Is it more important to elect good people or remove bad people from office? That might seem like the same thing to a lot of people but the two are not always mutually exclusive. Through the Obama years and at an increasingly accelerated pace since the election of Donald Trump, many Democrats have lost their focus on policy issues. If you check Twitter (which admittedly isn’t necessarily reflective of reality), there is an almost unhealthy obsession with Donald Trump. It’s understandable, President Trump is an odious figure who has debased the presidency and is the human manifestation of bigotry. Yet, we’ve had bad Presidents before and this led Democrats to unite around bold ideas to change our country for the better. This doesn’t seem to be happening, instead we see Democrats united against Republicans (which is good) but substance is missing.

We are becoming a party driven by personality and that’s made clear by the current primary polling and issue polling. Currently clear majorities of Democrats support Medicare-for-All and other progressive policy positions. But if you look at primary polling a full 45% of Democratic support goes to candidates who either oppose Medicare-for-All or have no stated position. Stranger still, Democrats who don’t have much in common ideologically seem to be sharing supporters. More than 1 in 4 Biden supporters list Sanders as their second choice, more Sanders supporters choose Biden over Warren as their second choice, and Warren supporters have Harris as their second choice and the same is true vice-versa.

In some limited circles there is something happening, Bernie Sanders is championing Medicare-for-All, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is leading the way on the Green New Deal, and Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax would be a revolutionary step towards wealth redistribution. These are popular ideas among Democrats but there is a real question of whether we even care about policy anymore. Overall it’s good that we’re embracing these policy goals, but are Democrats actually lining up behind personalities and letting the policy come second?

It seems like the answer is yes. We have been so traumatized by the presidency of Donald Trump that we now believe that electing any Democrat by default is good. Republicans are bad and are elected by bad people which means Democrats are good and are elected by good people seeing as we all want to be good people then we must vote for Democrats. That’s the flawed circular logic that exists. Some of us are starting to believe that being a Democrat is enough, and if you follow that to its natural conclusion then we are dangerously becoming closer to the position Republicans found themselves facing in 2016. “Vote blue no matter who“ is the creed of many Democrats who have Ralph Nader pinned to a dartboard in their homes. Are we so craven in our desire to defeat Donald Trump that we would sell out the interests of working class people (especially those of color), civilians living in whatever nation shall suffer the next imperialist adventure, and anyone living on this planet who’d rather not suffer the consequences of climate chaos?

I know what you’re thinking, defeating Donald Trump accomplishes the goal of protecting those people or at least makes it easier. But that’s only partially true. A necessary condition for making our world better is defeating Donald Trump, but it is not sufficient. As we look to our nominating contests not just for the presidency but for Senate races and House races and governors races across this country we have to consider whether the people we are nominating should win rather than if they can win. We currently have representatives, many of whom are diverse in their identities and had inspiring candidacies, who have voted to give legitimacy to the president constructing concentration camps along our southern border. We currently have Democratic senators who have signaled that if and when the time comes, they will give President Trump authorization to launch an illegal war in Venezuela. There are candidates running for president, namely Joe Biden, who will negotiate the slow privatization of Social Security to make a deal with Republicans.

Many of those politicians are “electable“and poised to defeat Republicans in their individual elections. But our goal should be to not only defeat Republicans, or defeat Trumpism, but to also defeat the system that puts the interests of an elite class of people above the majority of Americans. This system lied us into war in Iraq, this system bailed out Wall Street, this system builds private prisons, this system kills public unions and this system is determined to put profits before people. Even if Donald Trump is defeated, the system that created him will continue to exist and will undoubtedly produce something worse than Donald Trump. This system is the persistent enemy of progress and we should focus on how to attack it. In order to do that though, we are going to have to have tough conversations about whether people we like are on our side and if we should allow them to compromise our livelihoods in pursuit of voters. We’re going to have to ask ourselves whether we are getting a fair deal and if this coalition that we’ve cobbled together can continue to exist.

