many reasons here to do everything we can to ensure that Hillary does not win
the nomination.
And, although this article does pretty well for the most part, I do wish
everyone discussing this issue would be more careful
to distinguish between millions of people being granted access to health
*insurance* and millions of people being granted access to health *care.* This
has always been one of the red herrings with all this wrangling over health
insurance: far too many people, both now and then, have/had health insurance
for which they paid through the nose, but because of all the caveats,
exceptions, loopholes, pre-existing conditions and the phrase “ we don’t cover
that” rearing its ugly head at every turn, many people *still* did not receive
anything approaching adequate or satisfactory health *care.*
Alice On Jan 16, 2016, at 12:02 PM, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Sanders' Courageous Stand for Universal Coverage
________________________________________
Sanders' Courageous Stand for Universal Coverage
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship [1] / Moyers & Company [2]
January 15, 2016
The Clinton campaign just made a serious mistake.
They sent Hillary and Bill Clinton's daughter Chelsea out on behalf of her
mother to bash Senator Bernie Sanders on the issue of health care.
What's so wrong with that? Don't all candidates use family surrogates when
and where they can? The Kennedys, for example, deployed a horde of kinfolk
for Jack's campaign for president, then Bobby's, then Teddy's.
But when it's the first time (as this was for Clinton the younger), the
surrogate should be sure whereof she speaks, and had better stick to talking
about her candidate, not the opponent. Unfortunately, Chelsea Clinton
misrepresented Senator Sanders' position, and her premiere performance on
the stump backfired, producing a flood of political donations to Sanders
[3].
Here's what she said: "Senator Sanders wants to dismantle Obamacare,
dismantle the [Children's Health Insurance Program], dismantle Medicare, and
dismantle private insurance." Whew! She would have us believe that the
Vermont senator is a one-man wrecking crew, an enraged King Kong - or, to be
modern about it, a mendacious Darth Vader - proposing "to go back to an era
- before we had the Affordable Care Act - that would strip millions and
millions and millions of people off their health insurance."
Uh, not exactly. In fact, not even close. As Karen Tumulty noted in The
Washington Post [3], Bernie Sanders has long been a champion of a
single-payer health care system as the only way to assure that all Americans
receive medical coverage. Rather than "strip" millions and millions of
people of their health insurance, he wants to be sure millions and millions
of people actually get health insurance.
This was Sanders' position as far back as 1993 when newly-elected President
Bill Clinton put First Lady Hillary Clinton in charge of reforming our
disheveled and unjust health care system. Her task force huffed and puffed
in secret for months, calling in legions of experts and academics,
ultimately producing a plan so complicated and impenetrable - not to mention
unexplainable - that it would have collapsed of its own ponderous weight
even if the Republicans had not propagandized it into a laughing stock of
pretensions and inefficiencies that could only make matters worse.
And here's an ironic note: During that 1993 quest for a health care plan,
Secretary Clinton sent Sanders an autographed picture of the two of them,
wishing him the best and thanking the senator "for your commitment to real
health care access for all Americans."
All these years later, Sanders is still fighting the battle for single
payer, Medicare-like coverage for all, even as fellow Democrats capitulated
to the siren songs of the health and insurance industries. President Obama,
himself a one-time advocate of single payer coverage, buckled to the
insurance companies and its lobbyists and minions in Congress and agreed to
health care legislation (the Affordable Care Act) that would continue to
treat healing the sick as a profit center instead of a basic human right.
And look at former presidential candidate and single payer advocate Howard
Dean, Bernie's fellow Vermonter, who went on MSNBC this week and said that
the Sanders plan "would in fact undo people's health care. That is something
people should be concerned about."
Why the change of heart? Maybe because Dean "now serves as senior advisor to
the law firm Dentons, where he works with the firm's Public Policy and
Regulation practice, a euphemism for Dentons' lobbying team," Lee Fang
reports at [4]The Intercept [4]. ". The Dentons Public Policy and
Regulation practice lobbies on behalf of a variety of corporate health care
interests, including the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of
America [PhRMA], a powerful trade group for drugmakers like Pfizer and
Merck."
Fang notes that, "Incumbent health care interests, particularly drug
companies and insurers, have long viewed single-payer as a threat to their
business model," and points to documents that we uncovered in 2009 on Bill
Moyers Journal [5] with the help of former health insurance executive, now
whistleblower Wendell Potter. They showed a systematic plan by health
insurers to discredit single payer.
As president of the Clinton Foundation, the richly endowed philanthropy that
has become the family's private station for public causes, Chelsea Clinton
must know this. The cynic might think the more than $2.6 million [6] given
so far by the health industry to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and
outside groups supporting her (three times that of any other candidate,
Democrat or Republican) might be leading Chelsea Clinton to use the same
kind of false accusations so long used against her parents. But why would
any of the family, their campaign team, advisors and supporters assume that
the public would accept such a wild and irresponsible distortion?
