Zaid Jilani — GOP Senator Wants to Ban State Single Payer In New Health Care Bill

Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy plans to use the most recent effort to repeal and replace portions of the Affordable Care Act to push an amendment that would bar states from enacting their own single-payer systems, he told reporters on Monday.

When asked by The Intercept on Tuesday about the status of his legislation, Kennedy said that the bill’s co-sponsors, Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Bill Cassidy, R-La., told him that the measure already bans single payer, but that he was welcome to offer his amendment either way.

“I don’t think states should have the authority to take money from the American taxpayer and set up a single-payer system,” Kennedy said. “Now some people think that that’s inconsistent with the idea of flexibility. But that’s what the United States Congress is for. I very much believe in flexibility, and I know the governors want flexibility. But it’s our job to make sure that that money is properly spent.”

Kennedy’s amendment is similar to pre-emption laws many states have passed to prohibit municipalities from controlling their own minimum wages or enacting municipal broadband. These laws have emanated from the American Legislative Exchange Council, a policy network funded by corporations.…

The Intercept
So Much for States’ Rights — GOP Senator Wants to Ban State Single Payer In New Health Care Bill
Zaid Jilani

Wendell Potter — Even Business Leaders Are Realizing Health Insurance Companies Serve No Purpose

Klepper wrote that this way of doing business has been "spectacularly successful" for the health insurance industry. As he noted, between May 2009 and May 2017, the stock prices of the five largest investor-owned health insurers -- Aetna, Anthem, Cigna, Humana and United -- increased between 387 percent and 748 percent, much more than the Dow Jones average.

The CEOs of those companies have become spectacularly wealthy as shareholder value has skyrocketed. They undoubtedly have to be concerned to hear that a growing number of business leaders are saying it's time to give serious thought to single-payer health care in the United States.

Not long before I left my job in the insurance industry in 2008, a coworker asked our CEO during a company leadership meeting what kept him up at night. He responded with a single word that most of us, I suspect, had to look up. That word was, you guessed it, "disintermediation."

He said he worried that someday a majority of Americans -- and more specifically, a majority of business leaders -- might begin to question the value proposition of insurance companies and reach the conclusion that they are little more than unnecessary middlemen....

Truthout
Even Business Leaders Are Realizing Health Insurance Companies Serve No Purpose
Wendell Potter, formerly vice president of communications for Cigna

Dennis J Bernstein — The Push for a Medicare-for-All Plan

Sen. Bernie Sanders has unveiled a new single-payer healthcare plan which would provide all Americans with government-sponsored health coverage. Sanders’s plan, supported by some 16 Democrats in the Senate, calls for an overhaul of the healthcare system with what would essentially be a tweaked and revitalized version of Medicare-for-all.

“Today we say that a function of a rational healthcare system is to provide quality care to all in a cost-effective way,” declared Sanders, an independent from Vermont, “and not to continue a system which allows insurance companies and drug companies to make hundreds of billions in profits each year and makes healthcare industry CEO’s extremely wealthy.”

Flanked by supporting senators in making his Wednesday announcement, Sanders also noted that a Medicare-for-all program would end “the complexity of a system which adds enormous stress at a time when people need it the least.”...

Consortium News
The Push for a Medicare-for-All Plan
Dennis J Bernstein

Zero Hedge — Even Bernie Sanders Thinks "Medicare For All" Would Bankrupt America

This is an illustration of the political cost of Bernie not understanding and embracing MMT. He should have paid closer attention to MMT economist Stephanie Kelton when she was his economic adviser.

1. A currency sovereign cannot "go bankrupt." A currency issuer can always issue currency to cover its obligations in the currency of issue. In this case, default is a political choice rather than a financial necessity.

2. The only actual constraint on a currency soveriegn is the availability of real resources. This implies a financial constraint if effective demand created exceeds the capacity to supply real resources to meet it. Then accelerating inflation could result.

3. The United States government is a currency soveriegn. Affordability is never an issue.

4. A sovereign currency issuer has a monopoly on the issuance of the currency and can exercise this monopoloy by setting the prices the government will pay, including the interest rate.