But of course, some Democrats would rather discuss how many languages a candidate can speak or how cool it is that a candidate has legislative plans but no plans to win back the legislature. It’s less stressful to project your hopes and dreams onto your candidate of choice, developing this feeling of personal connection despite them never having met you and becoming personally offended when anyone challenges them on policy. We’d rather add hashtags to our Twitter bios like “resistor” and “ImStillWithHer” not to be outdone by “NotMyPresident”. We’ll still get together and laugh about “those people” and how they elected Donald Trump and remember how George Bush gave Michelle Obama candy, God don’t we miss him? We’ll compromise away every last value because Donald Trump is so gauche and offensive that we’ll do anything if we think we’ll win. Bret Stephens wrote that it’s rude to call racists out for being racist? Guess we mustn’t do that. Oh, and Ross Douthat said that being pro-choice turns off swing voters, well in that case I guess that’s done too. Now Neera Tanden says universal healthcare is bad policy, anything it takes. Then after all that, after we’ve been embraced every third way position and ignored policy for personality, we might very well beat Donald Trump.

But at what cost? It’s time to stand up for something or we will again, fall for anything and the country will continue to hate us, and they will be justified in that hatred.

The post Democrats need to be more ideological and less partisan appeared first on Occasional Planet.

A common practice in politics is to define your opponents before they define themselves. Usually this results in gross misrepresentation of where the opposition stands. But earlier this week, Donald Trump gave Democrats a helpful shove as he described their position on health care reform.

In a meeting with GOP senators at the White House, Trump rambled on about what Republicans should do to “fix” health care. In the process, he characterized what he sees as the Democratic position on health care:

The way I looked at it, we have no democrat help. They are obstructionists and that’s all they’re good at is obstruction. They have no ideas and they’ve gone so far left, they’re looking for single payer, that’s what they want, but single payer will bankrupt our country, because it’s more than we take in for just health care. So single payer’s never going to work, but that’s what they like to do. They have no idea what it will be and you wait in line for weeks before you see a doctor.

Clip begins at five-minute mark.

The good news is that Trump said about the Democrats what they could not say for themselves – that their position on health care reform is to adopt the single-payer, or more accurately phrased, Medicare-for-All system. Yes, there are the Claire McCaskills and Nancy Pelosis of the world who think that Democrats should continue to be mired in the world of confusing health care policy that is in essence what the Affordable Care Act became when the Public Option was no longer an option. But more and more Democrats are coming to see that Medicare-for-All is the best policy to adopt because (a) it provides the greatest amount of care at the most affordable cost and (b) politically it is viable because it is simple to explain.

Trump, who once said that Medicare-for-All was a good idea, now demonizes it and uses “reasoning” that is as fake and most everything else that he says.

He states that Medicare-for-All will bankrupt the country. Well yes, if the government was paying for all health care coverage without reforming taxes, that would be the case. But what he, and all Republicans and many Democrats fail to point out, is that there is a huge reservoir of untapped revenue for the federal government because the payroll tax (Social Security and Medicare) is capped at $118,500. Most taxpayers have 100% of their earned income subject to the payroll tax because they make less than $118,500. But for someone who make a million dollars a year, they have FICA taxes levied on less than 12% of their income. For someone who earns ten million dollars a year (and certainly is in a position to pay more taxes), FICA withholding applies to only 1.2% of their earnings.

Here a couple of other economic benefits of Medicare-for-All that are rarely mentioned:

1. By taking private insurance companies out of the equation, there is an immediate saving of 20% in health care. That’s because under current law, insurance companies are essentially guaranteed a profit of 20% on their transactions. Medicare, as we know it, has no such profit siphoned from consumers.
2. Under Medicare-for-All, employers would no longer provide health care coverage. That eliminates a huge cost for them. The beneficiaries become both those business as well as consumers who would then pay lower prices for the goods and services that the business provide.

Now might be the time for Democrats to thank Donald Trump for clarifying their position on health care reform. Progressives, step ahead of Claire and Nancy and lead.

The post Here’s one time when Democrats should take the lead from Trump appeared first on Occasional Planet.

