Medicare for all, or for Big Business?

This 30 July 2019 video from the USA says about itself:

Kamala Harris released her “medicare for…that’s all?” plan. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian break it down on The Young Turks.

“After proposing the most complicated student debt relief program in history, Kamala Harris is out with her healthcare plan, which she is describing as Medicare for All despite it not being that. Whatever!

The major difference between her plan and Medicare for All: Private insurers would be allowed to offer Medicare plans, like Medicare Advantage does today. Her plan would also have a 10 year transition period, during which newborns and the uninsured would be enrolled automatically and everyone else could buy into the plan, as opposed to the four year transition period under Sanders’ plan.

That transition is perhaps the weakest part of the plan, but not to hear the think tank set tell it. The New York Times reported that Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms, told the paper the 10-year transition was “more realistic” than Sanders’ four-year transition. And Kavita Patel, a Brookings fellow and former Obama official, told HuffPost that it was both more realistic and more “pragmatic”—the two favorite words of the Washington wonk class. The longer the transition, the more realistic it is. Let’s make it 1,000 years, just to be on the safe side. Here I am, demonstrating how pragmatic and sensible I am by increasing the period during which Republicans and the healthcare industry could fight to undo the plan.”

Read more here.

From the presidential campaign of United States Senator Bernie Sanders today:

Medicare for All has the support of a majority of voters and huge parts of the Democratic Party. So it’s no surprise that other candidates for president want to say they also support Medicare for All.

Senator [and Democratic party presidential candidate] Kamala Harris released a plan today that her campaign calls “Medicare for All” — you can call it anything you want, but you can’t call that plan Medicare for All.

Her plan is centered around privatizing Medicare, enriching insurance executives and introducing more corporate greed and profiteering into the Medicare system — and even then, waiting for 10 years before any changes happen.

Medicare for All means Medicare for All. Not more private insurance. Not more profits for denying care. And we cannot wait to fix our broken system.

Add your name if you agree: Medicare for All means Medicare for All. We need a strong show of support before tomorrow’s debate to say that healthcare must be a right, not a privilege.

Our campaign is rejecting money from health insurance and drug company executives. We don’t want to have the support of people who profit off of our broken healthcare system. And anyone who wants to fix that system must do the same.

The time is long overdue to guarantee healthcare to every man, woman and child as a right, not a privilege, under a true Medicare for All system.

Thank you for standing up to make healthcare a human right.

In solidarity,

Faiz Shakir
Campaign Manager

‘MEDICARE for All’ is shaping up to be one of the defining issues of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary campaign, with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren the leading candidates in favour, while former Vice President Joe Biden is the most prominent right-winger opposed: here.

PROGRESSIVES TAKE ALL COMERS An expected showdown between the 2020 Democratic race’s two leading progressive candidates instead quickly turned into a battle pitting Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders against a host of lesser-known moderate [rather: corporate] candidates desperate to continue their low-polling campaigns. [HuffPost]

MODERATORS ‘USE GOP FRAMING’ TO GRILL DEMS Bernie Sanders took his criticism of the mass media to live national television in the debate, accusing CNN’s Jake Tapper of amplifying GOP rhetoric on health care. [HuffPost]

THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST ‘MEDICARE FOR ALL’ IS SPENDING MILLIONS While proponents of single-payer health care like presidential hopefuls Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have had the chance to make their case on the debate stage, the opponents of the idea are vastly outspending them on the airwaves in early caucus and primary states. [HuffPost]