Disabusing the Disinformants

The disinformation crowd is at it again, spreading a lot of nonsense about Bernie Sanders’ health plan for America.  Gotta look a little deeper folks. Bernie Sanders’ plan has been published, complete with the scale of tax increases.

Remember, there is a huge difference from the ACA, which started its life as a single payer system concept, but was changed due to pressure in the House and Senate to preserve the Health Insurance companies. So, the ACA really became a subsidized health insurance platform which did not prohibit the insurance companies from raising rates (or deductibles and out of pocket costs). Now, everyone is obligated to pay for insurance and the costs continue to rise.

Based on the numbers released by Bernie Sanders’ camp, the smallest tax increase will be on families earning 200,000 dollars or less, two percent. Two percent of 200,000 is $4000 in tax increases, but you would no longer pay for private health insurance at all.  In my case, I have a wife and two kids and our combined health insurance premiums for a basic HMO come to just over $12,000 a year. So, my family would be looking at an $8000 savings.

Here is one thing I’d hope you all take careful note of and it is a little language related gimmick that often goes unnoticed. The Republicans and Hilary Clinton continue to say that what we all need is affordable health insurance. Only Bernie Sanders says that we need affordable health CARE. When you are sick or injured and need to go to a doctor, you need health care, not the card in your wallet. If health CARE was affordable, you would not need health INSURANCE. When I was younger, we all had catastrophic health insurance and paid doctors out of pocket. It was manageable. Today, due to the political clout of the health insurance and big pharma companies, costs have skyrocketed, allowing for such whopping profits, that those same companies can afford top shelf lobbyists to keep the ball rolling. Isn’t it time that WE stood up to these thieves and ran them out of town and out of government?



Ted Cruz’s Plan for Your Health

It was very interesting to hear Ted Cruz tip his hand last night in an instance of classic Washington double-speak. We’re going to let you hear one thing while we are actually saying something entirely different. He said that he would repeal “every last word” of Obamacare and would replace it with his plan, which had three main points.

First, “we should allow people to buy health insurance across state lines. That’ll create a true 50-state national marketplace while we drive down the cost of low-cost catastrophic health insurance.” – From that, I would take it that he wants to create even larger corporate health insurance providers who will focus on providing catastrophic health insurance (what we used to call major medical) for those instances when you have to go to the hospital. That would allow any other form of health insurance, for say, doctor visits, to continue to climb through the roof while mega-corporations put other insurers out of business. The net result would be the exact opposite of what anyone would call “health care.”

Second, “we should expand health savings accounts so people can save in a tax-advantaged way for more routine health care needs.” I have had HSA health insurance and it is a bust. The HSA account is linked to a very high deductible type of plan which essentially insures that you will pay every minor health care bill entirely out of pocket. The notion that this account can build over time to provide some manner of nest egg of tax-protected health care fund, is nonsense. Your employer contribution is capped, so any contribution you make is after taxes anyway and it is minimized by the cost of the health insurance you still need.

Third, “we should work to delink health insurance from your employment, so if you lose your job, your health insurance goes with you.” In other words, at the end of the day, all of this will be on you. We will remove the responsibility from employers to provide health care coverage, thus increasing their bottom line. Tell me Ted, if you lose your job and your health insurance goes with you, how the hell are you going to pay for it?
Folks, there is a very interesting point to bear in mind here. It has to do with language. Language can be very precise, when we want it to be. The Republicans and Hilary Clinton continue to talk about health “insurance.” You don’t need health “insurance,” you need health “care.” They are two very different animals.

Health “insurance” is that plastic card in your wallet which promises to bail you out should your health “care” costs get too high. It is a gamble. You are gambling that you will need that coverage and the health insurance company is gambling that you won’t (and now, your government is requiring that you play the game!). And the insurance companies are hedging their bets by setting higher and higher deductibles and out of pocket costs and capping benefits.

So, what we are seeing all over the country now are people who have health insurance but can not afford to go to the doctor. Where does the money go? If you don’t go to your doctor, your doctor does not get paid. The money stays in the insurance company’s coffers, which get richer and richer. Then, the insurance company puts more and more money into lobbyists to make sure that the system stays exactly the same.

The point on which we need to focus is that what we need is health “care.” If we can cut out the middle man which is the insurance company and can negotiate at a federal level with big-medicine and big-pharmaceuticals, the way every other industrialized country in the world does, the cost of our care can come down while the quality of our care remains high. It has been demonstrated time and again, all over the world.

A single payer system is the only way that the middle and working class people of this country can escape the burden of the rising cost of health insurance and can put more of their hard earned money back into the economy, to jump start it. Cruz, the Republicans, Clinton and Establishment Politicians in Washington have become too accustomed to having their own pockets lined by lobbyists for institutions which would drive the entire nation further into debt, with little to nothing to show for it.



Big Pharma Wants You

Think about this for a minute. If the pharmaceuticals would make you well, you would no longer need them. That is akin to GE making a refrigerator so perfect that you would never need another. They would sell millions overnight and then never sell another. They’d be out of business. Thus, we have “planned obsolescence,” things being made to break down so that you need to buy more things. It is worth considering that the pharmaceutical companies have every interest in you buying their pills for the rest of your life. So, why would they want to make you well?

Pharma Industry Meme