There are two key reasons why mainstream media must be talking about Medicare-for-All. First, it is sound policy, something that all Americans should hope for in truly finding affordable and accessible health care for all. Second, it is the Democrats’ position (though often muted) which stands in opposition to the Republicans’ “Repeal and Replace” Obamacare, or even simply “Repeal.”

Democrats acknowledge that the Affordable Care Act requires fixing. Most of what needs fixing is what was initially left out if the bill in 2009-2010 because (a) President Obama did not think that he could ask for that much, and (b) Republicans stood in firm opposition to it. The first step would be a public option, a proposal to create a government-run health insurance agency that would compete with other private health insurance companies within the United States. Because the public exchange would not need to charge consumers (taxpayers) the twenty percent overhead for private insurers’’ profit, it would immediately reduce costs and by its very nature, apply to everyone.

Presidents Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson both supported some form of Medicare-for-All. But without presidential leadership, it took until 2003 for Representatives John Conyers (D-MI) and Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and others to introduce H.R. 676, a simple six-page bill which would establish a single-payer or Medicare-for-All system. But as we have previously reported, the media paid scant attention to the proposal when Dennis Kucinich ran for president in 2008 against the likes of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, both of whom were offering “universal-lite” coverage.

In the 2016 presidential campaign, Bernie Sanders forced the media to cover what was the linchpin to his health-care program. Unfortunately, for many in the media Sanders has become “yesterday’s news,” and along with his partial black-out is a silencing of many of the progressive proposals that he advocated. In fairness, very few Democrats in office have taken up his mantle, even though it was clearly more popular with voters than Hillary Clinton’s milquetoast.

An example of neither the media nor a mainstream Democrat adding Medicare-for-All to a conversation was on CNN’s “New Day” on Monday, July 3. Guest host John Berman was interviewing Maryland Senator Ben Cardin about the question of whether Democrats were willing to work with Republicans on health care reform. [I wish that I could give you a link to this interview, but CNN is notoriously bad in providing access to recently-aired clips or interviews.]. Berman asked Cardin whether Senate Democrats were willing to work with Republicans and the Maryland senator gave the requisite answer that in theory Democrats would collaborate, but it did not seem realistic presently because of the huge gulf that separates the two parties on health care. But what Cardin did not say, and what Berman did not ask about was exactly what Democrats stand for. Had he been asked that, I am not sure whether Cardin would have proposed first aid for ACA, or even mentioned that government subsidies needed to be greater to meet escalating medical costs.

All of that is confusing. Medicare-for-All is not. It is something that should be asked about and talked about.

When the main issue before us was gay marriage, members of the mainstream media did not hesitate to ask politicians whether they were for marriage equality. That was a clear question which lent itself to clear and precise answers.

The media has not done so with Medicare-for-All. It is time they do so because (a) it is good journalism to do so, and (b) their personal lives and that of the society in which they live will be better off with it.

UPDATE: On Sunday, July 9, 2019,”The Hill” reported “Single-payer healthcare gains traction with Dems”

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Of all people, conservative retired Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) tossed out the idea that Members of Congress should be given a monthly housing stipend in the amount of $2,500. As “The Hill” reported, “Lawmakers of both parties aren’t endorsing Rep. Jason Chaffetz’s suggestion that they be provided a $30,000-per-year housing stipend — but also say the outgoing lawmaker has a point.”

Remember that Chaffetz is the one who said with regard to health care reform:

And, you know what? Americans have choices. And they’ve got to make a choice. So maybe, rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and they want to go spend hundreds of dollars on, maybe they should invest that in health care. They’ve got to make those decisions themselves.

It seems that he has little regard for those people who are struggling to make ends meet; people who need to choose between a now-necessary smartphone and the basic human right of health care coverage. But he is concerned about the expenses that he and others in Congress have when it comes to finding affordable housing in the pricey Washington, DC area.

The Hill further reports:

“Lawmakers acknowledge it’s a nonstarter to try to convince the public that a six-figure salary more than double the median American income isn’t enough. Rank-and-file lawmakers earn $174,000 annually.”