Zero Hedge
Even Bernie Sanders Thinks "Medicare For All" Would Bankrupt America

Tyler Durden

Ryan Grim — The Obamacare Fight Is Over — Now It’s On To Universal Medicare

The train is pulling out of the station.

The Intercept
The Obamacare Fight Is Over — Now It’s On To Universal Medicare
Ryan Grim

Also

Bernie’s Army: 24 Organizations With Millions of Members Vow To Help Pass His Universal Medicare Plan
Zaid Jilani

Pharma CEO Worries Americans Will Say “Enough is Enough” and Embrace Bernie Sanders’ Single-Payer Plan
Lee Fang

Democrats Follow Bernie Sanders' Lead on Single-Payer — Aaron Mate interviews Adam Gaffney

 Well, what Clinton said will never, ever happen is now looking more and more possible. A number of prominent Democrats are lining up behind it, Sanders' bill for single-payer. Last week, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris jumped on board. Now, Senators Cory Booker of New Jersey, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York are signing on as well. Bernie Sanders is set to unveil his Medicare for All Bill on Wednesday. Adam Gaffney is an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a member of Physicians for a National Health Program....

TRNN
Democrats Follow Bernie Sanders' Lead on Single-Payer

Aaron Mate interviews Adam Gaffney, Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School, a pulmonary and critical care physician at the Cambridge Health Alliance,and secretary and  member of the board of directors of the single-payer advocacy organization Physicians for a National Health Program

Sarah Kliff — An astonishing change in how Americans think about government-run health care

Vox
An astonishing change in how Americans think about government-run health care
Sarah Kliff

Zaid Jilani — Trumpcare Is Dead. “Single Payer Is the Only Real Answer,” Says Medicare Architect.

Many health care activists are now pushing to adopt what is called a “single payer” health care system, where one public health insurance program would cover everyone. The U.S. currently has one federal program like that: Medicare. Expanding it polls very well.

One of the activists pushing for such an expansion is Max Fine, someone who is intimately familiar with the program — because he helped create it. Fine is the last surviving member of President Kennedy’s Medicare Task Force, and he was also President Johnson’s designated debunker against the health insurance industry.

Fine, now 91, wrote to The Intercept recently to explain that Medicare was never intended to cover only the elderly population, and that expanding it to everyone was a goal that its architects long campaigned for....

Could the GOP pick up on this?

After the death of the Senate healthcare bill yesterday, The Intercept reached out to Fine for comment about where Congress should go next. “Single payer is the only real answer and some day I believe the Republicans will leap ahead of the Democrats and lead in its enactment,” he speculated, “just as did Bismarck in Germany and David Lloyd George and Churchill in the UK.”

No way the presently configured GOP could ever pass anything like this.

The Intercept
Trumpcare Is Dead. “Single Payer Is the Only Real Answer,” Says Medicare Architect.
Zaid Jilani

Robert Polin — Why Single Payer, Now, Is for Real

Is a single-payer health care system workable in California? My short answer is “yes.” I reached that conclusion by writing a research study, along with co-authors James Heintz, Peter Arno, and Jeannette Wicks-Lim, of the Healthy California single-payer bill (HB562) that was introduced into the California state Senate last spring. Our study was commissioned by the California Nurses Association, a lead supporter of the bill....

Commentators of all persuasions, but especially progressive ones, are doing nobody a favor by offering up overwrought pronouncements on why Healthy California must inevitably fail — especially when these pronouncements are grounded neither in evidence nor the growing political support for creating a decent health care system in California and the U.S. overall.

The worst enemy of progressives seems to be other progressives. But the so-called left is notorious for being unable to unite. So this is nothing new.

The Intercept
Why Single Payer, Now, Is for Real

Robert Polin | professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and founding co-director of its Political Economy Research Institute

Andy Serwer — Charlie Munger says single-payer healthcare is the solution

Charlie Munger says that single-payer healthcare is the answer to fix the nation’s healthcare system woes.…

The political process is not working to deliver a solution.

