Study: Bernie Sanders's single-payer plan is almost twice as expensive as he says

[Dovidoff]

Vox, January 28th 2016

"Bernie Sanders's health care plan is underfunded by almost $1.1 trillion a year, a new analysis by Emory University health care expert Kenneth Thorpe finds.

Thorpe isn't some right-wing critic skeptical of all single-payer proposals. Indeed, in 2006 he laid out a single-payer proposal for Vermont after being hired by the legislature, and was retained by progressive Vermont lawmakers again in 2014 as the state seriously considered single-payer, authoring a memo laying out alternative ways to expand coverage. A 2005 report he wrote estimated that a single-payer system would save $1.1 trillion in health spending from 2006 to 2015.

But he nonetheless concludes that single-payer at a national level would be significantly more expensive than the Sanders campaign believes, and would require workers to pay an additional 20 percent of their compensation in taxes. He also argues it would leave 71 percent of households with private insurance worse off once you take both tax increases and reduced health care expenditures into account.

Sanders's camp is, naturally, skeptical. Sanders's policy director Warren Gunnels told me Thorpe's analysis is a "total hatchet job." The disagreement ultimately comes down to a question of how optimistic you are about single-payer's ability to reduce health care spending."

More http://www.vox.com/2016/1/28/10858644/bernie-sanders-kenneth-thorpe-single-payer

[Hortensis]

1. Well, we do know a good single-payer plan would

be far more cost-effective and efficient than paying up to 20% of premium dollars under the ACA to a paper-processing company still calling itself an insurer.

So how long do we have to wait for a single-payer option is the question that concerns me, not whether we should do it.

[Recursion]

12. Germany doesn't have one. Neither does France.

Actually most of the world doesn't have one, because most of the world realized that futzing around with financing doesn't actually address the problem.

[Hortensis]

21. How about that. :) U.S. has a FEW. The VA is our truest

form of "single-payer," totally operated by government, and, even when underfunded, healthcare for vets is significantly better and costs less than private care. The same holds to a lesser degree for Medicare, which is considered a single-payer system but delivers that care through private industry.

Single-payer option for those who want it. After observing the excellent care and coverage provided through the VA to a relative with extremely serious renal cancer, we want that option.

[Baobab]

23. At least 4 trade deals literally prohibit single payer and they are trying to lock us in with more!!

Yes, the core US trade agreements, like GATS, and the pending TiSA, TPP, etc, clearly prohibit real single payer along with virtually everything else that can save money.

During the 1990s, the US started pushing a global series of trade agreements that promoted a meme that public services, public programs of all kinds, were a crutch that rich successful countries (like us) did not need, and we started a huge global organization (the WTO) and pushed through a bunch of trade deals that basically set up a one way street (with no exits once one enters it) to privatization! We in the US were never told this though and politicians and media try to maintain a fiction that GATS almost does not exist. Just like there is a media blackout on single payer.. Actually, the blackout on these deals is likely the cause of the blackout on both single payer and Sanders.. they are counting on his not getting the nomination, because they will never be able to explain this mess away if he does and especially, if he wins...

To understand these deals one needs to understand the "El Dorado" of what is called "Progressive Liberalisation"

Its marketed like the seven cities of gold just beyond the horizon.. - thats a core concept, and its anything but liberal or progressive, its basically a kind of noose, a trap that tightens with every movement...

One has to understand how its been marketed- (Its been marketed very very deceptively)

To developing countries, the developed countries are models they would like to emulate.. The developed countries have repeatedly used trade deals in a quite predatory manner - (Look at the Achmea v. Slovak Republic arbitral case over single payer- its on italaw.com ) The developed countries basically are taking advantage of their lack of real familiarity and selling them a bill of goods which is "overly optimistic" on for example, the success of our models- arguments which is to be kind, questionable at best.. (So Obamacare could be seen in part as a sort of delaying tactic to see corporate medicine through until TiSA could legitimize GATS and lock in for profit and an exportable meme that for profit is the only future, forever)

Of course to many of us, there has been no real "success" of programs like healthcare insurance and privatized education in the US that we would like others to emulate globally, because they are true nightmares of debt for many (poorer, unfortunately externally, relatively invisible) Americans..

