it from me. I’m a former health insurance executive who once profited from this system. It’s time for it to stop.

America needs to finally get out of the business of linking health coverage to job status. Even in better times, this arrangement was a bad idea from a health perspective. Most Americans whose families depend on their employers for coverage are just a layoff away from being uninsured. And now, when many businesses are shutting down and considering layoffs, it’s a public health disaster. Across the country we’re seeing reports of layoffs in almost all industries. As we approach a global recession, some analysts suggest that a million or more US workers will lose their jobs in April alone. Consider what this means for health care in this country.

We’ve seen this before. During the last big recession, researchers at Cornell University found that 9.3 million Americans lost their health insurance between 2007 and 2009. Why? As people lost work, their employer-provided insurance went away. During this time, roughly six in 10 Americans who lost their jobs became uninsured. And this problem compounds itself. If the reason you lost your health insurance is that you no longer have steady employment, how are you now going to be able to afford monthly premiums for some other private health care plan? This problem becomes particularly acute when you consider that premiums for health plans sold on exchanges are projected to soar, as well, due to “unexpected Covid-19 costs.”

It’s worth noting that even in good times, the employer-based model fails to cover enough of us, with the number of Americans covered through an employer steadily dropping in general. Since 1999, the percentage of those with job-based coverage has declined by nine points. And it most certainly will drop like a rock in the coming weeks and months.

It’s now clear that this system cannot handle our current reality. With so many Americans sadly on the verge of unemployment, the number that will lose health coverage will be crushing. As we rebuild our country’s economic base and reimagine the roles various industries play in our new future, we must also begin a difficult conversation about health care. If we’re dependent on jobs in order to have it, a lot of us will be left out in the cold. And at a time in our nation’s history where more will need quality care than ever before, the human cost will simply be too much to bear.

Reminder: the men and women you'll find by clicking on the ActBlue thermometer above will take you to a list of candidates-- including but not limited to Tom Guild and Dana Balter-- campaigning on Medicare-for-All.

Dana Balter and Tom Guild

Will 2020 Be The Medicare-For-All Election?

There are some undeniably good things Obamacare accomplished-- top-most, prohibiting predatory insurance companies from ripping off the general public by denying reasonably-priced health insurance based on preexisting conditions. But as a way to cover costs for medical treatment, Obamacare was always sorely lacking, especially as the GOP increasingly whittled away at it. It was never much more than better-than-nothing and a work-on-progress. Unfortunately, the Democrats failed at making it better when they could have-- and then along came Trump. So… now that Trump and the GOP have pretty much managed to gum up the works, it has become more and more evident that it’s time to abandon half-measures and update Medicare to cover everyone, the way it was meant to before conservatives made it a senior-care program-- while Democratic sadly persuaded themselves they would fix it "soon." It’s been over 5 decades and… how soon is now. It’s time to pass original Medicare-- which would include a viable drug program, dentistry, psychiatric care, visual care… and several other improvements, not the least of which would be universality. Maybe it should’ve been called Original Medicare instead of Medicare-for-All.

But the corporate and conservative overreach in regard to Obamacare is likely going to bring us right to Medicare-for-All. The only way to prevent it at this time? Leave the keys to the vehicle in the hands of visionless conservatives, whether Trump or Biden (not to mention Moscow Mitch and Pelosi).

The day after Christmas, a couple of Politico reporters, Miranda Ollstein and James Arkin, almost saw it. They recognized that the court ruling putting what’s left of the Affordable Care Act further in jeopardy could be a good thing for Democrats-- but they only got halfway there, predicting that it would help the Democrats electorally (again). But what they didn’t see, is that it would help progressives push through Medicare-for-All, something Politico and all of the Beltway media recoils from in instinctual horror.

“I think it’s an opportunity to reset with the new year to remind people that there’s a very real threat to tens of millions of Americans," Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) said in an interview. "We Democrats are always striving to improve the system, but, at a minimum, the American people expect us to protect what they already have."

In 2018, Democrats won the House majority and several governorships largely on a message of protecting Obamacare and its popular protections for preexisting conditions. This year continued the trend, with Kentucky’s staunchly anti-Obamacare governor, Matt Bevin, losing to Democratic now-Gov. Andy Beshear.

The landscape in 2020 may be more challenging for Democrats than it was in 2018, when Republicans had more recently voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Republicans also say they now have more ammunition to push back on Democrats’ arguments with the party’s divisions over single-payer health care, which would replace Obamacare, shaping the presidential race.

Notice the corporate media spin and a refusal to mention how immensely popular Medicare-for-All is, despite the efforts of the insurance and pharmaceutical companies and their bought and paid for conservative politicians on both sides of the aisle.

Democrats believe they can win the political battle over health care, especially in Senate races. At least a half-dozen GOP senators are up for reelection, and Democrats need to net three seats to win back control of the chamber if they also win back the presidency. Democratic strategists and candidates are eager to run a health care playbook that mirrors that of the party’s House takeover in 2018, and say Republicans are uniquely vulnerable after admitting this year that they have no real plan for dealing with the potential fallout of courts striking down Obamacare.

Within a day of the ruling, the pro-Obamacare advocacy group Protect Our Care cut a national TV and digital ad featuring images of Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Cory Gardner (R-CO), warning that if the lawsuit succeeds, “135 million Americans with preexisting conditions will be stripped of protections, 20 million Americans will lose coverage and costs will go up for millions more.”