$174,000 is an excellent salary for most Americans, but by some definitions, it is still below the top range of middle income. It is reasonable for Americans to want representatives who can focus on doing their jobs rather than worrying about making ends meet. Being a Member of Congress often means having two homes, one in their home district or state and the other in the Washington, DC area. The annual salary is high when compared to the median income of Americans ($52,000), but it is not high enough that Members and their families do not have to worry about meeting expenses.

Chaffetz’s suggestion can serve as the opening round of a discussion of how much Members of Congress should be paid so that they are without financial worries and are free to focus on doing the “people’s business.”

The flip side of the argument includes factors such as (a) Members of Congress really don’t work that hard [they are scheduled to be in session in Washington only 133 days in 2017], and (b) they are not particularly good at their jobs [witness gridlock while the fabric of the New Deal and Great Society is unraveling].

So, here’s a proposed compromise:

1. Raise Congressional salaries to $500,000 (and while you’re at it, do the same for the President and other top-ranking officials in both the executive and judicial branches of government). In the larger scheme of things, this won’t cost much and it will probably result in savings because it will cut down on government mismanagement, waste and fraud.
2. In order to justify these raises:
   1. Congress pass legislation ensuring that all Americans receive the quality of affordable and comprehensive health care that they do. This means Medicare for All.
   2. Congress initiate a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling and follow that with comprehensive campaign finance reform which puts in place exclusive public financing for all federal elections.
   3. Relieved of the time constraints of fund-raising, Members of Congress must work at least 200 days per calendar year. This includes extensive committee work, and no bill with a cost of $2 billion or more can be considered on the floor of a chamber without proper open committee hearings (exactly what Republicans have not done in either the House or the Senate with the “repeal and replace” bills on health care.).
   4. There be a life-time ban on Members of Congress and members of their families being paid lobbyists. There are plenty of other less-sleazy ways for former Members to cash in following their tenures in Congress.

It’s a “hot rail;” a “third rail of politics” for Members of Congress to suggest raising their pay. But truth be told, when they are doing their jobs, they deserve far more money than they currently are legally making. But the pay increases must come hand-in-hand with reform that will save money and bring about more responsible government.

The post Do the unthinkable: double, triple Congressional Salaries appeared first on Occasional Planet.

As Republicans recklessly move forward in doing damage to health care in America, it’s important for Democrats to have a clear vision for the alternative: Medicare-for-All. Democrats must communicate that their goal is straight-forward: to provide complete and affordable health care for all Americans. It’s basic economics. You want to ensure that the demand for goods and services is met by suppliers who are properly remunerated.

The demand for health care is always in flux. Each day, new Americans contract illnesses or are injured. At the same time, Americans are recovering from what had set them back. We as individuals, we as a society, are only as good as we are healthy. It is in everyone’s best interest for us to have a system in which health care is available in a timely and convenient fashion. To those who are taking care of us, it is important for them to be properly paid and to perform their duties in the best of working conditions.

There is nothing engraved in stone that says that insurance companies should be involved with how we do health care. Insurance is legalized gambling, on both the part of the suppliers and the purchasers. That may be acceptable if you go to the race track or a local casino. However, it is far too casual and unreliable to use as an approach to deal with our physical and mental well-being. In insurance, there are winners and losers. When it comes to our wellness, we need “win-win” solutions.

What Republicans are currently doing for insurance companies is not to expand the market as the Affordable Care Act has done. Rather Republicans are minimizing risk by essentially allowing the companies to either not insure people who may require the costliest procedures or to price individuals out of the market. But what Republicans are doing through their approach to health care is not just taking care of insurance companies with whom they are cozy. They are acting in a way that it consistent with one of their basic political, and even psychological, goals: to simply be mean to people about whom they care the least.

At last look, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Republican plan will cause twenty-four million Americans to lose health care.  Eight years ago, under President Obama, our nation talked about how low we could make the number of people who did not have access to health care. With Donald Trump and the Republicans, it’s how many we can remove from our health care system.

