Medicare For All: Industry Lobbying Seeks To Flatline Universal Health Care, Roots In Truman Era

[appalachiablue]

- 'Industry Seeks to Flatline Universal Health Care.' A deeply funded lobbying group is out to kill Medicare for All. Its ideological roots run back to the Truman era. Mark Kreidler, Inequality.org, Dec. 16, 2019.

When U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren rolled out details of her Medicare for All plan at the beginning of November, she didn’t merely answer her fellow Democratic presidential contenders, who were clamoring to know how she proposed to pay for it. Warren also handed a few pages from her playbook to her plan’s real opposition, the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, a consortium of sometimes disparate health-industry heavyweights, from insurance companies to private hospitals to Big Pharma.

Since 2018, the deeply funded and well organized Partnership, which is headed by Lauren Crawford Shaver, a former Hillary Clinton presidential campaign aide, has spearheaded a wide-ranging media and lobbying effort to defeat any movement toward either a single-payer or public-option health-care system. (Under single-payer, the government would provide health insurance for every person in the U.S.; a public option means adding a federally based plan to compete with private insurers.)

- Its methodology includes mass media scare ads, “earned media” editorials, directed think-tank studies and inside-the-Beltway persuasion.

“They’ve really powered ahead. We’re seeing them ramp up more and more,” said Eagan Kemp, a health policy advocate with Public Citizen. “And they are putting effective pressure on the polling [data] regarding Medicare for All” by, among other things, spending vast amounts of money across media platforms to raise concerns about tax increases or long wait times to see a doctor. The health care industry expects any Democratic candidate that emerges in 2020 to be a threat to the existing system, and it is pushing aggressively against that threat – both publicly and privately. But although the industry’s current war against universal health care is one of 21st-century America’s biggest political fights, its unforgiving rhetoric and tactics are rooted in legislative conflicts that stretch into the distant past.

Going back to the tortured path that eventually led to the creation of Medicare in 1965, medical industry giants have moved to defeat or delay almost every development they viewed as an incursion on their profits and prerogatives. That includes the Clinton administration’s attempted reforms in the 1990s and the Affordable Care Act, which, under intense lobbying, scrapped a heavily debated public option on its way to becoming law under President Barack Obama.

“It’s a long period of consistency not only in opposition, but also in messaging,”...

More, https://inequality.org/research/industry-universal-healthcare/



'Medicare for All Will Boost the Fight for Racial Justice in Health Care'
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/12/17/medicare-all-will-boost-fight-racial-justice-health-care

[Wellstone ruled]

1. Wendal Potter sounded the alarm several years ago.

Scare the living begeebers out of the Ignorant Populace via the Ad networks and smile all the way to the bank.

[appalachiablue]

3. With his background Potter is excellent at explanations & advocay

yes, the scare prop is immense

[Wellstone ruled]

6. Insurance Companies

are just Profit Centers for Wall Street. Typical Management of said companies have zero motivation to improve Health Care Delivery Systems,their only focus is return on dollars extracted from the Ignorant Policy Holders. And it is all about maintaining Stock Price and Management Perks.

[Magoo48]

2. How can one be a Democrat and not support universal healthcare?

[appalachiablue]

4. +1

[brooklynite]

5. Who doesn't support universal healthcare?

That doesn't mean they support a formulation that risks a Republican victory and something worse...

[redqueen]

7. Pretty sure we all do. The sticking points are

1. Getting elected
2. Getting it through Congress

[rurallib]

8. Thanks so much for this - helps to know the real enemy

[appalachiablue]

9. For sure, with all the media and propaganda out there it's hard

get to the truth. The source for the article, https://inequality.org/ is a good one to know; commondreams.org as well.

[rurallib]

10. I think inequality.org is Robert Reich's main site

love Reich.

[appalachiablue]

11. Yes, and he's excellent, I really value his writings and videos.