Other state-based progressive groups told Politico they’re readying their own ads going after individual Senate Republicans over the 5th Circuit’s ruling.

Protect Our Care director Brad Woodhouse predicts that it’s just a preview of the wave of attention the issue will get in the months ahead, as Democratic candidates and outside groups alike hammer the GOP on the threat their lawsuit poses to Obamacare.

“If there is one issue in American politics that is going to flip the Senate from Republican to Democratic in 2020, it’s this issue,” he said. “Our message is simple: President [Donald] Trump and Republicans are in court right now, suing to take away the ACA, take away your health care. And if Cory Gardner or Thom Tillis or any of them don’t think that’s an indefensible position, they should ask the 40-plus House Republicans who lost their seats in 2018.”

There are three approaches that must be taken: 1- replacing conservative, anti-healthcare Democrats, like Dan Lipinski, Tom O’Halleran, Bill Foster, Kurt Schrader, Jim Costa and Derek Kilmer with progressives in primaries; 2- replacing anti-healthcare Republicans like Don Bacon, Fred Upton, Michael McCaul, Roger Williams, Steve King and Ken Calvert in the general election; and 3- making sure the Medicare-for-All ticket wins the presidency, not a Republican-lite faux Dem like Status Quo Joe, Mayo Pete or-- worst of all-- Michael Bloomberg.

Marie Newman has to contend with one of the most notorious anti-healthcare “Democrats” in Congress, reactionary Blue Dog Dan Lipinski-- probably the next to jump ship now that his pal Van Drew is gone. Marie noted that "It really is perplexing why Congressman Lipinski does not like a tried and true program, like Medicare and make it more robust/updated, then provide it to everyone. This is the American way. I just don’t understand it." Yes, it’s the American way… but it isn’t the conservative way. Lipinski chose sides long ago.

Like Marie, Mark Gamba is running for a seat held by a conservative anti-healthcare Blue Dog, Kurt Schrader. And like Marie, Mark and the Blue Dog have little in common. “We keep being told,” he told me, “that universal health care is too hard or too expensive! Really? It’s so hard that we are the only industrialized nation in the world that doesn’t have it? As an American I take that as a direct insult.  Are you saying that our government is so inept it can’t even pull off something that Albania and Azerbaijan, the Cook Island and Croatia, Gabon and Guyana or Palau and Uzbekistan did years ago? Before I ran for office, I used to shoot for National Geographic and so had an inordinate number of opportunities to experience the health care systems of various countries. I can tell you that the care I got was always excellent, it was quick, there was no paperwork to fill out and it was virtually free. Universal health care works great. Health care systems designed to provide health care, rather than maximize profits are much cheaper than what we have here. Do you want to know why most people in congress think it’s hard? Because the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry and the for-profit-hospitals are going to make it hard for them by withholding the fat checks. My opponent is a classic example of that. Blue Dog Kurt is well funded by all of the above, so he sent his chief of staff to an event where his job was to learn how to stop universal health care. As long as the majority of congress is taking money from the industries that are milking us dry when we are at our most vulnerable, it will not change and we will have a worse system for providing health care to all of our citizens than Finland or France. Maybe it’s long past time to help people who aren’t taking corporate money raise enough to replace the health industry lackeys.”

Same with Kim Williams; she’s running for a seat in California’s Central Valley that’s being held by another Van Drew crony, Blue Dog Jim Costa. “Over the course of this campaign,” she said, “we have knocked on thousands of doors to not only share our vision for the Valley but to make sure constituent voices shaped our policy platform from the start. When conservative Democrats dismiss Medicare for All, they aren’t just catering to their wealthy donors, they are denying the very real struggles working families face. They do this because they benefit from a system that rewards the wealthy and because they do not believe the poor will show up. What they seem to miss, however, is that the poor may not have shown up in the past because there wasn’t much reason to do so. For many election cycles, voters in my district have had to choose between two conservatives from two different parties with no reason to believe that their lot would improve with either. They weren’t wrong, but the tide is turning. The majority clearly want Medicare for All, and as the only candidate to personally knock on thousands of doors, I am certain voters are ready to show up for it.”

Rachel Ventura’s opponent isn’t a Blue Dog-- but he is a reactionary New Dem, Bill Foster, generally just as bad. Rachel: “I’ve heard dozens of stories from constituents who have gone to Bill Foster to ask him to support changes to our healthcare system and how they have all walk away with disappointment from their congressman. Bill Foster continues to take money from insurance companies and big Pharma, yet his constituents’ needs fall on deaf ears. What’s more concerning is how he has turned his back on an iconic award-winning scientist who endorsed him. Bill Foster reminds his voters he’s a physicist who used to work at Fermi Lab. He uses this fact to mislead his voters to believe he is fighting for them. But in reality, he has ignored the healthcare atrocities of many including an iconic scientist who paved the way for the type of science Foster studied. Leon Max Lederman was a physicist who received both the Wolf Prize and the Nobel Prize in Physics, for the research on neutrinos. This is the very thing Bill Foster studied at Fermi. In fact, Lederman was Director Emeritus of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois! He even founded the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy right here in our district in Aurora. Lederman began to suffer from memory loss in 2011 and, after struggling with medical bills, he had to sell his Nobel Prize medal for $765,000 to cover the healthcare costs in 2015. He died of complications from dementia on October 2018. The current Medicare program does not cover long-term care-- neither care at home nor in nursing homes. The expanded and improved Medicare for all legislation includes comprehensive long-term care coverage, including at-home services and supports, as well as nursing home care. The Medicare for All Act also adds hearing, dental and vision coverage. This would be life-changing for tens of millions of people. It also wouldn’t force seniors to impoverish themselves just so they can qualify for Medicaid like today. After all, most families cannot pay their healthcare bills by selling a Nobel Prize medal. Bill Foster has turned his back on both on every day Americans as well as the innovated minds of the world. He cannot see the damage this broken system is causing to living breathing human beings; which is just one of the reasons he needs to be voted out of office.”