Share on Facebook Share
Share on Twitter Tweet
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [7]
[8]
________________________________________
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/sanders-courageous-stand-universal-cov
erage
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/bill-moyers-and-michael-winship
[2] http://billmoyers.com/
[3]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/clinton-attacks-produce-windfall-of-
campaign-cash-for-sanders/2016/01/13/d95b3d38-ba27-11e5-99f3-184bc379b12d_st
ory.html
[4] https://theintercept.com/2016/01/14/howard-dean-lobbyist/
[5] http://billmoyers.com/content/wendell-potter/
[6]
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.php?ind=H&cycle=2016&re
cipdetail=P&mem=N&sortorder=U
[7] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Sanders' Courageous
Stand for Universal Coverage
[8] http://www.alternet.org/
[9] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Sanders' Courageous Stand for Universal Coverage
Sanders' Courageous Stand for Universal Coverage
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship [1] / Moyers & Company [2]
January 15, 2016
The Clinton campaign just made a serious mistake.
They sent Hillary and Bill Clinton's daughter Chelsea out on behalf of her
mother to bash Senator Bernie Sanders on the issue of health care.
What's so wrong with that? Don't all candidates use family surrogates when
and where they can? The Kennedys, for example, deployed a horde of kinfolk
for Jack's campaign for president, then Bobby's, then Teddy's.
But when it's the first time (as this was for Clinton the younger), the
surrogate should be sure whereof she speaks, and had better stick to talking
about her candidate, not the opponent. Unfortunately, Chelsea Clinton
misrepresented Senator Sanders' position, and her premiere performance on
the stump backfired, producing a flood of political donations to Sanders
[3].
Here's what she said: "Senator Sanders wants to dismantle Obamacare,
dismantle the [Children's Health Insurance Program], dismantle Medicare, and
dismantle private insurance." Whew! She would have us believe that the
Vermont senator is a one-man wrecking crew, an enraged King Kong - or, to be
modern about it, a mendacious Darth Vader - proposing "to go back to an era
- before we had the Affordable Care Act - that would strip millions and
millions and millions of people off their health insurance."
Uh, not exactly. In fact, not even close. As Karen Tumulty noted in The
Washington Post [3], Bernie Sanders has long been a champion of a
single-payer health care system as the only way to assure that all Americans
receive medical coverage. Rather than "strip" millions and millions of
people of their health insurance, he wants to be sure millions and millions
of people actually get health insurance.
This was Sanders' position as far back as 1993 when newly-elected President
Bill Clinton put First Lady Hillary Clinton in charge of reforming our
disheveled and unjust health care system. Her task force huffed and puffed
in secret for months, calling in legions of experts and academics,
ultimately producing a plan so complicated and impenetrable - not to mention
unexplainable - that it would have collapsed of its own ponderous weight
even if the Republicans had not propagandized it into a laughing stock of
pretensions and inefficiencies that could only make matters worse.
And here's an ironic note: During that 1993 quest for a health care plan,
Secretary Clinton sent Sanders an autographed picture of the two of them,
wishing him the best and thanking the senator "for your commitment to real
health care access for all Americans."
All these years later, Sanders is still fighting the battle for single
payer, Medicare-like coverage for all, even as fellow Democrats capitulated
to the siren songs of the health and insurance industries. President Obama,
himself a one-time advocate of single payer coverage, buckled to the
insurance companies and its lobbyists and minions in Congress and agreed to
health care legislation (the Affordable Care Act) that would continue to
treat healing the sick as a profit center instead of a basic human right.
And look at former presidential candidate and single payer advocate Howard
Dean, Bernie's fellow Vermonter, who went on MSNBC this week and said that
the Sanders plan "would in fact undo people's health care. That is something
people should be concerned about."
Why the change of heart? Maybe because Dean "now serves as senior advisor to
the law firm Dentons, where he works with the firm's Public Policy and
Regulation practice, a euphemism for Dentons' lobbying team," Lee Fang
reports at [4]The Intercept [4]. ". The Dentons Public Policy and Regulation
practice lobbies on behalf of a variety of corporate health care interests,
including the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America [PhRMA],
a powerful trade group for drugmakers like Pfizer and Merck."
Fang notes that, "Incumbent health care interests, particularly drug
companies and insurers, have long viewed single-payer as a threat to their
business model," and points to documents that we uncovered in 2009 on Bill
Moyers Journal [5] with the help of former health insurance executive, now
whistleblower Wendell Potter. They showed a systematic plan by health
insurers to discredit single payer.
As president of the Clinton Foundation, the richly endowed philanthropy that
has become the family's private station for public causes, Chelsea Clinton
must know this. The cynic might think the more than $2.6 million [6] given
so far by the health industry to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and
outside groups supporting her (three times that of any other candidate,
Democrat or Republican) might be leading Chelsea Clinton to use the same
kind of false accusations so long used against her parents. But why would
any of the family, their campaign team, advisors and supporters assume that
the public would accept such a wild and irresponsible distortion?
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [7]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[8]
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/sanders-courageous-stand-universal-cov
erage
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/bill-moyers-and-michael-winship
[2] http://billmoyers.com/
[3]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/clinton-attacks-produce-windfall-of-
campaign-cash-for-sanders/2016/01/13/d95b3d38-ba27-11e5-99f3-184bc379b12d_st
ory.html
[4] https://theintercept.com/2016/01/14/howard-dean-lobbyist/
[5] http://billmoyers.com/content/wendell-potter/
[6]
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.php?ind=H&cycle=2016&re
cipdetail=P&mem=N&sortorder=U
[7] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Sanders' Courageous
Stand for Universal Coverage
[8] http://www.alternet.org/
[9] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
