Medicare for All

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New Year, New Congress—Same Old U.S. Chamber

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Never at a loss for spinning its corporate-friendly agenda as somehow benefiting working Americans, yesterday’s “2019 State of American Business Address” by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s CEO, Thomas J. Donohue, was a textbook example of using syrupy public relations-friendly language to mask the Chamber’s true intent. The speech laid out the Chamber’s policy priorities for 2019 and for the newly sworn-in 116th Congress in characteristically rosy terms.

A closer look at what was officially called the “#AmericanDreams” speech, though, paints a starkly different picture from how it sounded on its surface. The vision Donohue laid out—of maintaining private, for-profit healthcare; of an unregulated pharmaceutical industry free to price gouge consumers; of unrestrained use of fossil fuels that would pollute our environment and further contribute to climate change; of policies preventing consumers and workers from suing corporations that have harmed or discriminated against them; and of a total lack of transparency in corporate political spending—would be more like an American Nightmare for the average citizen.

When Donohue claims that the state of the economy is extremely strong, what he really means is that it’s great if you’re a CEO or wealthy stockholder raking in record corporate profits and increased share values due to record stock buybacks. However, the average American has been facing years of wage stagnation, job insecurity, underemployment, and a dangerous lack of worker protections. And, when he says “prudent regulation,” he means fewer safeguards for workers, consumers, and the public at large.

The Chamber’s well-funded and heavily-staffed lobby machine can be very savvy. So, when it says it will “take bipartisanship into account” we know that means that with a Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives in the 116th Congress, the Chamber cannot simply rely on congressional Republicans to pass its corporate agenda alone, as it’s done for years. And though the Chamber has added bipartisanship as a criterion in its 2019 legislative scorecard (at 10% of total score, making it roughly the weighted equivalent of the “participation” grade in an average college class), these feints toward moderation are merely PR. Its policy advocacy is no less extreme in its tilt toward corporations and the extremely wealthy folks who make up its donor base and against the average consumer, worker or family.

To wit: Donohue promises to “use all of our resources to combat” a single-payer healthcare system. Although such a system would overwhelmingly benefit the average American and is tremendously popular with the public, it would endanger the Chamber’s corporate buddies in the health industry, so the Chamber is now threatening to oppose it with all of its considerable lobbying might. Elsewhere in the speech, Donohue claims that protests of natural gas pipelines and the push to keep fossil fuels in the ground are causing undue strain on American traditional energy producers. In reality, this decline is because those entities are themselves fossils, tied to a business model that is no longer profitable (let alone prudent given the clear evidence of climate change). This willfully misleading stance proves the Chamber is just as beholden to the fossil fuel industry as ever.

Later in the speech, Donohue claims that Americans’ right to file civil and class action suits “undermines justice” when really it protects vulnerable populations from powerful wealthy interests. And, when the Chamber says that the U.S. should restrict shareholder rights to “reform” publicly-owned corporations’ policies on matters such as disclosure of political spending, it really means it wants average investors to have less of a say and intends to do all it can to ensure secret money continues to be dumped into political campaigns.

In all of these cases, the Chamber’s policy goal amounts to letting corporations do whatever they want with zero accountability and zero protection for the public interest. The Chamber may be attempting to put on a fresh new face to deal with a new Congress, but rest assured, its agenda is as pro-corporate and anti-Main Street as ever. Perhaps instead of promising to stand for “every child, every family, every worker, and every entrepreneur,” a more honest promise would be that the Chamber stands for “every corporation, every billionaire, every Big Bank, and every CEO.”

This post originally appeared on chamberofcommercewatch.org.

From California to D.C.

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“If someone is to get cancer, this is the best one with the best prognosis,” my brother’s oncologist told him as the doctor finally confirmed that my brother had between Stage 3 and Stage 4 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. After that moment this year, I couldn’t fathom what his life was going to be like.

Only 8,500 people in the United States are diagnosed annually with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, making it a rare cancer, and my brother was one of them. I was infuriated that something like this could happen to a 17-year-old, but the repercussions of his treatment were even more enraging. The regimen my brother received required him to stay in the hospital each time he received treatment, which added expenses to his already rigorous regimen. Thankfully, my brother was covered under my parents’ insurance – but both hospital stays and treatment are still very expensive for my family. We’re among the lucky, though; there were 28 million people uninsured in the United States in 2016, and some estimate that one in four people in the U.S. will die of cancer. Putting that into perspective made me realize how fortunate my brother was to receive treatment and continue with his life by being in full remission.

