A dear friend of the Right leaning persuasion forwards me lots of things he is sent by his ex military officer friends. The latest was a link to an interview with Bernie Sanders conducted by Jake Tapper. The interview was centered on Tapper asking why states who considered single payer systems, generally rejected it. The author of the article, in a far right web page setting, spun that into "Jake Tapper slam dunks Bernie on single payer" In fact the discussion was civil, and admits to several problems faced if a state or protion of the nation decides to go single payer with Medicare or Medicaid as the standard.
My friend is a sweet, genuine and naive person at times, especially when it comes to critical anaysis of written material, so he bought this at face value, including believing that the article on the web page was even known to Jake Tapper, or bore the imprimateur of CNN, neither of which inference is true. There was also the inference that UK citizens pay exorbitant amounts in taxation for their National Health Service..
The article of which the video clip was a small part was writen by one Onan Coca. Here is my response:
Dear *****,
Look who wrote it. This "resume" of the author is from the website:
Onan Coca
"Onan is the Editor-in-Chief at Romulus Marketing. He's also the managing editor at Eaglerising.com, Constitution.com and the managing partner at iPatriot.com. Onan is a graduate of Liberty University (2003) and earned his M.Ed. at Western Governors University (my note: WGU has no campus, it's a private on-line degree mill ) in 2012. Onan lives in Atlanta with his wife and their three wonderful children. You can find his writing all over the web."
I continued: A graduate of Liberty University, Jerry Falwell's faux college, the author IS alt right, and so is the (his) website ("Constitution- "Defending the Union from enemies, foreign and dommestic" ). Do the f***ing homework, ****! .
The fact that it (the discussion) ran on CNN is irrelevant. Brits pay an overall 9% of income for health care in taxes. For a $100k single earner family of four, thats $9,000. annually. They are far happier with their health care than Americans in every survey ever conducted, as is essentially every other single payer nation's population when asked. The average single earner family in the US pays a combined $27,000 annually on health care (for the math challenged, that's 300% more!).
What this ass bag fails to address is the obscene drug company profits (some over 30% net!) which are built into Medicare as a result of Bush 43's Part D sellout. Simply expanding Medicare AS IT IS would, indeed be very costly because we've allowed health care, and especially/more specifically pharmaceuticals, to become a high profit industry, vice something every citizen should be entitled to. On the one hand Far Righters are deliberately ignorant as sin regarding single payer because they've "been told" it's bad. They've also adamantly used the current structure of Medicare as the "only" example of a single payer healthcare system, which is egrigiously incorrect, but, alas, what we've come to expect. A list of what would make Medicare actually more a good standard of comparison is simple.
1- Don't simply pay what sharks like Mylan Pharma ask for their drugs. Medicare and Medicaid are forced to, because of the Part D concession to big Pharma. No one else does. The cost to Medicare and Medicaid is a national scandal. One example, Tecfidera for MS (you know like our friend ****** has?) is sold by its manufacturer at a profit in the UK for 41% of the price Medicare pays. There are numerous other and more disgusting examples, Epi-pen among them. A recent study found that DOD is, in many cases paying retail (about $600) per two pack, while the VA got them as low as $173. Of course Medicare and Medicaid pay the full price. So to compare "apples to oranges (single payer to the current system) remove the built in price gouging accorded big Pharma in exchange for campaign contributions and other lobbyist percs. By the way all formulary cancer drugs in the UK are free.
Medicare drug costs should be half (Many billions) of what is currently paid. An Enbrel user, like me, paying retail (I don't) pays about $5,000 for two boxes of four shots each. I have good healthcare and drug coverage, so I pay $51.00. (that's 1% of the retail cost!) A non insured US user pays about $625 per injection. A UK user pays part of $122 per injection, and yet, the company sells in the UK at a profit. So comparing Medicare to other single payer systems is phony , not because single payer is bad, but because Medicare and Medicaid are rigged in favor of the drug industry.
Using just what we know to be the overcharges by Pharma, as a standard, paying what non-government insurers pay for the exact same drug would save over $30,000,000,000 annually. Those who scream "free market" when lives hang in the balance are naive, probably white, and usually well insured because they have money. They also typically also choose to remain ignorant in areas such as this. Some things are just too important to let the ignorant be in charge.;
2 - Want to reduce drug manufacturers costs even more? Ban prescription public media drug advertising. If you recall, we never saw this crap until about 20 years ago. Big Pharma's #1 ledger sheet cost item is not R & D, it's advertising. Sadly, For some pharma companies, lobbying is #2. Most new drugs developed in the past 10 years have been developed, not by drug companies out of humanitarian concern, but by university researchers with NIH grants (that damned government!) I hope all this truth isn't overwhelming. Direct-to-consumer, or DTC, advertising is a relatively new area of prescription drug promotion. No federal law has ever banned it, but until the mid-1980s, drug companies gave information about prescription drugs only to doctors and pharmacists. When these professionals thought it appropriate, they gave that information to their patients. However, during the 1980s, some drug companies started to give the general public more direct access to this information through DTC ads. Obviously it was far more successful than even the most profit conscious pharma CEO could have envisioned. Interestingly, only two nations in the civilized world allow the type and degree of Pharma media saturation we see in the US. New Zealand is the other.
3 - Medicare is also expensive because providers charge more in admin costs due to the plethora of insurers all with different billing schedules and requirements. While the Canadian system has it's problems (many revolving around a hugely spread out and relatively small population for starters) they still manage the entire nation with fewer people than Blue Cross used in Massachusetts alone some years ago. (and they were by no means the sole provider in the state). Oh, by the way, Massachusetts does have a working "semi-single payer system, nicknamed Romneycare. they love it. 97% of their population have health insurance,
4 - Single payer in many cases also means doctors are paid a large, but fair salary by the government, so billing shenanigans (you know, like our, strike that, YOUR governor's company did to the tune of $8 billion) or running amok as pushers, with pain pill dispensaries, are less likely.
I know you don't want to read any of this, but it's all true, researched, and, like Mr. Onan Coca, I have several degrees too, and from from real schools!