Mike Siegel is also running against an arch-conservative, but one already in the Republican Party, multimillionaire Michael McCaul. Siegel knows exactly what he’s up against-- and what Texas working families he seeks to represent are up against: "Medicare for All offers the clearest contrast to Republican attacks on the Affordable Care Act and the safety net in general. On one hand, you have representatives like McCaul who have systematically undermined Obamacare, call safety net programs 'socialism' and otherwise promote austerity. The result: in TX-10 alone, over 100,000 are uninsured; tens of thousands more are under-insured and at risk of bankruptcy in the event of a medical emergency; and multiple rural hospitals have closed in the last decade. Under Medicare for All, a huge proportion of the district will instantly have high quality care at a fraction of the cost, or no cost at all; hospitals will re-open, saving lives and stimulating local economies; and innovation, productivity and happiness will improve, as we lift the burden of health care from the backs of countless working families. As a candidate supporting Medicare for All, I look forward to running alongside a Democratic nominee who will make the case, to Texas and the nation, that this single reform will improve the lives of millions, and take a huge step forward towards a more just and equitable society." Help Mike, Rachel, Kim, Mark and Marie win their elections by contributing what you can; just tap on the Medicare-For-All thermometer above.

Did I mention earlier how Politico and the rest of the Beltway media abhors Bernie? Even Politico was forced to admit this week that he could win the nomination. Source: the corrupt establishment politicos who would volunteer to amputate a limb rather than see Bernie’s political revolution win the presidency. Holly Otterbein and David Siders walked the tightrope. “Suddenly,” the wrote, exposing themselves for the fools they are, “Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign is being taken seriously.” Either could have pulled their heads out of their asses at any point in the last 12 months and the word “suddenly” wouldn’t have been the word that began their piece. Anyway, they reported how Democratic Party “insiders” had written Bernie off as “a candidate with a committed but ultimately narrow base who was too far left to win the primary.” They wish! Really, they do-- especially profiteering Republicans-in-all-but-name like David Brock.

California state Sen. Scott Wiener, who defeated a Sanders-backed Democrat for his seat in the liberal-heavy San Francisco area in 2016, said that Sanders has been “more resilient than I anticipated.”

“But in retrospect,” he added, “he has a very, very loyal following, and people have really stuck with him.”

Sanders is in second place in national polls, nearly 9 percentage points behind Joe Biden, according to the most recent RealClearPolitics average. He is second in Iowa and first in New Hampshire. The latest CNN poll found that he has the highest net favorability rating of any Democratic presidential candidate.

…At the beginning of the year— another high point for Sanders’ campaign, before Warren surged— some establishment Democrats talked about how to stop his momentum. Brock, who has a close relationship with many Democratic donors, said he has not heard anything like that being revived in recent weeks: “That doesn’t mean it won’t happen. This is more of an analysis in the political world than in the donor world.”

Many moderate Democrats [NOTE: Politico uses the word “moderate” when they describe corrupt conservatives; it sounds better to their tin ears] still dismiss Sanders’ candidacy. They believe his so-called ceiling remains intact, and that Warren will depress any room for growth he might otherwise have.

“He can’t win the nomination,” said Matt Bennet, co-founder of the center-left [they mean so far to the right that a centimeter more in that direction, they are bona fide Republicans] group Third Way, adding that Sanders’ uptick is simply him “bouncing around between his ceiling and his floor a little bit more than people had thought he would.”

On the other hand, he acknowledged his staying power. “Not until the very end will people say to Bernie Sanders, ‘When are you dropping out?’”

A series of TV segments around last week’s Democratic debate illustrate the shift in how Sanders is being perceived. “We never talk about Bernie Sanders. He is actually doing pretty well in this polling,” former senior Obama adviser David Axelrod said on CNN after the event. “He’s actually picked up. And the fact is Bernie Sanders is as consistent as consistent can be.”

The same day on MSNBC, national political correspondent Steve Kornacki said, “Democratic voters like him, and if he starts winning, there could be a bandwagon effect.” GOP pollster Frank Luntz, who conducted a California focus group that found most participants thought Sanders had won the debate, said on CNBC, “I think you’re going to see continued movement. Sanders has been gaining in California over the past two months.”

Larry Cohen, chairman of the pro-Sanders group Our Revolution, said Warren’s candidacy is not a problem for Sanders if both of them can-- together-- amass a plurality of delegates heading into the convention.

