{"id":2832,"date":"2017-04-23T22:21:09","date_gmt":"2017-04-24T02:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=2832"},"modified":"2017-04-23T22:32:46","modified_gmt":"2017-04-24T02:32:46","slug":"impossible-to-promote-single-payer-and-defend-obamacare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=2832","title":{"rendered":"Impossible to Promote Single Payer and Defend Obamacare"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s impossible to promote single payer and defend Obamacare.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s impossible to have a credible unity tour between Bernie Sanders and Tom Perez.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"tom<\/p>\n

It\u2019s impossible to call yourself a populist a defend a law written by insurance industry lobbyists.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with the so-called unity tour just completed with Sanders and Perez.<\/span><\/p>\n

Crowds came out to see single payer Sanders and boo corporate Obamacare Perez.<\/span><\/p>\n

On MSNBC last week, Chris Hayes had Perez and Sanders on his show.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Hayes asked Perez whether he supported single payer. Perez refused to answer. Sanders grimaced.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course Perez doesn\u2019t support single payer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet single payer is the driving force at all the town hall meetings.<\/span><\/p>\n

Single payer is what fueled Bernie\u2019s insurgent campaign last year.<\/span><\/p>\n

And single payer won\u2019t become law without a new political movement that will wash away Perez and the corporate Democrats.<\/span><\/p>\n

The corporate Democratic leadership pushed Sanders into a CNN town hall debate with Senator Ted Cruz earlier this year.<\/span><\/p>\n

They asked Sanders to defend Obamacare.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sanders proved it was impossible.<\/span><\/p>\n

Case in point.<\/span><\/p>\n

A hair salon owner from Texas confronted Sanders with her dilemma.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

LaRonda owns five hair salons in Texas and employs just under 50 workers. She keeps it under 50 because under Obamacare, more than 50 workers means that she has to buy them health insurance.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHow do I employ more Americans without either raising the prices to my customers or lowering wages to my employees?\u201d LaRonda asked Sanders.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sanders could have answered \u2013 \u201cWell LaRonda, if we had my preferred plan \u2013 single payer \u2013 you wouldn\u2019t have to bankrupt yourself by buying defective high priced health insurance from for profit health insurance companies. Under my plan, every American at birth gets a birth certificate and a Medicare card. They would be covered and you can hire employees to your heart\u2019s content.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead, Bernie answered with this:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLet me give you an answer you will not be happy with. If you have more than 50 people, you know what, I think \u2014 I\u2019m afraid to tell you \u2014 I think you will have to provide health insurance.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Texas populist and single payer supporter Jim Hightower put himself in a similar bind with a column last week titled \u2014 Obamacare is Actually Working.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

In it, Hightower seeks to achieve the impossible \u00a0\u2014 populist single payer supporter defending a law written by insurance industry lobbyists in an effort to save the corporate Democrats and their insurance industry funders from themselves.<\/p>\n

In the column, Hightower doesn\u2019t mention single payer.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile Obamacare has flaws that require fixing, overall it\u2019s been a tremendous success,\u201d Hightower writes.<\/p>\n

To secure single payer, activists like Dr. Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese of Health Over Profit for Everyone are siding with the American people against Obamacare and the Democrats.<\/p>\n

Zeese said that \u201cHightower surprisingly did not mention that 29 million are uninsured, tens of millions have inadequate insurance and that 30,000 people in the United States are dying each year because they do not have access to healthcare under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), nor did he mention the hundreds of thousands who go bankrupt because of medical illness even though they have insurance.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, with the failure of the ACA \u2014 and 30,000 dying can only be called a failed system \u2014 and the even worse failures of the two Republican attempts to replace it, there is only one path forward. It has always been the obvious solution but bipartisan corruption in DC by the healthcare profiteers has prevented it,\u201d Zeese said. \u201cLower the age of Medicare inclusion to birth and improve it so the US has the best healthcare system in the world. A system that is of, by and for the people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, more people have health insurance but their out-of-pocket costs are so high and the coverage is so skimpy that people still can\u2019t afford actual health care and bankruptcies due to medical illness continue unabated,\u201d Flowers said. \u201cIn a real perversion of our system, people can now get screenings for disease, but can\u2019t afford treatment once they are diagnosed with a new cancer or other disease.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd tens of millions of people remain without health insurance,\u201d Flowers said. \u201cThe ACA can\u2019t change that because it will never be affordable to everyone. That\u2019s why we need to end this failed healthcare experiment and embrace the proven solution, National Improved Medicare for All as embodied in HR 676.\u201d<\/p>\n

(From Single Payer Action Newswire<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s impossible to promote single payer and defend Obamacare. It\u2019s impossible to have a credible unity tour between Bernie Sanders and Tom Perez. It\u2019s impossible to call yourself a populist a defend a law written by insurance industry lobbyists. Let\u2019s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2832"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2837,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2832\/revisions\/2837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}