Months prior to my brother’s diagnosis, I visited Peru for a mobile clinic as a Medlife volunteer. Collectively we helped set up clinics to provide medicines and health education, and assist local doctors. People we attended to at these clinics lacked adequate water, sanitation and basic necessities to prevent diseases. These barriers contributed to their poor health, and even those who appeared healthy had underlying conditions that only local doctors could diagnose. However, I was shocked that medicines were unaffordable and inaccessible.

These two experiences in particular made me think deeper about health policy in the United States and around the world.

In early 2018, as my brother was undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, I made a decision to apply to the UC Davis Washington Program. Through the program I found Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines program.

My time with Public Citizen has been one of the most galvanizing experiences of my life thus far. Over the course of two months, I’ve learned a lot about drug pricing and the entanglement of it with intellectual property law. Although I had little prior knowledge of any of this, I was quickly immersed in everything relating to lowering drug prices.

I worked on projects including creating a table of state legislative efforts to curb price gouging as well as drafting a document on drug pricing stances of the new Democrats in Congress. Through these projects, I gradually learned the complexity of the health care system.

I have been fortunate enough to work alongside passionate people who are willing to teach me. This experience gives me hope that change is coming, and that although there are many health care disparities, people are working to make a difference. Going forward after this internship, I know fighting to lower drug prices is a movement I will continue to engage in. I hope that one day no one has to worry, as my family has, about the cost of cancer and basic necessities, all of which should be basic human rights.

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The $660 Million Hurdle to Single-Payer Health Care

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While a majority of the public, and an increasing number of politicians, support a Medicare-for-All health care system, any serious proposal will face major hurdles due to the lobbying power of insurers, big pharma and other industries that are deeply invested in the status quo. Three-fourths of lobbyists on health care issues in 2017 were from the pharmaceuticals, insurance or hospital industries, which will likely oppose single-payer health care.

That’s what our newly published report, “The $660 Million Hurdle,” shows.

Organizations from health care-related industries spent $660 million on at least 3,335 lobbyists in 2017, with more than 75 percent of the lobbyists deployed from the pharmaceuticals/health products; health services/HMOs or insurance; or hospitals/nursing homes industries. As the Medicare-for-All debate continues to heat up, private insurers likely will view single-payer as an existential threat to their businesses. Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical and hospital industries are also likely to resist a system that would hinder their ability to charge far more for their services in the U.S. than elsewhere in the world.

As a result, congressional lawmakers must eventually choose whether to side with Americans, or with special interests.

Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America, the trade association of the brand-name pharmaceutical industry, was tops among organizations analyzed in lobbying spending in 2017, spending almost $26 million in that year. Among individual companies, Blue Cross Blue Shield spent $24 million on lobbying in 2017, the highest of any health insurer, and second highest among all organizations covered in the report. The American Hospital Association and the American Medical Association both shelled out about $22 million on lobbying in that same year.

The report comes as Medicare-for-All gains steam and popularity among American voters. An August 2018 poll by Reuters and Ipsos found that a majority of Democrats (85 percent) and Republicans (52 percent) support such a policy. Many other polls in recent years have found majority support for single-payer Medicare-for-All.

Increasingly, the public and our elected officials have started to view single-payer as the best solution to our unjust, inhumane health care system. Advocates for single-payer should not underestimate industry’s inevitable attempts to deceive the public in order to preserve the status quo.

Read the .pdf of the report here

 

Photo credit: Flickr user Images Money (Healthcare Costs)
[CC-BY 2.0]

The Trumpy Awards, Round Three: Cruelest Action

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This is a mean-spirited administration. It combines a callous indifference to the poor, a contempt for the sick and vulnerable, a disregard for the truth and fairness, naked self-interest, ideological extremism and the most virulent racism, sexism and anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment in a presidential administration in living memory.

Donald Trump is a bigoted demagogue who sees the political payoff in scapegoating. In his self-absorbed megalomania, he is incapable of empathy. Devoid of concern for others and because he thinks it demonstrates strength and power, Trump is a cruel man. And in this regard he has built an administration in his own image.

Today’s Trumpy nominations, highlighting the worst of the worst of an abominable administration, are for Cruelest Action.

You can vote for the Trumpy for Cruelest Action here.

The judges had an incredibly difficult time selecting the nominees, and they recognize a raft of other possible contenders. These include the move by Attorney General Jeff Sessions to hit low-level criminal offenders – frequently minorities charged with drug possession – with the most serious charges possible; vicious proposed budget cuts for programs benefiting the poor, including home heating assistance (yes, the administration is willing to let the poor freeze to death); the effort to strip health care from more than 20 million people through repeal of the Affordable Care Act, a move that would have led to more than 40,000 deaths a year; and the shameful failure to effectively assist Puerto Rican recovery after Hurricane Maria. But after great deliberation, the final four nominees are:

The Muslim Ban. Days after his inauguration, Trump signed an executive order denying visas to people from seven overwhelmingly Muslim countries. Federal courts blocked the ban as unconstitutional, after which the Trump administration issued a second order. When the courts blocked that, they issued a third. The U.S. Supreme Court has permitted that ban to take effect while litigation continues. But while the litigation continues, the basic truth is obvious: The ban has zero to do with national security and is motivated exclusively by anti-Muslim animus. What a horrible statement this makes to the world, what a disgraceful contravention of the best of American history and values, and what a despicable message to the millions of Muslim-Americans who face a much increased risk of violence and mistreatment directly as a result of the president’s actions.