“The math is that if you think of the voters for Warren and the voters for Sanders as two circles, yes, there is overlap, [but] most of the circles are separate,” Cohen said. “I think between them, we can get to a majority.”

…Former California Gov. Gray Davis [a conservative bag of diarrhea so putrid that he managed two be recalled in the bluest state in the nation, not because Republicans hated him but because progressives did— and do] stopped short of saying firm support for Medicare for All would be an impediment for Democrats in the primary, but suggested the risk for the nominee is significant.

“Californians and Americans in general like options-- not mandates,” he said. [Social Security, Medicare and drivers' licenses are all popular mandates and the option Californians wanted was anything to get rid of Grey Davis, even a Republican!]

Faiz Shakir, Sanders’ campaign manager, said political insiders and pundits are rethinking his chances “not out of the goodness of their heart,” but because “it is harder and harder to ignore him when he’s rising in every average that you see.” And he welcomes a conversation about Sanders’ electability, he said.

“We want that,” he said. “I’d love to be able to argue why he stands a better chance to beat Donald Trump than Joe Biden.”

Mayo Pete And Status Quo Joe Are Fighting For Less Choice In Healthcare

The B-Team-- not as bad as Trump

Everyone should know who Wendell Potter is by now. Aside from being a bestselling author and a advocate for health insurance reform, he's an outspoken former health insurance industry executive (CIGNA), who saw how the health insurance industry could easily game Obamacare and became an early advocate of Bernie's Medicare-for-All proposal. I want to put one of Potter's Twitter storms into narrative form here. Without mentioning them by name, it's an attack on the treacherous betrayals of working families by conservative Democrats Mayo Pete, Bloomberg and Status Quo Joe.

Lately I’ve noticed some Democratic politicians defending the current healthcare system by saying it preserves "choice" for Americans. As a former health insurance exec who helped draft this talking point, I need to come clean on its back story, and why it's wrong and a trap.

When I worked in the insurance industry, we were instructed to talk about “choice,” based on focus groups and people like Frank Luntz (who wrote the book on how the GOP should communicate with Americans). I used it all the time as an industry flack. But there was a problem.

As a health insurance PR guy, we knew one of the huge *vulnerabilities* of the current system was LACK of choice. In the current system, you can’t pick your own doc, specialist, or hospital without huge “out of network” bills. So we set out to muddy the issue of "choice."

As industry insiders, we also knew most Americans have very little choice of their plan. Your company chooses an insurance provider and you get to pick from a few different plans offered by that one insurer, usually either a high deductible plan or a higher deductible plan.

Another problem insurers like mine had on the “choice” issue: people with employer-based plans have very little choice to keep it. You can lose it if your company changes it, or you change jobs, or turn 26 or many other ways. This is a problem for defenders of the status quo.

Knowing we were losing the "choice" argument, my pals in the insurance industry spent millions on lobbying, ads and spin doctors-- all designed to gaslight Americans into thinking that reforming the status quo would somehow give them "less choice."

This isn't the only time the industry made "choice" a big talking point in its scheme to fight health reform. Soon after Obamacare was passed, it created a front group called the Choice and Competition Coalition, to scare states away from creating exchanges with better plans.

The difference is, this time Democrats are the ones parroting the misleading "choice" talking point. And they're even using it as a weapon against each other. Back in my insurance PR days, this would have stunned me. I bet my old colleagues are thrilled, and celebrating.

The truth, of course, is you have little "choice" in healthcare now. Most can’t keep their plan as long as they want, or visit any doctor or hospital. Some reforms, like Medicare For All, would let you. In other words, Medicare-for-All actually offers more choice than the status quo.

So if a politician tells you they oppose reforming the current healthcare system because they want to preserve "choice," either they don't know what they're talking about-- or they're willfully ignoring the truth. I assure you, the insurance industry is delighted either way.

Have you actually read Bernie's Medicare for All proposal, the real one, not the version being twisted out of shape by Mayo Pete, Status Quo Joe, the insurance and pharmaceutical industries and their lobbyists, the corrupted Democratic establishment and the Republican Party? These are the key points:

• Create a Medicare for All, single-payer, national health insurance program to provide everyone in America with comprehensive health care coverage, free at the point of service.
• No networks, no premiums, no deductibles, no copays, no surprise bills.
• Medicare coverage will be expanded and improved to include: include dental, hearing, vision, and home- and community-based long-term care, in-patient and out-patient services, mental health and substance abuse treatment, reproductive and maternity care, prescription drugs, and more.
• Stop the pharmaceutical industry from ripping off the American people by making sure that no one in America pays over $200 a year for the medicine they need by capping what Americans pay for prescription drugs under Medicare for All.

"Today," wrote Bernie, "more than 30 million Americans still don’t have health insurance and even more are underinsured. Even for those with insurance, costs are so high that medical bills are the number one cause of bankruptcy in the United States. Incredibly, we spend significantly more of our national GDP on this inadequate health care system-- far more per person than any other major country. And despite doing so, Americans have worse health outcomes and a higher infant mortality rate than countries that spend much less on health care. Our people deserve better. We should be spending money on doctors, nurses, mental health specialists, dentists, and other professionals who provide services to people and improve their lives. We must invest in the development of new drugs and technologies that cure disease and alleviate pain-- not wasting hundreds of billions of dollars a year on profiteering, huge executive compensation packages, and outrageous administrative costs. The giant pharmaceutical and health insurance lobbies have spent billions of dollars over the past decades to ensure that their profits come before the health of the American people. We must defeat them, together. That means joining every other major country on Earth and guaranteeing health care to all people as a right, not a privilege, through a Medicare-for-all, single-payer program."

