A Koch-funded think tank tries hard to pretend that it didn't find savings from Bernie Sanders'
Medicare plan
(snip)
Whats overlooked in all these cavils about Sanders crowing about Blahous finding is that the champion cherry-picker in the discussion is Charles Blahous. The cherry he picks is the cost of Medicare for All to the federal government, and he fills a bushel basket with his harvest. Paying for every Americans healthcare expenses would increase federal spending by $32.6 trillion over the first decade, he writes. Even if Congress were to double what it collects in individual and corporate income taxes, there still wouldnt be enough money added to the federal coffers to finance the costs of this plan.
Notice what he did there? He pretended that the only economic effect of the plan would be to drive up government spending, without netting out the savings reaped by businesses and individuals by eliminating premiums, deductibles and co-pays. Nor does he factor in the value to individuals and society of the expanded services advocated by Sanders. Sure, giving everyone dental and vision coverage will cost money. But in return, everyone gets dental and vision care. Isnt that a positive?
In other words, Blahous counted all the increases in costs and attributed them all to the government, without placing his government spending figures in the context of the reduced spending by individuals and businesses or the gains in health services. Thats some world-class cherry-picking right there.
(snip)
So, sure, lets acknowledge that Sanders built his Medicare for All plan on a foundation of assumptions about costs and savings. But Blahous built his attack on a foundation of assumptions about costs and savings, just a different foundation. To declare his assumptions credible and Sanders not is to give up the fight for universal healthcare before the bugle is even blown. Thats what Blahous was hoping for, and no one should let him get away with it.
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-blahous-sanders-20180822-story.html#
This is a good read and analysis.
Eliot Rosewater
(31,121 posts)Uncle Joe
(58,417 posts)let us not chew gum and walk at the same time.
PNHP co-founders Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H., and David Himmelstein, M.D., have published a landmark review of studies in the Annals of Internal Medicine that points to a link between lack of health insurance and preventable deaths. Their review, The Relationship of Health Insurance and Mortality: Is Lack of Insurance Deadly? was published June 26, 2017, as the U.S. Senate considered a major health overhaul.
Although estimates range, there is a strong scientific consensus that uninsurance leads to tens of thousands of deaths annually. If any of the various GOP health bills become law, millions of Americans would lose coverage and the number of preventable deaths would increase dramatically. The "Better Care Reconciliation Act," for example, would result in 22 million people losing coverage and an additional 29,000 deaths per year.
PNHP press release:
http://www.pnhp.org/news...
(snip)
http://www.pnhp.org/mortality
Eliot Rosewater
(31,121 posts)Uncle Joe
(58,417 posts)passed, Democrats must take back the Congress in November and win the Presidency in 2020.
So why let this highly critical issue or policy favoring Democrats be framed in a highly misleading manner now?
Any Democrat or progressive running on his issue in November would be hampered by letting this piece of bullshit propaganda stand without being countered.
Eliot Rosewater
(31,121 posts)Just want to get that out in the open!
Uncle Joe
(58,417 posts)Eliot Rosewater
(31,121 posts)fire out first, good.
Uncle Joe
(58,417 posts)and wait til then to address this issue while tens of thousands of Americans are dying for lack of health care every year, it will be too late.
The damage from right wing propaganda like this will have settled in as established "conventional orthodoxy."
It's needs to be addressed now particularly with the mid terms coming up.
George II
(67,782 posts)"why let this highly critical issue or policy favoring Democrats be framed in a highly misleading manner now?", but who is doing the misleading?
Eliot Rosewater
(31,121 posts)George II
(67,782 posts)Eliot Rosewater
(31,121 posts)George II
(67,782 posts)Eliot Rosewater
(31,121 posts)I will never forget being a young man, high as a kite on some local and seeing "Sleeper" for the first time in a theater.
almost died from laughing
George II
(67,782 posts)....losing interest when he go a little weird in his movies.
Annie Hall was my favorite, then Sleeper and Everything You Wanted to Know, Manhattan, etc.
Eliot Rosewater
(31,121 posts)took getting used to.
Some love those, some dont.
Overall he has a brilliant legacy of movies and is a genius.
Uncle Joe
(58,417 posts)of a few gullible fact checkers.
Gothmog
(145,554 posts)Why has sanders delayed in getting vermont to adopt this plan?
George II
(67,782 posts)...read the entire report.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100211032432
Eliot Rosewater
(31,121 posts)HAVING SAID THAT, not now, house is on fire.
Even if it costs more, we need it. Let the rich pay their fair share..
HAVING SAID THAT, not now, house is on fire.
Now there is an agenda from Russia to make democrats look bad if they dont do this or that, we know that for a fact.
You see the difference between how I frame this, present this, and others? There is a good way to do this and a very bad way that is CERTAIN to harm democrats in November.