Why do they do this? Some, like House Speaker Paul Ryan, would say that it is to be responsible overseers of our federal budget. But it looks and smells much more like overseers of people who they want to keep subservient.

If Republicans really care about balancing the federal budget, as they say, why do they want to balance the budget? The conventional answer is that they care about deficits and deficits cause inflation. Take a look at the two charts below to see how specious this argument is:

As you can see above, the federal debt has grown, almost exponentially, since 1980. But below, you see that inflation has topped 5% only once during that period. Over thirty-five years of recent history clearly shows that running federal deficits has little or nothing to do with inflation [the real factor is what percentage of the GNP is the deficit, but Republicans don’t talk about that.]

So why is it that Republicans constantly harp on wanting to balance the budget? First, by supporting the reduction of federal expenditures, they put themselves in a position to support tax cuts for the wealthy. That’s something they clearly like.

Second, and this is more psychological than political, we have to recognize that there are some people in our society who are just plain mean when it comes to public policy. They almost seem to lack an empathy gene and they don’t care about the suffering of others, particularly if those people are not like them. Why else would you support a health care bill that would reduce $800 billion of taxes on the wealthy while denying twenty-four million people access to health care?

It’s not that Republicans are mean; it’s that those among us who are mean tend to be Republicans¹. Psychologically and politically, there is very little that Democrats and others can do about changing that. But what it does mean is that those who have more of a sense of empathy can try to fashion public policy that provides the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people. When it comes to health care, that is clearly Medicare-for-All.

So Democrats, please don’t get bogged down in the details of the Republican policies. Don’t worry about giving a fair shake to the insurance companies? Our goal for those in the health insurance industry should be to help them find gainful employment in the future, just as it is for coal miners.

Not only is Medicare-for-All sound policy, it is good politics. Let’s face it, the American people don’t like complexity. That’s why neither the Republican plan nor the Affordable Care Act are popular.

Keep it simple, when you can. The message and the policy should be Medicare-for-All.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

¹ Many of these people are very cordial and thoughtful towards those who they know. But when it comes to fashioning public policy that serves the common good, they are just plain mean.

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Aetna has just announced that it will be pulling out of the Affordable Care Act’s insurance exchanges in 11 of the 15 states where it has been participating. People who have wanted “Obamacare” to fail are rejoicing, using Aetna’s withdrawal as “evidence” that the exchanges don’t work and that Obamacare is entering the long-wished-for [but never real] “death spiral” that they hoped to create.

But Aetna’s motivation may not really be economic at all.

New reporting  suggests that Aetna is exiting the ACA exchanges not because it’s not making [enough] money. In reality,  the withdrawal may be a retaliation for the Department of Justice’s recent ruling against a proposed merger between Aetna and another insurance giant—Humana.

AlerNet is reporting that Aetna’s CEO, Mark Bertolini sent a letter on July 5, 2015 to the Department of Justice. The letter included the following threat:

…his company would have “no choice” but to quit Obamacare if a planned merger with fellow insurance company, Humana, was blocked by the DOJ.

In Bertolini’s words: “It is very likely that we would need to leave the public exchange business entirely and plan for additional business efficiencies should our deal ultimately be blocked.” Bertolini went on to cite the, “additional synergies” offered by the merger as a bargaining chip for continuing to support Obamacare.

But the DOJ was having none of it and promptly rejected the request. Subsequently as we learned this week, Bertolini has stayed true to his word.

What the hell? The Affordable Care Act delivers a gift of millions of new, paying customers to Aetna and other health insurers—and, in return, gets threats and bullying?

Why do we bother with these people? It’s time to move on: Get these money-grabbing middlemen out of the way, and enact Medicare for All.