And we'll end with a look at some new polling (just above) that measured support for Medicare-for-All among registered voters and also just among registered Catholic voters, using two different ways of framing the question. Looks like despite all the millions of dollars that Big PhRMA and the insurance company crooks-- plus the Status Quo Joe and Mayo Pete campaigns-- have spent denigrating it, voters still understand that Medicare-for-All is good for them and for their families.

Americans Say They Want Fundamental Change To The Healthcare System-- But Do They Really?

Obamacare Repeal by Nancy Ohanian

If you don't want any fundamental changes to the healthcare system, you have a choice of candidates to choose from. You can stick with Trump and pray he keeps failing to make it much worse. Or you can choose one of the timid corporate Democrats running on timid corporate platforms... Status Quo Joe, being the most prominent and the most inert, but don't forget the two big wet-finger-to-the-wind contenders, Mayo Pete and Kamala Harris. No sense in bringing up the also rans at this point. Only the DNC and TV ad selling networks pretend to take them seriously as presidential candidates. Only Bernie and Elizabeth Warren, the former more so than the latter, are running on absolute fundamental change to the American healthcare system.

What do the voters think? A more appropriate question might be do the voters think? But a just-released SSRS poll for CBS News assumes voters do think about and, presumably, react to, policy questions. Although the results are not easy to interpret, CBS reported that "Most Americans think the nation's health care system needs fundamental changes or to be completely rebuilt, and costs are what concern them most. More than four in 10 are dissatisfied with their health care costs and say affording basic medical care is a hardship. Many have had problems paying medical bills and more than a third say they have gone without medical treatment because of the costs. Overall views of the U.S. health care system have been largely consistent for many years: most want fundamental changes or a completely rebuilt system."

OK, so why are so many voters backing the two worst candidates on fundamentally changing healthcare, Trump and Biden? Most voters, alas, are way too stupid and impervious to easily available facts to understand the ironclad relationship between keeping costs down and ensuring everyone has health care coverage. The voters see that as a choice, rather than as a symbiotic relationship. You can't have one without the other (like love and marriage-- and a horse and carriage).

And now for what really makes no sense"

This may be because Americans are largely satisfied with the quality of their own health care. Seventy-nine percent say they are satisfied, including 42% who say they are very satisfied. Americans have shown a high level of satisfaction with the quality of their health care for a number of years.

But Americans have greater reservations about their health care costs. Just over half of Americans say they are satisfied.

And many-- more than four in ten-- find affording basic medical care a hardship. Lower-income Americans are particularly likely to feel this way:  More than half of those earning less than $50,000 a year describe the affordability of basic medical care for their family as a hardship.

...Generally, most Americans with health insurance say they like the coverage they have.  Nonetheless, some have experienced difficulties with their insurance. Fifty-five percent of Americans with health insurance report receiving medical bills or paperwork that was confusing and almost half have received a medical bill in which their plan paid less than expected. About a third each have had trouble getting a doctor's appointment in a timely manner or have had their plan not cover a particular doctor they wanted to see.

Different types of insurance seem to have different problems. Sixty percent of Americans with private insurance (and 51% of those on Medicare) report confusing paperwork. Half of those with private insurance say they have experienced their plan paying less than they expected for a medical bill. Fewer Americans on Medicaid or those who get their insurance through a public exchange have experienced these problems, though 54% say they have wanted to see a particular doctor only to find that the doctor was not covered by their plan.  

Yesterday, Bernie reminded his supporters that "our opponents, whether it is the Republican establishment, Democratic establishment, Wall Street, insurance companies, drug companies, the fossil fuel industry, the military industrial complex, the prison industrial complex-- the whole damn 1%-- they're not going to give up their wealth and their power without a fight. The question that we have to answer together is this: are we prepared to stand up to them and transform our country? ... Are you willing to fight to ensure that every American has health care as a human right, even if you have good health care? ... Are you willing to fight for a future for generations of people who have not yet even been born, but are entitled to live on a planet that is habitable? Because if you are willing to do that, if you are willing to love, if you are willing to fight for a government of compassion and justice and decency, if you are willing to stand up to Trump's desire to divide us up, if you are prepared to stand up to the greed and corruption of the corporate elite, if you and millions of others are prepared to do that, there is no doubt in my mind that not only will we win this election, but together we will transform this country."



UPDATE: Pramila Jayapal

After reading the polling today, Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), author of the House version of the Medicare-for-All bill, sent me this note: "This poll reaffirms what we already know: The vast majority of Americans know that the for-profit health care system needs fundamental structural changes, not nibbles around the edges. Health care costs are a huge crisis for Americans, and that’s why any proposal that just aims to increase accessibility or coverage without addressing the high costs of a system driven by profits simply won’t succeed in giving Americans the health care everyone deserves. Most Americans do not like their private for-profit insurance companies that limit their choices with ‘out-of-network’ doctors and hospitals and keep raising costs to pad their own pockets. Americans do, however, like their doctors, which is why support for Medicare 4 All rises when you explain that it would allow Americans the freedom and choice to go to any provider of their choice-- without any co-pays, premiums or deductibles. Medicare for All is the bold solution that tackles the fundamental systemic change necessary to provide comprehensive, quality, affordable care to everyone-- not just the wealthiest few."