All the current and pending trade deals support this phony "progressive liberalisation" ideology - they also attempt to make huge multinational corporations more profitable by eliminating non trade barriers- of all kinds-in other areas that all fit together to explain a very great deal.. Especially under siege are the other things that dovertail with public health care and education, - drug buying programs that leverage the bargaining power of governments, financial oversight regulations that limit banking and too big to fail anything, rules that restrict provision of health care to any particular kind (like non profit entities) or which impose numerical limits on the number of providers (which also includes providers of payment- financial services (needed, obviously for single payer)

The so called "standstill" is the most general blanket ban on public srvices expansion - a sort of catchall bar..

These one way "standstill" and "ratchet" provisions act as freezes limiting any further public programs subsequent to their signing, They are phrased like this- "capture the autonomous level of liberalisation" (one wording - another wording is "A. Standstill Any conditions, limitations and qualifications to the commitments noted below shall be limited to existing non-conforming measures&quot . Please see the paper I linked at the top for an exhaustive examination of how the WTO services agreement conflcts with single payer. the more recent deals are very similar and understanding them requires understanding the original one first.

So they intended to - and so far have successfully locked in existing US models as the global paradigm, in part by making it look like "what successful countries do" In exchange for giving up their public healthcare and education - (which we have craftily created a way to pretend are not public - Google this phrase- " 'a service supplied in the exercise of governmental authority' means any service which is supplied neither on a commercial basis, nor in competition with one or more service suppliers." &quot

Health care and education policy in the US might be thought of as collateral damages -

But now the developing countries want more from us in exchange for ending these programs which they need..

They want the US and other developed nations to put more "Mode Four" concessions (jobs under new liberalised non-immigrant L1 visas and harmonized licensing - and innumerable other changes called 'disciplines on domestic regulation' Google that phrase..) so they want more jobs on the table in exchange for their Mode three concessions allowing market access, National Treatment, Most Favored Nation etc.

The deals apply a test to service jobs that receive public money and if they are not qualified for some very narrow exceptions they must be put up for competitive international bidding- even down to the local level- . now Obama has Fast Track, we are clearly being expected to return to the table with lots of goodies, in the form of large numbers of newly privatized jobs which must be opened to market access by our trading partners, no discrimination involved. That's what is increasingly meant when neoliberals talk about ending discrimination, they mean ending discrimination against other countries corporations.

Winning bids will entitle services firms to do the work. people need to understand the so called "Four Modes of Supply" which are core concepts in understanding the trade in services. Mode Four are jobs across borders.. working for your company, supporting some contract your firm won. In another country. The biggest numbers likely will come as part of TiSA which has a "negative list" that includes all service sections and modes of supply unless they have been carved out during the ten years the negotiations have been going on (since 2006, although that is not commonly known)

The problems for public services began especially with the 1995 General Agreement on Trade in Services, which started a process which seems to me to be best described as prohibiting virtually the entire New Deal, bit by bit, systematically. (The three pending deals will give the controversial GATS, which is really hated by people in a great many countries who know about it, a new lease on life.)

(Jane Kelsey wrote an excellent 2008 book on GATS- which is really worth reading- its needed to understand TiSA- Serving Whose Interests?: The political economy of trade in services agreements - you can find it via Google Scholar)

So, reading its history there, you'll realize how its been going on for awhile! More than 20 years.

Isn't that something!

The things they don't tell us, huh?

[Hortensis]

25. Hearing what "they" have been up to is scary,

sure, but it's important to realize they don't necessarily win -- by a long shot. This was written in, what, 2008-2009? It's 2016 and hasn't happened. Oh, and we're not dismantling the single-payer systems already in place.

There are a thousand of these horror stories, and only some come true. And then not necessarily permanently. If it can be done, it can be undone.

The president of the "U.S." Chamber of Commerce was so confident that he bragged in public that soon the nations would have to pay damages to international tobacco companies for any revenue lost as a result of anti-smoking policies. He shouldn't have been quite so confident, though they're still hoping to get into other trade deals.

Right now, some of "them" are planning to abolish public education in America. They'll start with getting rid of the Department of Education, as at Cruz and Rubio and perhaps others promise, then use the Supreme Court to strike down compulsory education (under the guise of personal freedom), then repeal taxes for public funding. Unemployment insurance is headed for the chopping block if they have their way, and of course Social Security.

Scary that one can see how this extremely powerful organization of plutocrats might accomplish it, and yes, the smaller portion of their political action budget that they've allocated to election campaigns in 2016 is just short of a billion dollars, but all that's not going to happen either. Because we don't want it to.

This battle between greedy elitists and everyone else has been going on in our nation since its inception. Be brave and take a friend out to lunch and vote. Make that a couple people.