Medicaid Work Requirements: Hard Bigotry Against the Poor. Earlier this month, the administration announced that it will permit states to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients. This move is stupid, cruel and illegal. It denies that health care is a right and will lead to needless death and suffering. It will worsen public health problems, including by complicating availability of opioid treatment. It ignores the commonsense recognition – backed by lots of empirical data – that health problems prevent many people from working and that taking away their health care will lessen their ability to get and hold a job. It violates the law, by contravening Medicaid’s purpose to expand health coverage. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma has condescendingly talked about combating the “soft bigotry” of low expectations for Medicaid recipients. What she is in fact doing is promoting the hard bigotry of animus against poor people – the hard and shameful bigotry of health care denial based on wealth.

Nursing Home Abuse. Don’t let it be said that the Trump administration is unresponsive to cries of distress. When Trump administration officials heard “It is critical that we have relief,” they rushed to the rescue. After all, if the nursing home industry was complaining of unfair treatment, then relief was indeed called for. And so, the Trump administration has pulled back a modest move by the Obama administration to impose fines on nursing homes engaged in wrongdoing. Although the fines had generally been small and inadequate, they were frequently levied – because nursing homes regularly engage in misconduct and mistreatment of patients. Since 2013, according to the New York Times, four in 10 nursing homes have been cited for serious violations of federal standards, and Medicare has fined two-thirds of them. By contrast, the Times reports, “the new guidelines discourage regulators from levying fines in some situations, even when they have resulted in a resident’s death.”

Deportation Nation: DACA and TPS. Last fall, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the administration would end DACA – the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which curbed enforcement of immigration laws against immigrants without documentation who came to the United States as children. About 800,000 Dreamers are enrolled in DACA and facing deportation – in many cases to countries they do not know – unless the program is rescued by Congress in the next couple of months. Trump says he “loves the Dreamers,” has “a great love for them” and wants a “bill of love” to protect the Dreamers. But he hasn’t supported any actual legislation, and at best seems to want to hold a solution hostage to concessions on a border wall and other anti-immigrant measures, placing a priority on splitting up families. The Dreamers are the leaders of the 21st century and Trump’s actions are a disgrace.

If we’re lucky, the DACA problem will be solved. But Trump is definitely moving aggressively and heartlessly to deport hundreds of thousands of other immigrants, notably among them those who have been in the United States with Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Trump is ending TPS for Haitians, Nicaraguans, Salvadorans and Sudanese. This means hundreds of thousands of immigrants who have effectively permanently relocated to the United States in the wake of natural disasters and other emergencies in their home countries will be forced to return to nations that do not have the capacity to absorb them and where they may face violence. The Trump administration line is that it is doing nothing more than ending haven for people who were supposed to be in the United States for a limited period only, long expired. That pretense hardly seems worth rebutting after the “shithole” remark.

Which of these is the cruelest and most shameful? Vote here.

And, you can vote for Worst Corrupting Conflict of Interest here.

And Worst Assault on Democracy here.

Medicare and Medicaid Turn 50

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by Payal Mehta

Yesterday marked the 50th Anniversary of Medicare, the nation’s first national health insurance program. As soon as President Johnson signed it in 1965, 20 million Americans were immediately covered, and today that has grown to over 54 million.

To celebrate, events were held in Washington, D.C., and around the nation. In Washington, the day started with a rally in the Senate Park hosted by National Nurses United (NNU). The rally featured speakers like Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Executive Director of NNU RoseAnn DeMoro, and Representative Donna Edwards (D-Md.). Click here to watch a video of the rally.

Senator Sanders spoke passionately about expanding Medicare to cover everyone as a single-payer national health care program. Not only did he and the other speakers want to expand Medicare, but to improve it too by protecting it from further privatization threats.

Later in the afternoon a panel hosted by Representative John Conyers (D-Mich.) that Public Citizen helped organize honed in on the expansion and improvement of Medicare as well. The panel featured a riveting conversation between members of Congress and advocates for universal health care. To view the panel celebration, click this link. Public Citizen’s own President Robert Weissman eloquently enlightened us about the harsh reality that we are in and what we need to do advance single-payer Medicare for All in the United States. More

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