Supporting The Lesser Of 2 Evils Means You Are Supporting Evil-- Trump Is Worse Than Biden But...

Feeling the pressure from Elizabeth Warren and Bernie-- and the energy among grassroots activities they have inspired-- Biden's team of weasels is talking about making some kind of symbolic gesture so Status Quo Joe can pretend he stands with working families instead of the Wall Street crooks who are underwriting his campaign and who he has always kissed up to. The Washington Post's Jeff Stein reported that the crew of crooks who think for Biden is "weighing the introduction of a new tax on Wall Street, as the former vice president now stands alone among the Democratic presidential front-runners in not backing a multitrillion-dollar 'wealth tax' on the richest Americans." Biden, who famously assured Wall Street banisters that if he's elected, "nothing fundamental will change" for them, will never make any moves against Wall Street even if his campaign comes up with some cosmetic bullshit to reassure the dumb Dems who don't pay attention.

Stein reported that "An aide to Biden confirmed that the campaign is working on tax policy proposals but would not confirm that a Wall Street tax is in the mix." Bernie and Elizabeth have been working to implement and perfect these kinds of policies for decades while Biden fought them and killed them on behalf of the banksters. Now his team is trying to put a p.r. effort together to trick low-info voters into backing him. Meanwhile, his campaign is doing something more in line with who Biden is: launching a SuperPAC to try too turn around the negative momentum his campaign has been experiencing in recent weeks as voters have gotten a sense of what a useless turd he is. Biden-- who officially disavows having anything to do with the SuperPAC (just as Trump does)-- has been looking at ways to get around legal and moral fundraising limits and the SuperPAC rand is the one he's decided to take. CNN's Dan Merica reports that Biden allies want to counter all the slime coming out about his family of grifters-- who everyone is seeing are on the same level of Trump's family of grifters. Trump ran-- through his own crooked SuperPAC, Great America-- this disgusting, manipulative and purposely misleading ad about Joe Biden:





As I've been warning, if Biden is the nominee, this election will be all about which candidate is the most dishonest, which candidate is the most senile and which candidate has a more corrupt family. Trump's biggest fear-- that he will have to confront Bernie or Elizabeth on substantive issues that matter to the American people-- will have evaporated.

The possible super PAC is far from operational, but Larry Rasky, a former Biden aide, has led the effort to stand up an outside group that he believes would help the former vice president rebut attacks that could impact Biden's standing in the crowded and contentious Democratic primary. While Biden is still seen as a front-runner in the race, recent polling has shown his once-large lead slipping as Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren rises in the field.

"For me, this week puts everything into stark relief," Rasky said. He added that he has begun to think "the campaign was being a little naïve about the resources we'd need to fight this."

"The campaign is fighting a war on two fronts-- the primary and the general election-- at the same time. They certainly need all the support they can get."

..."The attacks aimed at this campaign from dark money groups helping Donald Trump spread his outlandish lies and slander have only served as a reminder of the urgent need for campaign finance reform," Ducklo said. "Which is exactly why since the beginning of this campaign, Biden for President has not and will not welcome the help of super PACs. That goes for those that purport to help him, despite his explicit condemnation of their existence."

A source familiar with the internal Biden campaign strategy, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the outside effort, put a finer point on it.

"The campaign had its best week of fundraising since the second week after launching, and it would be impossible to miss from anywhere on earth that Donald Trump is panicked about Joe Biden," the source said. "The campaign doesn't need or want this effort, and anyone engaging in it doesn't have its best interests at heart."

Rasky said he expected that his prospective effort would be disavowed by the campaign, but he and others still believe the outside group is needed to rebut attacks leveled by Trump and other Republicans.

"We are dead serious about the need to do it," Rasky said. "But we are also mindful of the campaign's position and the Vice President's expressed desire not to have one. That is a lot for us to ponder."

...A source close to the possible super PAC said that while its focus would be to respond to attacks from Trump and other Republicans, they would not rule out responding to Democratic attacks on Biden.

"That's not what it is for," the source said, "but if Biden is attacked, we need to defend him."

And it isn't just Wall Street banksters who Biden is kissing up to. As Branko Marcetic noted at Jacobin Tuesday, In Joe Biden, the Health Care Industry Has Found Its Guy. Short version: "A new survey conducted by a Biden-linked firm is workshopping Biden’s own attacks against Medicare-for-All. His campaign is part of a multi-front corporate effort to defeat the policy."

While billing itself as a “national think tank that champions modern center-left ideas,” Third Way is a conduit for a panoply of corporate interests that campaigns against left-wing policies-- in 2013, two of its highest-ranking officials wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed warning that “economic populism is a dead end for democrats.” One of those officials, Executive Vice President Jim Kessler, the former longtime aide of Wall Street’s favorite Democrat Chuck Schumer, has admitted the majority of Third Way’s financial support comes from Wall Street, which views the health insurance industry as a great investment. At least as far back as 2013, it was staffed with Republicans and fundraising from a variety of corporations, donations that the companies themselves sometimes listed as part of their lobbying budgets.