“We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”
–Louis Brandeis U.S. Supreme Court Justice (1856-1941)

[Baobab]

26. They are systematically locking down our future into bad decisions by setting up huge Bailouts as

Last edited Fri Feb 26, 2016, 03:30 PM - Edit history (3)

the cost to the taxpayers of escaping their bad policy decisons. Trillion dollar bailouts.

I hope you wont mind my copypasting your whole reply and going through it line by line because I think its important tht I reply calmly and systematically.

>sure, but it's important to realize they don't necessarily win -- by a long shot.

I don't understand how they could possibly not be winning. Sure, Bernie Sanders is popular but by the election, the battle likely will already be over - and a future President powerless - Obama will ost certainly do his best to bet all three wrapped up if Sanders is the niominee, And he and the GOP and Hillary are all hard core neoliberals working together on this. Signal left, turn right, you know?

Also, trade deals block Presidents, they block democracy, thats their job, they render us intentionally, almost POWERLESS to change things. So TiSA, TPP, or TTIP, any of those three will in effect lose the battle for us e by legitimating the horrible 1995 GATS which has already arguably caused the 2008 financial meltdown and the subseqent bailout to the banks guilty of pumping u their losses in anticipation of easy taxpayer money.

>This was written in, what, 2008-2009? It's 2016 and hasn't happened.

Unbelievably wrong statement. Sorry. Youre just wrong. Please let me show you why.

What did happen. For one thing, Skala unexpectedly, sunddenly died shortly after his paper was published, on the eve of what was to be a historic vote in the House which was cancelled because of his death, his death was on August 8, 2009, his funeral several days later. So, we cannot ask him for his evaluation of his "worst case scenario" can we? No.

Skala likely would have been more forceful and laid out more of an emotional case were he not writing in a scientific journal, journals have to be that way.

But also, there is clearly a lot that we can see now that he was on the verge of seeing but could not have, then. But his "worst case scenario" about the idologically basis for Obama Administration decisonmaking and their dominance in trade turned out to be 100% right. Trade is arguably ruling everything in policy and they are doing their best to hide that, a campaign which an awful lot of people must be helping with.

He did not have the benefit of knowing about TiSA, negotiations for a "plurilateral" (smaller) agreement outside of the WTO, which had already been ongoing for three years in Geneva, when he wrote his paper in 2009.

He did not see it in its larger context as part of an attack on scientific literacy and gathering of scientific medical data from the poor, he could not see Obamacare's disincenivising of people with medical complains from disclosing them to doctors for fear of sudden huge bills. He definitely would have recognized that as an attack on data collection, any scientist would, any intelligent lawyer (one can only guess he would have been the kind of lawyer our country desperately needs had he not suddenly died) would.

He didnt seem to see the trading of jobs part of GATS, which is half of it, thats the payback for globalization part, the developing countries dont want to give up their public health care and education for nothing, you know.. But this trade is totally against our peoples interests, its an eample of very bad, very anti-Democractic policy pushed by Democrats, and the reasons need to be explained. Whatever they are, they better be damn good. Not another fake emergency like Obamacare failed. (hiding the reaons for its failure and the fact that we all knew, even I knew that exactly this would happen at exactly this time.)

So, he did not realize that there also was a goal of lowering wages, in a covert aggressive way behind this.. He did predict that the traditional approaches all fail in a few years.. So he could and would have definitely seen the so called "managed competition/Obamacare apprioaches failing in a predictably short amount of time. I think he says that in this video.

See

Its a Nick Skala Interview about Single Payer compared to "Public Option" (a concept the insurance industry made up because they knew that making public optional kills it, because of the loss of bargaining power, denial of care making healthcare when it finally is gotten much more expensive and less likely to be successful, of course, administrative costs rise dramatically for hospitals, doctors and the entire cost of the insurance industry which adds no value, also there is GATS requiring the coddling of private firms. Single payer has to be free, it accomplishes a gret deal by being free, and avoids the creation of a tiered punishment level like Medicaid that forces sick working people out of the workforce so they can get health care at a price they can afford.



First thing you should know is that he totally nailed it in that paper, everything he said was right, and he in that paper failed to mention because nobody knew about, negotiations which had already been going on for three years in 2009, in Geneva for a plurilateral Trade in Services Agreement.