The post Aetna’s exit from Obamacare should make us want Medicare-for-All even more appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Until we have single-payer, Medicare for All healthcare in America, insurance companies will continue to screw their customers in as many ways as possible. For now, though, the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, is at least helping people who were previously uninsured–or uninsurable according to the skewed rules of the industry–to avoid health-crisis-induced bankruptcy. Many of the new rules in the Affordable Care Act eliminate the worst abuses of the old system. But bad practices persist. Recently, HealthCare-Now!–a group that advocates for  a Medicare-for-All system- asked its supporters to submit nominations for the 2013 Award for Profiteering and Deceit in the Private Health Insurance Industry. Of course, HealthCare Now’s contest was unscientific, and mostly a public-relations stunt, but the results are enlightening anyway. Based on the submissions HealthCare Now received, the top vote-getters  are:

UnitedHealth, for paying its CEO, Stephen Hemsley, $49 million in 2012. HealthCare Now notes that among CEOs, healthcare CEOs receive the highest median pay at $11.1 million. There are thousands of insurance companies, but the seven largest publicly traded health plans alone are paid their CEOs a collective $87 million.

Humana, for charging women over 50% more than men for the same insurance plan.

Anthem Blue Cross for predatory premium increases.

Moda Health for paying $40 million for naming rights to the Portland Trailblazers arena.

Each of these examples is emblematic of the stuff health-insurance companies continue to get away with, and that could be reigned in–if not eliminated–under a Medicare-for-All system. Or, as Health-Now puts it:

Under a single-payer health plan, health coverage would be offered as a public good to all, administered by civil servants who will not siphon millions of dollars meant for patient care into their personal bank accounts. So we could use that $87 million in wasted money on CEOs to pay for as many as 8,700 hip replacements.

The post The worst health insurance companies in America appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I recently went to a most engaging and informative movie called The Waiting Room sponsored by Missourians for Single Payer Health Care. There was a crowd of about thirty people. It was good to see so many people on a Thursday night come to see a movie that focuses on the perils that so many people currently face because they are without any form of health insurance.

What was not good to see was that I was the youngest person in the room. At 66 years old,  I’ve been on Medicare for a year and truly appreciate all the benefits I receive from it. But the point of showing the film was to heighten the awareness of Medicare to those too young to currently qualify for Medicare. These are the people who would immediately benefit from expanding the eligibility for Medicare. They need what their seniors already have. Where were those younger people? They were nowhere to be found.

Some may pass it off as simple apathy. Obviously this is part of the problem, but it goes well beyond that. We need to ask who were the people who influenced them to become apathetic about a public issue that has such a personal impact. What kind of parenting did they have? What kind of education did they have?

Critiquing parenting is difficult to do, especially since there are about as many different ways to parent as there are parent. But schools are much easier to critique because in so many ways they operate like a monolith.

It has now been well over a dozen years since the George W. Bush Administration brought us the “No Child Left Behind” program, more appropriately referred to as the “No TEST Left Behind.” Students and teachers alike are herded to march to the beat of the standardized tests. All of the tests have one thing in common; they suppose that there is one and only one correct answer.

These tests do not challenge students to question. They do not encourage active participation in public issues. They do not raise students’ awareness of the problems that our world faces and how we might go about trying to resolve them.

Few students learn in school about how virtually industrialized country in the world other than the United States has a system of universal health care or Medicare for all. What they do learn a lot about is charity. To the schools’ credit, they do inform students that others in the world are suffering and need help, but isn’t it convenient for conservatives that the only forms of help that the schools actively acknowledge are ones in the private sector. You might think that the Red Cross or the American Cancer Society are part of the government, but they are not. They do outstanding work, but their capacity to fully address the challenges that they face is as limited as the total amount of money that Americans have to give to charity.  Whether the issue is cancer research, providing better hospital or clinic care for those who are infirmed, the bottom line is that the federal government has what charities don’t have: the resources to address it. It would require eliminating the ceiling on income taxed for payroll taxes from $113,700 to no limit. This would be a progressive tax. However, far too many Americans have come to accept the conservative mantra that the best government is the least government.