Today, one of its leadership team once worked for the National Association of Manufacturers, a Republican-aligned business group that, among other things, fights climate action and in its earlier years was one of the earliest forces to organize against Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Meanwhile, Third Way’s board of trustees currently features a former private equity titan, a former Goldman Sachs executive, the head of a major corporate lobbying firm that has counted pharmaceuticals as its clients, and several other private equity and bank executives.

Third Way has openly said it views Sanders alone among the Democratic field as an unacceptable choice for the nomination, so threatened by his campaign that they’ve now come around to even longtime nemesis and Sanders rival Elizabeth Warren. In 2018, the organization convened a meeting of 200 elected Democrats, political operatives, and donors to “launch a serious, compelling economic alternative to Sanderism,” as Kessler put it.

Although health insurers and the pharmaceutical industry are funding a variety of Democratic candidates-- all of whom are now either attacking or backed away from their earlier support for Sanders’s Medicare for All bill-- the primary conduit for their campaign against the policy appears to be Biden. Health insurers were thrilled when Biden entered the race, seeing his campaign as a bulwark against Sanders’s plan for Medicare for All, and an In These Times investigation from July found that Biden received the most money in the Democratic field from insurance and pharmaceutical employees, while Sanders received the least. He kicked off his campaign with a fundraiser hosted by a health insurance executive, and one of Biden’s campaign aides is a former health care lobbyist.

Not only that, but Biden’s advisor and chief pollster John Anzalone is the president of the firm that authored Third Way’s survey, Anzalone Liszt Grove Research (Anzalone’s partner, Lisa Grove, conducted the polling). Anzalone joined Trade Works for America earlier this year, an organization co-founded by Vice President Mike Pence’s current chief of staff that’s partly funded by the pharmaceutical industry and is pushing for Trump’s sequel to NAFTA.

The results of the survey, which found majority support for Medicare for All among those polled, including 75 percent of Democratic primary voters, potentially give us a sneak preview of the negative campaign the health care industry and the candidates it funds will embark on.

Polling showed that solid majorities thought statements arguing that Medicare for All would “end Medicare as we know it” (54 percent), produce lower-quality care and longer wait times for seniors and the disabled (60 percent), and that it would cost an extravagant amount and require doubling payroll taxes (59 percent), were all convincing arguments against the policy. Most potent were statements pointing to issues with the chronically underfunded Veterans Affairs health care system (64 percent), and fearmongering about the wait times of the United Kingdom’s far superior (and deliberately underfunded) government-run health care system (61 percent). Deemed least convincing were arguments that Medicare for All would empower bigoted politicians to control Americans’ health care (39 percent) and that it would be a “giveaway to employers” (49 percent).

We’ve already seen the Biden campaign and other candidates deploy some of these arguments. Biden has made the ten-year $30 trillion cost of Medicare for All a core part of his attack on the bill, saying that the tax hikes needed to fund it are too expensive, that it would mean “Medicare goes away as you know it” and that “all the Medicare you have is gone,” and, as he told a forum hosted by seniors advocacy organization AARP, that it would create “hiatuses” in care. He even briefly deployed the argument that the policy would let employers “off the hook.” There is a remarkable convergence between Biden’s talking points and those tested by the organization’s survey.

...The 2020 election is less a contest between different candidates and more a battle between big business and the working class, with the issue of health care-- the number one concern among voters-- at its center. On one side is Joe Biden’s campaign, which, whether he’s conscious of it or not, is in reality one part of a multifront operation by the private health care sector to derail Medicare for All. On the other side is Bernie Sanders’s campaign, which has sworn off big money donors, is aligned with a variety of grassroots groups pushing for Medicare for All, and has emerged as a nationwide tribune of working-class anger.

Somewhere between these two fronts is Elizabeth Warren, who is now genuinely surging in the polls after months of artificial elevation by a sympathetic media. Though Warren holds similar policy positions to Sanders, she has been inconsistent in her support for single-payer health care, calling it “the most obvious solution” in a 2008 book, before refusing to endorse it in her 2012 Senate run, and repeatedly waffling on her support for Sanders’s bill to the point that even mainstream news outlets have taken notice. She also continues to rely on big money donors, anchoring her current run in a $10 million transfer from her Senate coffers that was raised from wealthy fundraisers and tapping a major big-dollar fundraiser to be her treasurer, and she refuses to rule out funding her general election campaign with big-money donors. Should Warren win the nomination, now a distinct possibility, this could offer another point of leverage for the health care sector to defeat Medicare for All.

Defeating Joe Biden’s campaign, an unabashed electoral channel for all manner of corporate interests hoping to defeat Medicare for All and other left-wing policies, should be the number one priority of the broad left. But even after Biden’s gone, we’ll have to exert all the pressure we can to keep Medicare for All on the table in any future Democratic administration.