You can read about that secret deal and its expected impact on our health care flexibility here. It likely will be signed within the next few months and it makes affordable health care by means of everything we hold dear (reserving the doctor side of our current system) instead it likely will sacrifice everything we do now and maintain the current mess by doing things like sending poorer sick people overseas for care and importing millions of very very low paid healthcare workers from the Third World, likely leading to huge reductions in wages here in services - 70% of all jobs, eventually.

If you talk to politicians privately, they want US wages to fall, not rise. Even many Democratic Senators.

They want them to fall a lot. At the same time, the banks have made it mandatory that they be paid back for any changes which effect their profits. Any policy changes at all. The same thing will apply to insurance companies soon. All of the GOP plans trigger it right away. GATS can even be said to require huge bailouts as soon as a singe foreign firm is involved in the market. (Read Article XXI for the procedure required for purchasing our freedom after that event occurs. Its designed to become nearly impossibly expensive. Silently and invisibly.) That same approach is written into TiSA in the form of a "negative list". Both GATS and TiSA and also TPP and TTIP include what are called Standstill" and "ratchet" (similar to a noose) clauses.

The GATS contained GATS Mode Four which is basically the "fourth mode of supply".. a global trade jobs for markets. The pressure for the US i particular, from countries like India, to embrace a procurement system is huge and we have already - no TiSA requiresd put a process in place which is slowly leading us to a total crapification of health care whether we want it or not, WHY? To preserve the tiered system by coercion, and then export it globally, as a model of success" (at what, killing people before their time! )

Google the phrase "progressive liberalisation",

GATS is there and 25 years of negotiation at least is behind it, but it still has not became what it was intended to become because politicians here and in the EU, - but especially here because workers in the EU are much better protected, knew they would be blamed and they wanted cover, some way of plausible deniability of responsibility. That has been set up and then some, they can now claim to never have read it, its been made so hard to read, also people who are trying to make people better informed on these issues are being blocked,

The issue is literally the mother of all media censorship. We know more about totally secret things than we know aboyt GATS and its progeny - the media automatically squelches stories that might lead to discussion of it. For example, Bernie Sanders platform is not seriously discussed because to do so would require discussing how trade deals block it and that would trigger a lot of questions as to how they managed to give these important rights away 20 years ago and get away with not telling the country.


>Oh, and we're not dismantling the single-payer systems already in place.

You're not very well informed, to be polite. Proof from Canada - well written, still applies.:

http://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/National_Office_Pubs/putting_health_first.pdf

Yes we are. For example, the UK's NHS is being dimantled because of GATS.

Canada's health care system is under a coordinated attack from the US, GATS, CETA, TPP and TISA, (and likely TTIP too)

The US - Ive already explained it here too many times.

SO, let me be blunt, youre very wrong, fighting single payer and fighting oublic healh care and now it seems also higher education systems is a CORNERSTONE OF US POLICY ALL AROUND THE WORLD, and the blocking and dismantling of single payer and public health care programs is largely successful because they have been able to dishonestly claim that its been a success here (!!!)

The media plays along. We're also attacking and creating a similar unnecssary crisis with education by refusing to address systemic problems instead doing our best to not address them in order to justify a "crisis" for which strong medicine is proposed as the "cure".

Look a USTR railing against "nonconforming measures" "state owned enterprises" "government monopolies" and the like,

Here is an authoritative statement on our attack on public education, Go to the EUropean University Association web site at EUA.be and look for their February 5, 2015 statement on TTIP and TISA.

Go to Google and searching only within the .in domain (plug in - without the quotes "site:in GATS WTO education"

Read more on our trade policy.. Here are good starting points: bilaterals.org ourworldisnotforsale.org citizen.org under Global Trade Watch , policyalternaives.ca under programs/projects - Trade. (for example, https://www.policyalternatives.ca/newsroom/updates/what%E2%80%99s-big-deal-understanding-trans-pacific-partnership )

>There are a thousand of these horror stories, and only some come true.

This is where you lost me, because if you looked at the record of existing trade deals they have been INCREDBLY COSTLY, to our country. GATS was also responsible for the repeal of Glass-Stegall in 1999 which was in no small part responsible for the 2008 financial meltdown, otherwise the speculative financial instruments would not have been the responsibility of US taxpayers to pay off.

I read just yesterday that the bailout for that alone has cost us OVER A TRILLION DOLLARS to date.

>And then not necessarily permanently. If it can be done, it can be undone.

No no no.. These deals are like a free gift of your firstborns soul. Instantly, we become serfs, tied to the land and this huge free entitlement, Buying our freedom triggers the bailout.