So while many younger Americans have far less than optimal health care coverage, they tend to address questions about their needs to their employer, their union, or to a seemingly insensitive insurance company. What “pre-seniors” don’t do is to look to their federal government to deliver a service that is a basic human right. Their employers, unions, and insurance companies do not have as a primary goal “the well-being of the people.” Neither do the states. Health care is clearly a service that is the responsibility of our national government. But conservatives seem to win the battle because citizens who are entitled to this basic right don’t quite understand it. As odd as it may seem, the first place to start enlightening the public is in our schools. If that won’t work, then progressives have to use every other legal method to help people consider the benefits that they would accrue from a Medicare for all system.

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Maybe I didn’t get the memo, but I don’t recall seeing much airtime/ink/bandwidth devoted to discussing single-payer healthcare as a jobs program. And that’s too bad, because job creation could be an effective talking point.

Here’s the crux of the argument: Under a national, single-payer healthcare plan [and can’t we just call it Medicare for All, already?], businesses would no longer have to pay the huge costs of health care benefits for their employees. Removing the cost of health care benefits would mean that creating jobs would be less expensive. Voila! One less reason to hold back on hiring. Companies will be quicker to hire when they’re growing, and quicker to rehire when the economy starts recovering from recession.

I’m not saying that single-payer  Medicare for All is the only answer to America’s jobs crisis, but it certainly could contribute to a much improved employment picture for businesses.

Here are a few salient numbers that help make the case, as compiled by the Business Coalition for Single Payer Healthcare. Under Medicare for All [HR. 676], businesses would:

• Eliminate health care benefits and reduce their labor costs by 10 – 12 %
• Cut workers’ compensation by up to 50%
• Become more competitive with foreign products
• Eliminate health care benefits management costs and related labor negotiations
• Free up worker income to buy new products and services, thereby improving the economy

In addition,  in a 2009 study, researchers at the California Nurses Association concluded that Medicare for All would be both a job creator and an economic stimulus:

Overall, expanding and upgrading Medicare to cover all Americans (single-payer) would create 2.6 million new jobs at an average salary of $38, 262 per year, [paralleling almost exactly the total job loss in 2008], infuse $317 billion in new business and public revenues, and inject another $100 billion in wages into the U.S. economy.

On the political front, a national Medicare for All  plan would blunt conservative criticisms [many of which are not based on fact, of course] of the healthcare reform law passed in 2010. Politicians who want to repeal the 2010 Affordable Care Act claim that it has increased health care premiums and is contributing to slow job growth. That assertion has been shown to be false, but when facts don’t matter, the contention lives on as a talking point for politicians hell-bent on undermining anything promoted by the Obama administration. A Medicare for All system would render moot the contention that “rising health care premiums caused by the health reform act”  are strangling businesses.

Another popular meme is the one about how small businesses create a significant proportion of new jobs in the U.S. [A popularly quoted figure is 65 percent, but it depends on the meaning of the term “small.”] If that’s the case, then Medicare for All would be a plus in that sector, too.  In Vermont, for example, where a proposed single-payer plan is in the works, a recent Burlington Free Press article  put it this way:

You probably know people who dream of starting their own businesses, or joining their spouse’s business, but who can’t quit their day jobs because they need the health insurance. Imagine the boon to the economy if all those people become free to unleash their entrepreneurial passion. Imagine the great new products and services that they will create. Imagine how much happier those people will be working for themselves in a business they care about.

Admittedly, a single-payer system could have the effect of eliminating a lot of jobs in the existing health insurance industry. That result would, indeed, stand in contrast to the less-talked-about job security for claims deniers, plan administrators and exorbitantly paid executives that the 2010 health reform act created when its mandate gifted millions of new members to private health insurers. But Medicare for All will need administrators, too, so many current workers would find new opportunities in the new structure.

