The Status Quo Establishment Decides To Destroy Medicare-For-All By Destroying Bernie

"Hell hath no fury," wrote Michael Corcoran at Truthout on Tuesday, "like a coalition of health care lobbyists scorned."

The insurance industry, Big Pharma and other stakeholders in the status quo of "healthcare" spend immense amounts of money annually on lobbying and on legalistic bribes to politicians. To stop Medicare-For-All... it's a fight to the death and they amounts they spend to protect their profit flows to wealthy shareholders (and highly paid top management will be virtually unlimited. It may be dysfunctional for patients but, hey, the healthcare system wasn't built for them anyway. As Corcoran noted, "It bankrupts and kills the poor while widening profit margins for the wealthy. It is a national embarrassment and a brazen moral abdication of one of the most basic functions a government can serve... [T]he industry’s privileged status and hefty profits nevertheless allow it to shape the national debate and politicians in Washington. Our electoral system allows the most powerful industries so much influence that invariably, the people shaping the debate are doing so on behalf of commercial interests-- not for patients, taxpayers or citizens.

This election cycle the hub of the single-payer opposition has come mostly in the form of the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future (PAHCF), a coalition of nearly every major powerful lobby in the private health industry. Among the powerful entities in the coalition are the largest drug, insurance and hospital lobbies in the country, among many others (all large spending lobbyists in their own right). The coalition has one goal: to prevent support for single-payer from emerging into a consensus position for Democrats, despite being so popular with Democratic voters.

The battle is accelerating quickly as the 2020 presidential campaign has been filled with Medicare for All discussions (and just as many distortions) in the press. Recently, Bernie Sanders released his Senate version of Medicare for All (S.R.1129), now with 14 co-sponsors. The Partnership wasted no time in responding to Sanders, calling the bill one that “destroys our system.” PAHCF failed to mention that countries with single-payer systems spend about half of what the U.S. pays, have in most cases better health outcomes, and provide coverage to every citizen.

The PAHCF’s power plays are being made at the regional level as well, not just in the media circus of the presidential primary. In Massachusetts, for instance, Rep. Lori Trahan (D-MA) recently co-sponsored single-payer legislation. Interestingly, Trahan was previously courted by the coalition to be a surrogate of its views. Leaked slides revealed strategic plans from the group, such as “earned media” and visits to Congress. Earned media is positive press, essentially, as opposed to a paid ad. The slides highlighted several favorable, “earned,” articles. They also gave briefings with several members of Congress and their staffs. PAHCF provided talking points, data and other arguments against Medicare for All.

They provided a note about their courting of Trahan in the documents. She expressed concerns about “single-payer rhetoric” but otherwise “did not discuss the issue.” Trahan’s campaign site has a health care section that very much toes the establishment line. There is no reference to Medicare for All or single-payer-- advocated by DCCC and Third Way that cycle-- but rather her “plans to build on” the success of the Affordable Care Act and “make sure no American is left uninsured.”

This lack of support for Medicare for All may have been what prompted the Partnership’s decision to approach her. In the face of this pressure Rep. Trahan went another way. Rather than become a surrogate for the private health industry in fighting the policy, she became the 107th co-sponsor of the House version of Medicare for All in the current Congress. (There are now 108, as Elijah Cummings has since co-sponsored as well.)

Trahan’s decision, however, might cost her. Now, the private health interests whose advances she resisted are on the warpath. Less than two weeks after Trahan co-sponsored the legislation on March 27, she became the target of the first individual attack ad from the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future on April 8, according to Facebook advertising data. As of April 11, there were 1,800 ads total on Facebook paid for by the PAHCF, according to Facebook’s ad library. The life span of the ads is short by design so most of the ads are “inactive.” But they all reflect the recent use of social media by the organization. Other ads include general messages such as videos telling voters to "stop Medicare for All."

The tactic sends a message to other Democrats that there are consequences for spurning some of the most powerful interests in the country, some of which see this as an existential battle to justify their existence. This large group went after Trahan by running attack ads in her district.

“Big pharma, health insurers and for-profit hospitals are now using our health care premiums to publicly attack legislators who defend our right to health care,” said Benjamin Day, director of Healthcare-NOW, a pro-single-payer organization. “It’s an unbelievable testament to where health care politics are at these days.”

Advocates have called this tactic the “lover spurned” situation and are starting to prepare counterstrategies.

“We face a formidable opponent with a lot of money and a lot of success at keeping the truth about Medicare for All from the public,” said Adam Gaffney, president of Physicians for a National Health Program. “We have to be prepared, we have to work, and we have to just tell the truth about the benefits of this program in solving our terrible crises.”

If they're doing this to freshman Congresswoman Lori Trahan, what do you think they have in store for Bernie. Think. Think bigger. Bigger than that. Here's how CNBC covered Medicare-For-All on a typical day.

UnitedHealth Group CEO David Wichmann warned investors on Tuesday that “Medicare for All” proposals pushed by Democratic lawmakers and presidential candidates would “destabilize the nation’s health system.”

A number of Democratic proposals call for eliminating private health insurance and replacing it with a universal Medicare plan, claiming it would help reduce administrative inefficiencies in the health-care system. Most recently, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont unveiled a bill that would create a government-run system to provide health insurance for all Americans. Freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is pushing a similar plan.

Wichmann, who rarely discusses politics, told investors on a post-earnings conference call Tuesday such measures would “surely jeopardize the relationship people have with their doctors, destabilize the nation’s health system and limit the ability of clinicians to practice medicine at their best.”