Your statement is particularly deceptive _ Do you realize, trade deals are meant to be impossibly costly to disobey or leave to a country. Otherwise what would be the point of spending decades negotiating in secret with thousands of corporate lobbyists and NO representaives of the public?

Since we are talking about health care, let me point you to the case of the Slovak Republic. (the URL above on he TPP describes it well, you can also read the actual case at italaw.com )

>The president of the "U.S." Chamber of Commerce was so confident that he bragged in public that soon the nations would have to pay damages to international tobacco companies for any revenue lost as a result of anti-smoking policies. He shouldn't have been quite so confident, though they're still hoping to get into other trade deals.

True, but the ISDS is the only new part, the tobacco industry disinformation factory is the mother of them all. Where they all cut their teeth. Out of that came the health care disinformation campaign, and its likely the FTAS like GATS's original goal was stopping public health care (perhaps because of tobacco industry fear of better access to medical care and therefore more lawsuits, back in the 80s and 90s when the scheme was being planned out)

Maybe it emerged out of that in some way.

Of course, now we have biopersistent buildup of those pesky EDCs to contend with, so getting rid of public health care and education and that pesky scientific process globally is a particularly high priority..

COVER STORY? (To cover up the real root cause, bad trade deals that force us to allow foreign firms and their workers under L1 visas who may not even be paid a living wage (it may be impossible to even know what they pay them) due to trade deals that trade away other peoples jobs for markets overseas, where US taxes likely never are paid, but US jobs are lost for pie in the sky of a few more years of profits - even as they plunder their own country- the US economy for them.):

>Right now, some of "them" are planning to abolish public education in America. They'll start with getting rid of the Department of Education, as at Cruz and Rubio and perhaps others promise, then use the Supreme Court to strike down compulsory education (under the guise of personal freedom), then repeal taxes for public funding. Unemployment insurance is headed for the chopping block if they have their way, and of course Social Security.

>Scary that one can see how this extremely powerful organization of plutocrats might accomplish it, and yes, the smaller portion of their political action budget that they've allocated to election campaigns in 2016 is just short of a billion dollars, but all that's not going to happen either. Because we don't want it to.

>This battle between greedy elitists and everyone else has been going on in our nation since its inception. Be brave and take a friend out to lunch and vote. Make that a couple people.

Divide and conquer to win, pretend its us versus them with us being crooks in cahoots with them.. Sorry, I am notan idiot, I can see thet Hillary and Obama are in just as deep as the GOP.

Their slips are showing.

I dont share your confidence in one flavor of these political schemers or their games.

We went for >5000 years of human history and won two world wars without them, What the hell were we fighting for if it wasnt DEMOCRACY- SO NO TRADE DEALS- I dont see anything good coming from them now. NO NO NO.

The emeror has no clothes.

[Hortensis]

28. Baobob, your readings on this are far more

extensive than mine, and I appreciate your knowledge. However, I have a few beliefs that differ from yours. I'll keep it fairly short, though.

Barack Obama is NOT their tool. To the contrary. He was elected against all "they" did to stop it, and reelected. They are very powerful, and a president is far from all-powerful, but he hurt them and justified all their fears on his election. They can be taken down. By us. We did it before, and they're not that big!

We do really need to win the White House so a liberal appoints the next few justices. If we can do that, they cannot win. ITM, Scalia dropping dead was a great break for us and very bad news for them.

Hillary Clinton is NOT their tool. To the contrary. And, although the Kochs, and others, operated for decades mostly in secret behind charitable foundations set up for front, infiltrating our universities, our textbooks, our legal system, our elections, the media, they have now been exposed. Eyes have been opened. Leaders on the left now understand what they are up against.

And, above all, the nation is rebelling. We are potentially far, far stronger than any conspiracy. Unfortunately most of those rebelling have no idea what against, they're just mad, but at least they're no longer allowing themselves to be placidly lead along by the usual rings in their nose, fear, bigotry, abortion, loyalty to their conservative leaders.

As I said, be brave. The tides of history have turned. We haven't won yet, but right now we are winning and they are losing. Don't forget, by far most people don't want what they do. They cannot win if people know who and what they are.