In Oregon, where a single payer act was proposed in the state legislature early in 2011, the pro-single-payer group, Mad as Hell Doctors, compiled a list of popular knocks on the proposed bill. Among them was the charge that, under a state-run single-payer health plan, “…twenty-one hundred (2,100) independent insurance agents with an estimated annual payroll of $350 million would immediately have no business and no jobs.” Mad as Hell Doctors countered this contention by saying:

The bill as drafted includes funding for the retraining of workers displaced by implementation of the Plan. Based on single payer studies from other states and nationally, Oregon will enjoy creation of approximately 40,000 new jobs. Thus these 2,100 agents would be retrained and compete for the 40,000 new jobs. While they retrain, they and their families, like other Oregonians, would enjoy uninterrupted access to health care.

In addition, as current Medicare enrollees know, even under a single-payer system, there’s going to be a need for some form of supplemental insurance for services and expenses not covered by the program. That’s an opportunity for private insurers, who will need employees to administer those policies.  One CEO who sees the up side is Bill Little, vice president for Vermont’s MVP Health Care, as reported by VT Digger:

“It’s not keeping me up at night,” said Little, who added that under the plan his company might be able to offer supplemental coverage to Vermonters covered by the single-payer plan, including Medicare patients.”

Policymakers, pundits, state legislators, health care providers, insurance companies, lobbyists and individual citizens have been debating the merits of Medicare for All for years [led, of course, by the ahead-of-his-time Congressman Dennis Kucinich]. With the economy in a slump and employment at record highs, there’s a whole new economic rationale for pushing the Medicare for All scenario.While unceasingly vilified by the profit-makers, ignored or labeled as [gasp!] socialism in campaign dialogues and debates, and shot down by legislators bought and paid for by the private-insurance lobbying juggernaut—Medicare for All deserves serious consideration through the wide-angle lens of job creation.

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The Social Security Act of 1965 was signed into law on July 30, 1965, by President Lyndon B. Johnson as amendments to Social Security legislation. At the bill-signing ceremony President Johnson enrolled former President Harry S. Truman as the first Medicare beneficiary and presented him with the first Medicare card, and his wife Bess, the second.

The following is an open letter to the single-payer community from Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. It was released on the eve of Medicare’s 45th anniversary.

Congress of the United States

July 29, 2010

Dear friends of health care for all,

Now that a new health care bill has been signed into law, it has never been more important to have a strong movement behind Medicare for All.

Many health care experts have expressed concern that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, does not adequately contain costs for American families and businesses. If they are correct, and we believe they are, additional legislative cost containment measures will be necessary in the future.

When it is time for Congress to try to control health care costs again, the demand for Medicare for All must be undeniable. There is substantial support for a federal Medicare for All solution, embodied by H.R. 676, the National Health Care Act, and S. 703, the American Health Security Act, in the Congress and around the country. We believe that this support can and will continue to grow.

The truth is not enough. We already know that such a health care system has repeatedly proven to control costs more effectively, cover everyone, or almost everyone, and deliver care of significantly higher quality than health care systems that tolerate the presence of private health insurance companies. Now we must make it so that the truth can no longer be ignored.

During the health care debate, the movement created significant momentum on which to build. Its voice was heard in multiple Congressional hearings – it won historic victories in a House vote to grant an ERISA waiver to a state that passes a Medicare for All-like plan and in a Senate provision allowing a waiver from the Exchanges for states to innovate with health coverage such as a state-based Medicare for All-like system that was included in the new law.

The latter victory created a new opening. Though the effective date for the Exchange waiver was pushed back to 2017 by the Congressional Budget Office to avoid driving up the estimated cost of the bill, the waiver’s presence sent a clear message: if a state thinks it can do better, Congress wants to see it.

We are encouraged by the progress already garnered in multiple states toward guaranteed health care and we will continue to work hard in Congress to clear any obstacles in the way. The 2017 date can be changed at the same time Congress considers all of the other waivers from federal laws that will be required for the state to move forward. That can happen either before or after a state passes a Medicare for All-like bill.

Regardless of the legislative path, we vow to continue to fight alongside you for health care justice at the both the federal and state levels. We believe that Medicare for All is inevitable in the United States. It is up to all of us to determine when the inevitable becomes the reality.

Sincerely,

Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich

Rep. John Conyers Jr.

Sen. Bernie Sanders

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