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Campaign funding from Health Insurance and Pharma blocks hopes for Single-Payer enthusiasts
by Josh Finkelstein on January 31, 2018
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@Jack V Savage
Funny how every presidential candidate was saying that money is corrupting our politics in that video,(must be a popular thing to say according to their pollsters) and they all seem to agree, and yet nothing is ever done about it.
The explanation is simple. The people making the laws are bought and paid for, so we can't actually solve any problems, including the corruption driven by the money and lobbying.
I'm sure I sound like a broken record here, but this is where Bernie Sanders was different. He told us all, that electing him president would not solve anything. That only if the millions of people he needs to show up to his rallies to be elected president, continue to show up, and demand the corruption be fixed, can we remove ourselves from this path that must eventually end with a cliff.
That there is no savoir coming to fix anything. That even if trump really did have good intentions, that he doesn't have the power to change anything of import. That only millions of people organizing to create leverage that outweighs that which is created by this legal bribery, can the system be set to balance.
(JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont hosted a town hall recently to discuss the Medicare for All Act, during which he emphasized a conflict of interest around involving the private sector in healthcare.
“Right now, we have a healthcare system that is not designed to provide quality care to all people in a cost effective way,” Sanders said at the town hall. “Let us be frank, we have a healthcare system designed to make enormous profits for insurance companies and drug companies. And disease prevention is not very high on their lists.”
Sanders isn’t alone in his sentiment. A number of polls last year (see here, here, and here) indicate that a growing plurality of Americans support switching to a single-payer healthcare system, including a substantial majority of Democrats.
A single-payer system would change the current healthcare system by using taxes to expand Medicare coverage to all Americans, allowing anyone to access free care whenever they need it.
However, Congress may be slow to respond to the growing interest in the healthcare model found in Canada and across much of Western Europe. The influence-wielding of insurance and pharmaceutical companies appears to be a barrier preventing Congress from embracing single-payer.
A Center for Responsive Politics analysis found a correlation between congressional Democrats’ support for single-payer proposals and contributions received from the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries.
One-third of Senate Democrats have cosponsored the Medicare for All Act, which Sanders introduced in September. Democrats who haven’t cosponsored the bill received 146 percent more money on average from health insurance companies between 2011 and 2016 than those who have ($147,186 to $59,789) and 60 percent more from pharma ($252,369 to $157,768)
_________________________________________________________
@Jack V Savage
Funny how every presidential candidate was saying that money is corrupting our politics in that video,(must be a popular thing to say according to their pollsters) and they all seem to agree, and yet nothing is ever done about it.
The explanation is simple. The people making the laws are bought and paid for, so we can't actually solve any problems, including the corruption driven by the money and lobbying.
I'm sure I sound like a broken record here, but this is where Bernie Sanders was different. He told us all, that electing him president would not solve anything. That only if the millions of people he needs to show up to his rallies to be elected president, continue to show up, and demand the corruption be fixed, can we remove ourselves from this path that must eventually end with a cliff.
That there is no savoir coming to fix anything. That even if trump really did have good intentions, that he doesn't have the power to change anything of import. That only millions of people organizing to create leverage that outweighs that which is created by this legal bribery, can the system be set to balance.