“A benign despot would create a single payer system with people being able to opt out into private care that was a little faster or a little fancier like all of Europe and Canada,” he said.

Yahoo Finance
Charlie Munger says single-payer healthcare is the solution

Andy Serwer

Daniel Marans — Bernie Sanders, Top Progressives Announce New ‘Medicare For All’ Push

In the wake of the Republican failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act on Friday, leading figures in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party are rallying behind a single-payer health insurance and a raft of other bold reforms.

These lawmakers and grassroots leaders have long believed that the problems plaguing the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, are rooted in the original health care law’s attempt to accommodate, rather than gradually replace, the private, for-profit health insurance system.

Now that efforts to eliminate the law wholesale are effectively dead, they are again arguing that the best way to improve the country’s health care system is to confront the power of corporate health care provider more directly.…

The Huffington Post
Bernie Sanders, Top Progressives Announce New ‘Medicare For All’ Push

Daniel Marans

Russell Mokhiber — The Time for Single Payer Has Come (So Why is Bernie Sanders Still Hawking ObamaCare?)

As Senator Bernie Sanders is proving, you have to choose — single payer or Obamneycare.

You can’t defend both.

They are incompatible.

During the 2016 primary election season, Bernie sided with the American people and single payer.

During the general election and since, Bernie settled in with the corporate Democrats and Ombaneycare.

Bernie has yet to introduce his single payer bill into the Senate — despite promises from his health care legislative assistant that he will do so.

(A Sanders aide told one single payer supporter that “Senator Sanders will definitely introduce a single payer bill in the Senate this Congress.” When asked to be more specific, the aide told the caller they can’t be more specific “because we don’t want to give the opposition time to organize against the bill.”)...

Hope on the horizon?

Last week, Dallas Mavericks owner and rumored presidential hopeful Mark Cuban came out for single payer.

And Cuban has the billions in the bank to make ballot access a slam dunk....

Counterpunch
The Time for Single Payer Has Come (So Why is Bernie Sanders Still Hawking ObamaCare?)
Russell Mokhiber | Editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter

Salvatore Aversa — Vermont Approves Single-Payer Health Care: "Everybody In, Nobody Out"

Vermont—Home of Ben and Jerry’s, Maple Syrup, Bernie Sanders and the first state to pass marriage equality. Now, Vermont will be known for something that will impact every resident in the state.

 The ACA provided states with federal funds to institute a Medicaid expansion. The states chose to expand the program also were able to set up their own state exchanges, which were relatively free from the problems the federal site had. Vermont decided to take it a step further by setting up their very own single payer system.

The slogan of the program: Everybody in, nobody out.
The program will be fully operational by 2017, and will be funded through Medicare, Medicaid, federal money for the ACA given to Vermont, and a slight increase in taxes. In exchange, there will be no more premiums, deductibles, copay’s, hospital bills or anything else aimed at making insurance companies a profit. Further, all hospitals and healthcare providers will now be nonprofit.

This system will provide an instant boost the state economy. On the one side, you have workers that no longer have to worry about paying medical costs or a monthly premium and are able to use that money for other things. On the other side, you have the burden of paying insurance taken off of the employers side, who will be able to use the saved money to provide a better wage and/or reinvest in their company through updated infrastructure and added jobs. It is a win-win solution.

To make sure that it is done right the first time, Vermont brought in a specialist who knows a thing or two about setting up a single-payer system.

Dr. William Hsaio, the Harvard health care economist who helped craft health systems in seven countries, was Vermont’s adviser. He estimates that Vermont will save 25 percent per capita over the current system in administrative costs and other savings....

Truthout
Vermont Approves Single-Payer Health Care: "Everybody In, Nobody Out"
Salvatore Aversa, Occupy Democrats | Report

Ralph Nader — 21 Ways Canada's Single-Payer System Beats Obamacare

Canadian style single-payer healthcare is simple, affordable, comprehensive and universal—unlike the US's labyrinthine ACA

AlterNet
21 Ways Canada's Single-Payer System Beats Obamacare
Ralph Nader