There's Plenty Of Money To Be Made By Professional Democrats Willing To Sell Out On Medicare

People say we'll never get Medicare-For-All while McTurtle is Senate Majority Leader or while Trump is in the White House. True. And we'll never get it while Pelosi is Speaker. All those obstacles must be removed

Just before Congress adjourned for another long holiday week, I asked Pramila Jayapal, who wrote the new and improved Medicare-For-All legislation (H.R. 1384), if there are any new cosponsors aside from Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) and David Price (D-NC), who were both reported last week-- numbers 109 and 110. Happily, she said there are several members getting closer and she was pretty sure there would be a few next week. But the opposition is ferocious. Since then, George Goehl asked at The Hill Who's Blocking Medicare-For-All? "Decades of corporate-friendly politics and policy," he wrote, "have decimated communities throughout the country. Centrist Democrats who have chosen corporate profits over people’s needs have aided and abetted this decimation. People are hungry for big ideas to improve their lives and to change the rules that serve only to make the rich richer."

Big ideas? Well, Bernie has them; Elizabeth Warren has them. A few other presidential hopefuls are trying to glom onto them. But most of them come from corporate-friendly centrist groupings Goehl referred to, worst all, of course, being Status Quo Joe Biden, who has no ideas and no policies except that he should be president and that things were better before so we should move backwards. As for Medicare-For-All, that isn't something Biden would fight for and probably something he would fight tooth and nail to stop if-- God forbid-- he ever became president.

Yes, Goehl wrote that "Nowhere is this hunger more apparent than in the demand for improved Medicare-for-All. During a hearing at the House Budget Committee this week it was also apparent that the center-right and their wealthy donors won’t go down without a fight when it comes to health care. With guns-a-blazing, they are out to block an incredibly successful and popular program: Medicare, from being improved, expanded and provided to everyone." Of all the 20-some-odd Democrats running for the presidential nomination, there is no one, at least not within reasonable reach of the prize-- more opposed to Medicare-For-All than Biden. He's as likely to help achieve it as any garden variety Republican.

Yet polling shows that across party lines, a majority of Americans are in favor of Medicare for All. And why not? Right now, nearly 30 million people in this country are uninsured; 40 million can’t afford health-care co-pays and deductibles and 45,000 die annually as a result of not having access to health care. [Note: a majority of ordinary people are in favor, but not a majority of the GOP's or Biden's campaign donors, the people who have underwritten their political careers for decades of ease and privilege.]

Those reaping the excessive profits from our illnesses and injuries are in a panic. They’re laying all their chips on the table to make sure Medicare for All never becomes reality. It would mean the end of private insurance companies that profit mightily off the most costly and least effective health-care system in the industrialized world.

So, to continue to rake in their profits, they’ve created the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, a partnership of corporate hospitals, insurance and drug companies. They must have a lot to lose: last year alone, the group spent $143 million developing attack ads and launching fear campaigns to kill Medicare for All.

It’s time to admit it, while nearly every modern country in the world provides quality, accessible health care for free or very inexpensively to their citizens, the United States stands alone in its willingness to let corporations suck the last pennies out of sick or injured people.

Well, the jig is up. Decades under a corporate-run private health insurance system have proven that we can’t rely on profiteers to provide access to quality health care. We need a publicly held system that is accountable to the people who rely on it. We are able to do so and save trillions of dollars over the next decade.

Medicare for All would reduce national health-care spending by anywhere between $2 trillion to $10 trillion over ten years. Research shows that countries with single-payer systems spend much less on drugs.

Yet opponents continue to decry the “costs” of Medicare for All. They will continue to focus on the cost to taxpayers, conveniently avoiding the truth that already we pay excessive health care costs through insurance premiums, co-pays and deductibles.

Americans suffer from poor health outcomes because they can’t afford to see a doctor until their illness becomes catastrophic. Many weigh the choice between financial ruin and life-saving medicines and treatment. In one of the richest countries in the world that is nothing short of shameful.

The U.S. is a country with abundant resources and more than enough wealth to go around. It’s time to share the wealth in America. It’s a new day and it starts with Medicare for All. Buckle up-- because the fight is just beginning.

A number of Democrats got into bed with the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future stooges and campaigned on the PAHCF planks, notably Senators Bill Nelson and Joe Donnelly, both of whom were defeated in the midst of a blue wave cycle primarily due to a refusal of Democratic base voters to bother coming-out to vote from either of them. They also worked with the Danny O’Connor campaign in OH-12, an open seat. Danny who? Yeah, he lost as well. A volunteer who worked in the O'Connor campaign told me that his Medicare message-- which came directly from the PAHCF-- killed the campaign. "Activists were nonplussed by the campaign. Danny's refusal to back Medicare-For-All disincentivized too many voters... We weren't offering the activists what they wanted and what they saw other candidates offering." Despite outspending Republican Troy Balderson $8,241,164 to $2,512,715 (not even counting the close-to-a-million more spent by the DCCC and Pelosi's House Majority PAC), O'Connor and his status quo messaging on healthcare were defeated 104,328 (50.1%) to 102,648 (49.3%). "I know we would have won," the O'Connor volunteer told me, "if Danny had backed Medicare-For-All."

Not that easy for some Democrats to turn them away. After all, the PAHCF folks have good political pedigrees, having come from the Clinton and Obama administrations and the Hillary campaign. Forbes-Tate is a slimy lobbying form filled with Clintonites and Blue Engine Message & Media is filled with Obama staffers. Former members of Congress-- take former Democratic Senate leader Tom Daschle-- are included on the team, as are anti-progressive organizations like Third Way, the New Dems and the Blue Dogs, all of whom have been paid off by PAHCF.

These are some of the deceptions and lies that the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future are putting out: