#single-payer

[barrydeutsch]

Rationing Health Care

You can find the transcript and a post discussing the issue and also the things I like and hate about my drawing here. If you're the first person to spot the cameo appearance by a Peanuts character, you'll win a billion dollars! Honest! Would I lie?

If you like my work, help me keep doing it at patreon.com/barry. (I make a living mostly from lots of people pledging just $1 or $2, which I find really cool.)

[newsbites]

News from BC, 14 June

Debris loosened by wildfires is causing concerns for transportation safety in British Columbia, as trees continue to fall unpredictably onto the roadways.

The closure of Hwy. 4 has resulted in a significant deployment of resources to maintain a 90-kilometre-long logging road detour route for essential goods and movement.

While progress is being reported to combat the Cameron Bluffs fire, transportation challenges persist due to the dangerous terrain and unpredictability of the wildfire conditions.

2. Another storm bringing rain, winds, and potential lightning is expected to hit northeastern British Columbia, which could impact the ongoing wildfires in the region.

3. The NDP has tabled legislation to establish a universal single-payer pharmacare system in Canada to pressure the Liberal government on the file.

The creation of a national universal pharmacare program by the end of the year is a condition of the House of Commons supply-and-confidence agreement between the Liberals and the NDP.

Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos did not commit to supporting the bill, saying there are consultations and other work to be done before the government brings forward a pharmacare bill — legislation he said may not pass before the end of the year.

4. The Nanaimo Association for Community Living (NACL) has launched a community garden for those with mobility challenges.

5. Chilliwack's first Vegan Festival will be held on June 17, 2023, from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM at Central Community Park.

[odinsblog]

Were it not for white supremacy, America would have single payer health care. In the wake of the assassination of United Health CEO Brian Thompson, Americans are wondering out loud why we're getting ripped off by giant insurance companies when every other developed country in the world has health care as a right and pays an average of about half of what we do, and gets better outcomes. America is the only developed country in the world that doesn't recognize health care as a human right.

The only country with more than two-thirds of its population lacking access to affordable health care and a half million families facing bankruptcy every year because somebody got sick. The only country in the developed world where over 40% of the population carries $220 billion in medical debt. And the only country in the developed world that has since its founding enslaved and then legally oppressed and disenfranchised a large majority of its population because of their race.

These things, along with the United Health's $370 billion in revenue and $32 billion in profit, are connected. Roughly 60% of Americans would have had to take out a loan or otherwise borrow or beg for money to deal with a single unexpected $1,000 expense. Yet annual family medical co-pays and out-of-pocket deductibles averaged $6,575 in 2023, when the Kaiser Family Foundation did a comprehensive survey of Americans.

This strikes minorities particularly hard, which, it turns out, is not an accident. The simple fact is that, were it not for slavery, white supremacy, and the legacy of scientific racism, America would have had a national single-payer health care system in 1915, just 31 years after Germany put into place the modern world's first such program. At the center of the effort to prevent a national health care system, or any form of government assistance that may incidentally offer benefit to African Americans, were Frederick Ludwig Hoffman and the Prudential Life Insurance Company, which promoted his science-based racial theories to successfully fight single-payer health insurance.

Racism is the main reason that America doesn't consider health care a human right and provide it to all citizens, in contrast to every other developed country in the world. Racist whites, particularly in the South, have worked for over a century to make sure that health care is hard for Black people and other minorities to get.

Were it not for so-called scientific racism, America would long ago have joined the rest of the developed world with a competent and efficient national health care system. Instead, we're stuck with for-profit health insurance giants attached like giant leeches to our backs.

—Anti-Blackness is the reason we don’t have Universal Healthcare

[famousbasementwizard]

[livefromtheelephantsfoot]

i think the best possible outcome is they catch him and the jury acquits him. think about it, if a jury won't convict him regardless of him doing it (assuming they do get the right guy), there will be absolutely nothing insurance companies can do about it but change their policies. if the american public says, fully within the bounds of the system, that their lives don't matter until ours do, there is nowhere they could throw their money to make that message go away.

[alex51324]

Scroll down a bit...

Someone who works on CNN's front page did a thing, I bet.

(A little while ago these two headlines were close enough together to get them in the same screenshot, but the second one was moved down before I got around to actually taking the screenshot.)

[isawthismeme]

[specialagentartemis]

it has been seven months and my insurance STILL is asking me "are you SURE your surgery wasn't due to a car accident we can bill someone else for? are you sure??? we're not gonna pay the whole thing till we're sure you're SURE"

[captainjonnitkessler]

Listening to conservative union members talk is a trip. They'll give a speech about worker solidarity, the right to basic human dignity and a thriving wage, and the value of labor that would bring a tear to Marx's eye, and then they'll turn around and be like "anyway, radical leftism is ruining the country".

[nix-that-rad-lass]

You’d think my mom, someone directly harmed by predatory privatized health insurance in multiple ways, would understand and agree with Luigi Mangione’s actions.

Alas, indoctrination runs deep.

[rainbowpopeworld]

That’s one way to move the Overton Window

[scottguy]

Poor babies. They use their patent power to literally EXTORT money from sick people, especially cancer patients causing people to lose their life savings simply to stay alive.

Now they wail that their obscene profits may drop a bit when they never should have been that high in the first place.

[tomwambsmilk]

I do love how the celebration of the UHC CEO being killed seems to have spanned the political divide. bipartisan support for the assassin. nothing unites people like someone who made billions preying on sick people getting gunned down in the street

[famousbasementwizard]

Single payer would have saved his life too.

[berniesrevolution]

LBC | US Senator BernieSanders warns the UK against America’s private healthcare model.

[cherryblossomshadow]

Kamala Harris Talks About Her Own Medicare for All Plan With Ady Barkan | NowThis

NowThis Impact

Love to see a politician discussing the nuances of their policies, the difference between two “Medicare for All” plans fluently and respectfully. I would still prefer Bernie’s plans to hers, but it is so encouraging to see her talking to a disabled activist so vulnerably.

.

@/sagesufferswell

Never seen the other guy be vulnerable, honest or open to even a civil conversation with a disabled person.

.

Excerpts below the cut:

3:00

Ady Barkan, disability activist: As California attorney general, you took action against insurance industry greed and successfully won a $320 million settlement from a private Medicare Advantage plan that was defrauding California.

Can you talk a little bit about that case and what it taught you?

Kamala Harris: Let’s be clear about this: Access to health care should be a human right, and not just a privilege of those who can afford it. It has been a business model that is motivated by profit over public health.

Government has three essential functions: public education, public safety, and public health.

And we’ve got to do a better job, which is why I have a Medicare for All plan. Everybody should be covered, and money should not be the reason people don’t get the health care they deserve.

Ady: You originally co-sponsored Bernie’s Medicare for All plan, but recently, you said you are not comfortable with it anymore. You have come out with your own different vision.

Can you explain your plan, and why you believe it is better than the Medicare for All bill you originally co-sponsored when you first came to the Senate?

Kamala: Bernie’s bill is good, but we could do better.

I was meeting with people around the country who were saying, look, we want to have an option of having a private plan. Don’t take away our options.

And so I said, ok, under my Medicare for All plan, there will be an option for a public plan or a private plan, but the insurance companies are going to have to play by our rules, which means the private plans cannot charge copays, cannot charge deductibles.

The other point that I wanted to make is the coupling of insurance with employment. That’s gotta stop because there are so many people in our country who are losing their jobs.

…

5:15

Ady: As you know, I also have a perspective on this question.

I would like to tell you why I believe that single-payer Medicare for All is the best approach, and I’d like you to tell me where you disagree.

Kamala: Ok.

Ady: First, only Medicare for All will get everyone the care they need. Under your plan, millions of people like me will still be denied care by their for-profit insurance company during the 10-year transition period and afterwards. In addition, people will avoid getting needed care because of high copays and deductibles.

Second, only a true Medicare for All system will drive down costs. It will save us hundreds of billions of dollars per year in administrative and billing costs that are the result of a for-profit insurance system. That will not happen if providers still have to bill numerous insurance companies.

Finally, there is the political reality. The insurance industry is going to do everything it can to block any of these proposals, including yours, which means the only way to win is with a huge grassroots movement. And from what I can see, that enthusiasm only exists for Medicare for All. So, where am I wrong?

…

8:00

Ady: Ok, Senator, last question. Since my diagnosis, I have been thinking a lot about my legacy. I’m curious: What do you want your legacy to be after you eventually exit the stage of national politics?

How do you want to be remembered?

Kamala: I want to be remembered as having lifted the quality of life and circumstances of everyone, and in particular, those who historically have been outside the access to resources, and power, and opportunity. I want to know that my life has been about actually having impact. I’ll tell you, Ady, so much of the work I’ve done over my career, it’s not been about a lovely speech, not been about some grand gesture. The work that I have done, in my career and that I hope to continue to do is about actually showing that when you put resources into the people and you see the capacity of people, that they will thrive and we all will benefit as a result.

Ady: Sen. Harris, this has been a real pleasure. Thank you so much for being here.

Kamala: Thank you, Ady. It means a lot to me to sit here with you.