Bernie Sanders

eridani

(51,907 posts) Thu May 12, 2016, 03:30 AM May 2016

WaPo Squeezes Four Anti-Sanders Stories Out of One Tax Study Over Seven Hours

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/11/washington-post-squeezes-four-anti-sanders-stories-out-one-tax-study-over-seven

Missing as well from any of the pieces was any meaningful critical analysis of the study’s highly contestable cost projections, as David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler—two of the nation’s leading experts on healthcare finance, and co-founders of Physicians for a National Health Program—laid out yesterday in the Huffington Post (5/9/16). Himmelstein and Woolhandler called the Urban Institute’s cost estimates “ridiculous,” saying they “ignore the extensive and well-documented experience with single-payer systems in other nations—which all spend far less per person on healthcare than we do.”

Himmelstein and Woolhandler note that the Urban Institute report assumes there will be 100 million more doctor visits per year, despite the fact that the plan does not involve an increase in the number of doctors. The Urban Institute report supposes that the US single-payer system would pay 50 percent more for prescription drugs than Medicaid currently pays, and ignores or minimizes administrative savings from a unified system that add up to $6 trillion over ten years.

While honest people can disagree on these figures, readers were not clued in that there are legitimate healthcare experts who back up Sanders’ numbers. Instead, on the basis of one report, the Post painted his plan as at best fantastical and at worst a cynical effort to deceive the public on its “true cost.”

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Why would so much ink be spilled on a candidate who, by the Post’s estimation, can’t possibly win? The objective is, of course, to further stigmatize Sanders ideas and platform goals—all of which are deeply antithetical to the editorial and financial bottom line of the paper and its sole owner, Jeff Bezos, whose net worth is over $45 billion.

It’s not enough for Sanders to lose, as the Post’s editorial board has been expressly rooting for for months; his ideas and the influence he maintains in the party must be snuffed out as well.Why would so much ink be spilled on a candidate who, by the Post’s estimation, can’t possibly win? The objective is, of course, to further stigmatize Sanders ideas and platform goals—all of which are deeply antithetical to the editorial and financial bottom line of the paper and its sole owner, Jeff Bezos, whose net worth is over $45 billion.

It’s not enough for Sanders to lose, as the Post’s editorial board has been expressly rooting for for months; his ideas and the influence he maintains in the party must be snuffed out as well.