[Baobab]

29. no

sorry, NO

[99th_Monkey]

2. This article needs to be vetted by 20,000 Doctors, who I think may disagree

Doctors group welcomes national debate on ‘Medicare for All’
Nonpartisan physicians group calls single-payer reform ‘the only effective remedy’ for nation’s continuing health care woes and urges focus on facts, not rhetoric

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, January 22, 2016
Contact: Mark Almberg, PNHP communications director, [phone], [e-mail]

Physicians for a National Health Program, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization of 20,000 doctors who support single-payer national health insurance, released the following statement today by its president, Dr. Robert Zarr, a Washington, D.C., pediatrician.

The national debate on single-payer health reform, or "Medicare for All," that has emerged in the course of the presidential primaries is a welcome development. But unfortunately a number of misrepresentations about single-payer national health insurance – and the prospects for its attainment – have crept into the dialogue and are potentially misleading the public.

Most of these misrepresentations, or myths, have been decisively refuted by peer-reviewed research. They include the following:

Myth: A single-payer system would impose an unacceptable financial burden on U.S. households. Reality: Single payer is the only health reform that pays for itself. By replacing hundreds of insurers and thousands of different private health plans, each with their own marketing, enrollment, billing, utilization review, actuary and other departments, with a single, streamlined, tax-financed nonprofit program, more than $400 billion in health spending would be freed up to guarantee coverage to all of the 30 million people who are currently uninsured and to upgrade the coverage of everyone else, including the tens of millions who are underinsured. Co-pays and deductibles, which have been rapidly rising under the Affordable Care Act, would be eliminated. Further, the single-payer system’s bargaining clout would rein in rising costs for drugs and medical supplies. Lump-sum budgets for hospitals and capital planning would control costs even more.

MORE: http://www.pnhp.org/news/2016/january/doctors-group-welcomes-national-debate-on-‘medicare-for-all’

[Uncle Joe]

18. And let us not forget the nurses.

Nurses Endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders for President

Noting his issues “align with nurses from top to bottom,” National Nurses United, the nation’s largest organization of nurses, today endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders for President.

“Bernie Sanders has a proven track record of uncompromised activism and advocacy for working people, and a message that resonates with nurses, and, as we have all seen, tens of thousands of people across the country. He can talk about our issues as well as we can talk about our issues. We are proud to stand with him in his candidacy for President today,” said NNU Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro.

NNU, which represents some 185,000 nurses from California to Florida, including nurses who live in the early caucus and primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada, becomes the first national union to endorse Sanders.

The announcement was made at a National Nurses Conversation with Bernie Sanders attended by hundreds of RNs in the Oakland, Ca office of NNU, and watched on live stream, with questions asked, by nurses at 34 watch parties in 14 states. The festive “Brunch with Bernie” even included ice cream donated by Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, founders of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream.

“Bernie’s issues align with nurses from top to bottom,” DeMoro continued. Among them – “insisting that healthcare for everyone is a right not a privilege, protecting Social Security and Medicare from those who want to destroy or privatize it and working to expand both, holding Wall Street accountable for the damage it has done to our communities, understanding the threat to public health from the climate crisis, environmental degradation, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, support for minimum nurse-to-patient ratios for hospital patients, and on and on,” DeMoro said

The NNU Executive Council voted to endorse Sanders. Factors for NNU backing, said DeMoro, included:

Sanders’ long history of support for NNU, nurses and patients,
A 100 percent scorecard on a questionnaire NNU sent to all the Democratic and Republican Presidential candidates,
Overwhelming support for Sanders among NNU members in an internal poll, and
Sanders’ response to issues before the AFL-CIO Executive Council.
NNU, said DeMoro, has adopted a call to “Vote Nurses Values – caring, compassion, community. Nurses take the pulse of America, and have to care for the fallout of every social and economic problem -- malnutrition, homelessness, un-payable medical bills, the stress and mental disorders from joblessness, higher asthma rates, cancer, heart ailments and birth defects from environmental pollution and the climate crisis. Bernie Sanders’s prescriptions best represents the humanity and the values nurses embrace.”

(snip)

http://www.nationalnursesunited.org/press/entry/nurses-endorse-sen.-bernie-sanders-for-president/

[99th_Monkey]

19. OMG! yes, the nurses too. Thanks Uncle Joe.

haven't you heard that Bernie's "on the take, and beholding' to the nurses", since they have
a super-pac that runs ads and such ... pretty scary stuff..

Wouldn't it be great if one of these new debates could be sponsored by the 20,000 doctors and
these nurses ?? to provide a little balance to that ridiculous CNN 'forum'.

[Uncle Joe]

20. Do you know if Big Pharma is endorsing anyone with their money?

....never mind I found it.