“And the inherent cost burden would surely have a severe impact on the economy and jobs-- all without fundamentally increasing access to care,” he added.

That's the kind of crap Bernie, and other progressives, will be up against, as the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future unites with Republicans and conservative Democrats to... protect their profits and screw the country. In a Rolling Stone essay this week, Matt Taibbi, explained the science of smears and how the defenders of the status quo are using that against progressives, particularly Bernie. "The Brahmins of today," he wrote, "don’t battle with ideas, because... their belief systems are usually regressive and unpopular, only they don’t know it yet. The battle is almost always waged instead over personality, because while certain 'radical' ideas may be unstoppable, individual politicians are easily villainized, delaying change-- a little." Terrible when someone like Nancy Pelosi-- who has recently said she's a progressive (poor, used up old thing)-- throws her lot in with them.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders made headlines this week by taking on the Center for American Progress, long known as a messaging arm of the mainstream Democratic Party. Sanders wrote a letter criticizing the CAP board for playing a “destructive role” in the “critical mission to defeat Donald Trump,” a critique seemingly crafted in response to recent efforts by ThinkProgress, a news site founded by CAP, to paint Sanders as a hypocrite for being a millionaire author.

The Sanders letter to CAP formalized the rift between the Democratic establishment and the labor-based movement of millions Sanders represents. That we’re talking about a petty PR battle and not the hardcore disagreement about policy and (especially) campaign funding sources that created this divide is Exhibit A proving the old propaganda method is still working.

The practice of painting dissident challenges as selfish, hypocritical acts-- as opposed to the selfless altruism of corporate-funded candidates-- has been going on forever. Long before Sanders was framed as a thin-skinned, cranky narcissist who’s “all about himself,” Dennis Kucinich went through the same thing... [H]e was routinely denounced as something worse than a radical: a kook, nut and egomaniac. I covered both of the Kucinich runs for the presidency and saw how frustrated he became over time as his ideas were ignored and his campaigns were denounced as indulgences.

What little coverage he got tended to be stuffed below the fold, and focused on him as a “lower-tier” eccentric, a vegan who dabbled in ventriloquism, wore wing-tips and was too short (the standard modifier attached to him was “elfin,” as in “the elfin peace candidate”)... By 2010, when he was opposing the Affordable Care Act for many of the same reasons driving today’s Medicare-for-All movement, even would-be liberal commentators like Markos Moulitsas [ROTFLMAO] were denouncing him. He was a modern Nader, pushing “unrealistic” and “self-defeating” politics, someone who’d never accomplished anything.

The treatment of Kucinich was pure high school. I used to get an unpleasant pang of recognition listening to the cool kids on the press plane laughing at the “lefty elf” who refused to get the hint he wasn’t wanted on the debate stage.

Back when Sanders didn’t seem like a threat to win anything, he got much of the same. He was dismissed as a geek and a wallflower who’d be defined by whether he chose to be a help or a hindrance to the real candidate, Clinton. The New Yorker’s John Cassidy in early 2015 mock-welcomed Bernie to the race, insisting the entrance of the “loner” would be a “plus” for the Clinton campaign, since he would “occupy the space to the left of Clinton, thus denying it to more plausible candidates, such as Martin O’Malley.”

It wasn’t until Sanders started piling up delegates that he began to take on the villainous characteristics for which he is now infamous. After he won primaries in 2016, suddenly reporters ripped him as a divisive narcissist with three houses who was the ideological mirror of Donald Trump, boasting racist, sexist and violent followers.

This was all part of the age-old technique of focusing on the person instead of the ideas or the movement behind them. Sanders wasn’t winning in 2016 because Bernie Sanders is some great stump act-- he isn’t. A fair portion of his support was coming from people who were fed up with both parties even before he decided to run.

The easiest way to avoid dealing with uncomfortable truths is to create an ick factor around the politician benefiting from them. That was Sanders in 2016 and it’s still him, mainly. However, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii have also been pre-emptively dipped in the ick this cycle, cast as crippled politicians whose mere presence in the race will “undermine” Democrats in the end.

...Sanders was described as the Kremlin candidate in the Washington Post just a few days ago. This was unsurprising since the Post was asking as far back as the fall of 2017 how Democrats would respond to Putin playing dirty tricks for Sanders in 2020.

There are people who will protest that descriptions of such Russian activity boosting Sanders are rooted in fact, as efforts to reach his supports are described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of the Internet Research Agency. That’s fine. I would counsel anyone who thinks Russia is responsible for the rise of Sanders or people like Gabbard or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should go out and interview voters around the country, especially in remote areas.

The anger toward the political establishment that drives support for such politicians began to be visible over a decade ago, long before Sanders or Gabbard were factors in any kind in national politics.

Those voters aren’t selfish, or hypocrites, or Kremlin favorites, and they’re not going anywhere. What a lot of DC-based reporters and analysts don’t grasp is that if you remove Bernie Sanders from the scene, there will still be millions of people out there mad about income inequality. Remove Gabbard, and discontent about the human and financial costs of our military commitments will still be rampant. Removing Warren won’t cancel out anger about Wall Street corruption.

Covering personalities instead of political movements only delays things for a while. Sooner or later, the conservatism of tomorrow arrives. You can only delay the inevitable for so long.

Stay strong. Stay hydrated. Remember who 'not your friend. Contribute what you can to Bernie and to other candidates who are running on progressive issues and who will help move his platform through Congress once he beats Trump in 2020.