Biden Plan, Says Sanders Campaign, 'Preserves Corporate Greed' Rotting Nation's Healthcare System

[Uncle Joe]

Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign on Wednesday highlighted the potentially deadly flaws in former Vice President Joe Biden's healthcare plan and accused him of "once again peddling dishonest insurance company talking points" after Biden's team launched its latest attack on Medicare for All.

"Biden's proposal preserves the corporate greed and corruption that rots our healthcare system, and his plan leaves millions of Americans uninsured," said Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir after the Biden campaign issued a statement condemning Medicare for All and questioning the "credibility" of Sanders and others who support it.

"Will Joe Biden tell the American people how many more of them he's willing to allow to go bankrupt?" Shakir asked. "How many more people would die because they don't get to a doctor in time? We need to have the guts to stand up to corporate greed. That's what this election is about."

(snip)

"At the same time we are learning that Joe Biden has a super PAC to bankroll his campaign with unlimited donations from corporations and billionaires," said Shakir, "he is once again peddling dishonest insurance company talking points about Medicare for All."

(snip)

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/10/31/biden-plan-says-sanders-campaign-preserves-corporate-greed-rotting-nations

[TidalWave46]

1. Sanders camp also compared Bidens plan to 9-11.

There is no stoop too low.

[guillaumeb]

2. Any plan that allows the insurance companies to keep their control over the system

is doomed to failure.

The insurance companies are only interested in profiting from the current system.

[George II]

5. The healthcare insurance company industry has among the lowest profit margins of any industry.

[guillaumeb]

7. A common talking point. However:

Which firms profit most from America’s health-care system

The most controversial source of excess spending, though, is rent-seeking by health-care firms. This is when companies extract outsize profits relative to the capital they deploy and risks they take. Schumpeter has estimated the scale of gouging across the health-care system. Although it does not explain the vast bulk of America’s overspending, the sums are big by any other standard, with health-care firms making excess profits of $65bn a year. Surprisingly, the worst offenders are not pharmaceutical firms but an army of corporate health-care middlemen.

https://www.economist.com/business/2018/03/15/which-firms-profit-most-from-americas-health-care-system

Excess profits of 65 billion a year.

[empedocles]

3. SAnders quote, soon to be a 'con political ad on fox

[George II]

4. Why do this? That article has at least one inaccuracy (won't waste my time reading it all):

"Joe Biden has a super PAC to bankroll his campaign"

That is BLATANTLY FALSE! Shakir is accusing Biden of violating campaign finance law. And it gets repeated here on Democratic Underground?

Even worse, he follows up HIS "dishonest talking points" by complaining about Biden "peddling" dishonest talking points.

[Uncle Joe]

9. JOE BIDEN'S SUPER PAC IS BEING ORGANIZED BY CORPORATE LOBBYISTS FOR HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY,

WEAPONS MAKERS, FINANCE

(snip)

In an effort to revive Biden’s prospects, prominent supporters of the former vice president are mobilizing to establish a Super PAC, a bid that the Biden campaign appeared to endorse on Thursday, according to a report in Bloomberg. The move represents a reversal from earlier this year, when Biden rejected support from Super PACs, which can receive unlimited donations from corporations or individuals.

(snip)

Longtime Biden supporter Larry Rasky, one of the people involved with the big-money effort, is the founder of lobbying firm Rasky Partners, which is currently registered to lobby on behalf of Raytheon, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, and the Republic of Azerbaijan, among other clients.

(snip)

Rasky, Schale, and the Biden campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Rasky Partners lists a number of successful client campaigns on its website, touting efforts to win congressional support for banks and defense contractors. Disclosures show that the firm was previously retained for communications services to the Education Finance Council, a lobby group for student loan companies.

(snip)

But this time may be different. Bernard Schwartz, a wealthy financier who has organized dinners with prominent centrist Democrats in order to prevent Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., from gaining the Democratic nomination, is reportedly in talks to fund the new Super PAC. Schwartz is known for deep-pocketed donations. In 2016 alone, Schwartz, through his foundation, gave $1 million to Third Way, a centrist group backed by corporate donors that has vigorously opposed Medicare for All and other ideas centered on tackling economic inequality.

(snip)

https://theintercept.com/2019/10/25/joe-biden-super-pac/

[George II]

10. IT'S NOT JOE BIDEN'S SUPER PAC. NO CANDIDATE HAS A SUPER PAC.

People complain about the "mainstream media" being dishonest, why give The Intercept a pass when it comes to truthfulness?

[Uncle Joe]

11. Single Payer Would Save at Least 20,000 More Lives Than ACA

Repealing the Affordable Care Act without replacing it, as some conservative hardliners are demanding, would cost a minimum of 37,127 lives over the next two years (14,528 in 2018 and 22,599 in 2019), and perhaps as many as four times that number, according to scientific studies summarized in an editorial in this week’s American Journal of Public Health.

The new analysis of the effect of widespread insurance loss is particularly relevant in light of the report issued March 13 by the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO estimates that the American Health Care Act, the Republican plan to replace the ACA, would cause 14 million people to lose insurance in the first year alone. By 2026, 24 million would lose coverage, leading to a total of 52 million uninsured in that year.

In contrast, the editorial’s authors estimate the impact of replacing the ACA with a universal, single-payer health system, along the lines of the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, H.R. 676, would provide immediate coverage to the 26 million Americans who are currently uninsured, saving at least 20,984 lives in year one.

Longtime health system researchers Drs. David U. Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler analyzed all of the peer-reviewed studies of mortality associated with losing or gaining insurance. Using the CBO estimates of how many people currently lack insurance and how many more would lose coverage if the ACA were repealed without replacement, they provide a range of estimates of the excess deaths or lives saved under different health reform options (see table below). The evidence indicates that one American dies for every 300 to 1,239 who go without health insurance.

(snip)


http://healthoverprofit.org/2017/03/22/single-payer-would-save-at-least-20000-more-lives-than-aca/

[Act_of_Reparation]

6. The business of insurance is fundamentally at odds with best healthcare practices.

These private entities must, at some point, be relegated to optional or supplemental coverage.

[Uncle Joe]

8. Study: 45,000 Deaths Per Year Due to Lack of Health Insurance

A new study from the Harvard School of Medicine says that 45,000 people die every year due to a lack of health insurance, and therefore a lack of access to ongoing medical care for a wide variety of treatable conditions. This seems so obvious as to not need documenting, but studies like this are still very important.

Nearly 45,000 annual deaths are associated with lack of health insurance, according to a new study published online today by the American Journal of Public Health. That figure is about two and a half times higher than an estimate from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2002.

The study, conducted at Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance, found that uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts, up from a 25 percent excess death rate found in 1993.

“The uninsured have a higher risk of death when compared to the privately insured, even after taking into account socioeconomics, health behaviors, and baseline health,” said lead author Andrew Wilper, M.D., who currently teaches at the University of Washington School of Medicine. “We doctors have many new ways to prevent deaths from hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease — but only if patients can get into our offices and afford their medications.”

(snip)

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2018/10/15/study-45000-deaths-per-year-due-to-lack-of-health-insurance/