Clinton tops 2016 field in drug industry donations

Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton has received more campaign cash from drug companies than any candidate in either party, even as she proudly declares the industry is one of her biggest enemies.

Clinton accepted $164,315 in the first six months of the campaign from drug companies, far more than the rest of the 2016 field, according to an analysis by Stat News.

Cash from drug companies poured in despite Clinton’s tough public stance on the industry. Last month, she unveiled a plan to combat rising drug prices by clamping down on the rules for pharmaceuticals. In last week’s Democratic debate, she listed off drug companies among the enemies she is most proud to have made in politics.
Clinton has taken a harder stance on drug companies than any other candidate besides Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has also skewered “Big Pharma” as he seeks the Democratic nomination.

This week, Sanders rejected a $2,700 contribution from Martin Shkreli, the now-infamous CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, which hiked prices for a life-saving drug by 4,000 percent overnight.

(snip)

http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/257234-clinton-brings-in-most-big-pharma-money-of-2016-field

That would be a most excellent debate!

[Baobab]

24. Nurses jobs may become tradeable commodities, bargaining chips in a global game under trade deal

Nurses may not realize it but as a high wage group whose wages are well above global norms for nurses, their jobs are likely going to be impacted heavily if any candidate besides Sanders wins or if he pending deals, especially the one in Geneva, or possibly sooner if the Trade facilitation deal in services being proposed by India, is rushed through - since we signed off on te WTO in 1995, its possible no further votes in US legislative bodies may even be necessary- its on autopilot- (I think the chances are very high that by one of these methods, then Sanders entire platform will be rendered FTA-illegal and therefore these plans to liberalise services, in the makings for >20 years, will be impossible to stop)

If we know where to look, we will find that while we have been distracted, firms in developing countries are gearing up to offer low cost high skill services like nursing to developed countries. For what wage?

It seems that as of 2014, the US had proposed a "highest common denominator" wage apply, the higher of the two countries minimum wage (if they have one)

(Source: Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) An Information Note on Current Scenario and Scope for
Future, Prepared by Tanvi Sinha, on behalf of CUTS International, Geneva [e-mail] July, 2014)

The scope of the mandatory privatization is identical to that of GATS-

Does anybody understand what I am saying here? Services liberalisation trades jobs for markets- It could impact tens of millions of jobs in the US alone. Pushing wages way way down.

What would its scope be? Good question. its clear it would be very very broad.. read GATS and Public Service Systems, Ministry of Employment and Investment
British Colombia

http://www.iatp.org/files/GATS_and_Public_Service_Systems.htm

The change would be effectuated both by means of radical changes in government procurement, down to the local level, which have been in the works for a very very long time, and by so called "Disciplines on Domestic Regulations" to eliminate non-tariff barriers to services trade. Things like state specific licensing or visa laws. They would be harmonised to be "No more burdensome than necessary to insure he quality of the service"

[DanTex]

3. Yet another policy expert concludes that Sanders' plan is unworkable.

[stevenleser]

5. Of course, now Sanders supporters here will try to dog up dirt on both the Vox

Piece author and the guy who did the study.

[AgingAmerican]

22. When will this happen?

???

[SheilaT]

4. And even if it were ten times as expensive,

we could easily pay for it out of the military budget.

[taught_me_patience]

6. the military budget is about 500B

Bernie'S plan it 1T short. Your math doesn't work at all.

[Recursion]

11. No, not even close

The entire Pentagon budget would cover about 4 months of it.

[taught_me_patience]

7. of course

Germany pays 15% payroll tax. Bernie think s he can do it with an 8% payroll tax.

[Baobab]

30. Its cheaper than what we do now..

And it will be free, it has to be completely unconnected from wages to work and free to work right -- No 'tiers' No insurance cos- no bills.

NO BAIT AND SWITCH

NO MORE LIES

[Recursion]

8. Ha! Sanders's "analysis" includes negative drug spending

Amazing

[pnwmom]

17. Hah! I just added a link to your other post before I noticed your post in this thread.

Thanks for the very useful info, Recursion.

[ecstatic]

9. Even more expensive if you include the $15/hr minimum wage

he proposed. Which is OK, just be honest, that's all. People want details and honesty.

[Recursion]

10. They're also apparently malleable.

When I pointed out that the yearly savings numbers they were presenting on prescription drugs were literally impossible, the Sanders camp revised the number to $241 billion — huge and arguably implausible but not larger than total annual spending on prescription drugs. A follow-up email also revised down the assumed administrative savings from 16 percent to 13 percent and the savings on utilization up from $216 billion to a whopping $660 billion.

