Every veteran and every retiree in America gets single payer health care through the VA and Medicare. VA healthcare and Medicare cost less than care through private insurance because overhead costs are much lower. Insurance company middle men are classic rentiers, financial leeches, who quite literally make money by denying patients care and denying payments to providers. Insurance company executives make a fortune off of denying care to patients and denying payments to doctors and hospitals.
UnitedHealth Group CEO Stephen J. Hemsley received $66.13 million in compensation last year, according to a preliminary proxy statement filed Monday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
In 2013, he received $28.14 million.
Bernie knows this. That’s why he wants single payer health care for all Americans.
But Hillary Clinton, who knows damn well that America has by far the world’s most expensive healthcare with outcomes far below most of the developed world, has doubled down on her attacks on Bernie’s support of single payer care. She knows better (image above) but that isn’t stopping her.
Single payer is cheaper than private insurance because it cuts out the middleman. Moreover, there is strong political pressure on government to resist overpayment for drugs and services. America has the world’s most expensive medicines because private insurance companies are unable to stop skyrocketing pharmaceutical cost increases. Both Bernie and Hillary know this but Hillary is deceptively portraying Bernie’s plan as a huge tax increase on working Americans.
What Hillary isn’t saying is that private insurance companies are taxing Americans far more than single payer would cost, however it is paid for. I have not written any diaries critical of Hillary before this, but this disingenuous attack on single payer cannot stand.
Before the election, Bernie Sanders might have believed that the strongest opposition to his government-funded health care proposal would come from Republicans. But as he gains on Iowa on Hillary Clinton, it has been the Democratic front-runner who has launched a series of attacks on his plan, painting it as a giant tax on the middle class.
Clinton's latest criticisms focus on how Sanders would pay for his plan, which would cost an estimated $15 trillion over 10 years. In a Wednesday conference call with reporters, the Clinton campaign pointed out that while Sanders told CNN Tuesday night he would “absolutely” outline funding for his health care plan before the Iowa caucus, the Vermont senator's campaign manager Jeff Weaver said this week that Sanders would “not necessarily” release those details by Feb. 1. snip...
“I think that one can only draw the conclusion that the Sanders campaign doesn’t want to outline what is going to amount to a massive, across the board tax hike on working families,” Clinton senior policy advisor Jake Sullivan said during Wednesday's call with reporters.
Shame on you Hillary. America deserves an honest discussion of health care costs, not deceptive misrepresentations of single payer care that serve the interests of insurance company rentiers.