Government run health care

Wendell Potter describes himself as a reformed health insurer exec. He was part of the effort back in 1993 to sink the grand health care plan Hillary Clinton came up with when her husband was president. The effective tool at the time was to brand it “government run health care.” Public opinion dropped. Never mind that the public already had government run health care in Medicare.

Now Potter says there is a better chance to pass Medicare for all. He lists reasons:

* People who get health insurance through their employer want single payer. The number of companies offering health insurance has dropped.

* Those who have employer plans pay dearly for it and find it too expensive to use – their deductibles and copays are too high. I’m still a couple years from Medicare and the employer I retired from is getting rather stingy. Remind people of out of pocket costs and they’re all for it.

* Small business owners want it and can’t afford to offer it to their employees.

* We have people like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren with enough political power to get the truth of the current system out there.

Potter reminds us that Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg keep defending the insurance industry.



Egberto Willies of the Daily Kos community reminds us the attacks on Medicare for All, even from “friends,” is well orchestrated – and all lies. Willies reminds us:

To be clear, math is absolute. It is impossible for (Cost of Healthcare) to be more expensive than (Cost of Healthcare + Cost of Multiple Executives + Cost of Shareholder Profits + Cost of Duplicate Services + Doctor Cost to Interface with Multiple Insurance Companies + more). That is an absolute statement. Those who are opposed to Medicare for All would like you to forget that basic mathematical fact.

No fiscally responsible politician who has the interest of their poor- and middle-class constituents at the forefront could continue to support a model designed solely as a method to enrich a few while providing absolutely no service. In fact, private insurance adds inefficiency to delivering health care.

Private insurance’s fiduciary responsibility is to its shareholders, and to its overpaid executives. That dictates that the insurance industry performs two immoral tasks. The first is to market to the healthy, even as obstacles are erected that leave those with pre-existing conditions without insurance. Secondly, private insurance companies make every attempt to deny service. These two acts maximize profits to shareholders and ensure exorbitant salaries for their executives.

Profits are not a bad thing if one is providing a necessary service in an efficient manner, or one needs to be innovative. Private insurance provides neither. The industry’s ‘innovation’ consists of finding ways to maximize wealth extraction.

Americans are starting to get it, even if some Democrats and Republicans make believe they don't (wink-wink). Those ‘skeptics’ are wards of the plutocracy.
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Mayor Pete Buttigieg's ‘Medicare for All Who Want It’ plan is not acceptable because it opens the door to dump sick people onto Medicare for All using many legal techniques, even if the law dictates that insurance companies take everyone. In other words, they continue to immorally manage risk for profit maximization that benefits shareholders and executives.