Brutal

[Nanjeanne]

13. Not saying there is any bias here

But . . .

From Thorpe's bio on Emory website.

In addition to holding a number of faculty positions, Thorpe was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health Policy in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 1993 to 1995. In this capacity, he coordinated all financial estimates and program impacts of President Clinton’s health care reform proposals for the White House.

He is also a Co-Chair of Partnership for the Future of Medicine. I took a quick look around at that site. Seems on the anniversary of Medicare they did a few roundtables on was to make it better because, doncha know, it's unsustainable. But funny I didn't see anything about raising the cap which makes it solvent for many many years. Nope - I saw:

In fact, Wakefield said HHS has set a goal of moving 50 percent of all fee-for-service Medicare payments to alternative payment models by 2018, a focus that will help providers move from a system that is paying for quantity to one that will pay for quality. To achieve this goal, HHS is working with private insurance companies, including Medicare Advantage plans, to find innovative ideas to ensure seniors receive quality health care at a lower cost. Some insurers have begun launching Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) for Medicare Advantage beneficiaries. In fact, Medicare Advantage’s focus on prevention and care coordination has influenced coordinated care models like ACOs.

That's right folks. Just give more of your money to private insurance companies for Medicare Advantage programs and they'll make it all better.

And on the Advisory Board for Partnership - why that would be Douglas Holtz-Eakin who is also President of The American Action Forum. Who are they? Well right there on their website it says:

is a 21st century center-right policy institute providing actionable research and analysis to solve America’s most pressing policy challenges

Don't have time tonight to keep searching out additional bio's, etc. But I just love research! You find out all kinds of interesting things to help form your own opinions on what someone is saying.

So I think I'll skip Dr. Thorpe's analysis - but thanks for posting!

[mythology]

15. Even if you want to argue that some of it is biased such as the savings in overhead

how exactly do you get around the fact that the Sanders plan called for an annual savings on prescription drugs that was more than what is spent annually?

That's a set of numbers that is pretty hard to bias. Also Paul Krugman and Ezra Klein aren't exactly Milton Friedman.

It's not a viable well-thought out plan based on the math.

[Gothmog]

14. Krugman- Sanders health plan looks a little bit like a standard Republican tax-cut plan

The Sanders plans relies on some dubious projections of cost savings that have no basis in reality. Prof. Krugman compares these cost savings to the projected results of GOP tax cuts and the comparison is a good one. I trust Prof. Krugman on this http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/01/19/weakened-at-bernies/?_r=0

On health care: leave on one side the virtual impossibility of achieving single-payer. Beyond the politics, the Sanders “plan” isn’t just lacking in detail; as Ezra Klein notes, it both promises more comprehensive coverage than Medicare or for that matter single-payer systems in other countries, and assumes huge cost savings that are at best unlikely given that kind of generosity. This lets Sanders claim that he could make it work with much lower middle-class taxes than would probably be needed in practice.

To be harsh but accurate: the Sanders health plan looks a little bit like a standard Republican tax-cut plan, which relies on fantasies about huge supply-side effects to make the numbers supposedly add up. Only a little bit: after all, this is a plan seeking to provide health care, not lavish windfalls on the rich — and single-payer really does save money, whereas there’s no evidence that tax cuts deliver growth. Still, it’s not the kind of brave truth-telling the Sanders campaign pitch might have led you to expect.

Again, as noted by Prof. Krugman this plan does not add up. Sanders proposed savings are hypothetical and unrealistic

[pnwmom]

16. And as Recursion pointed out recently, it relied on a NEGATIVE number in pharmaceutical

costs.

Which they have now magically changed to reflect some actual costs.

What a joke.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=1086538

[Baobab]

27. Many Rx drug prices-even GENERICS magically rose 300% during the Obama Administration. Stopping TPP

So I think Sanders is not being unrealistic to say that once we get some public servants in there that they will fall IF and ONLY IF ALL THREE of TPP, TISA (especially) and TTIP are defeated, any of those three passing would result in multiple disasters for American taxpayers. They all contain the same GATS wording on services privatization so they all would block the key aspects of anders health plan that make it affordable by design I am sure.

The web site http://bilaterals.org/ has a issues/intellectual property/medicines section that goes back over ten years, you can see there what US policy on affordable medicines has been.. Its not pretty.

To stop the metoric rise in drug prices TPP has to be stopped.