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BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
28 June 2025
MOTHER JONES DAILY: The Supreme Court’s Ruling on Birthright Citizenship Is a Trump Power Grab, “Disaster looms”: Justice Jackson’s warning for the country, Supreme Court once again preserves the Affordable Care Act, LGBTQ kids lose at the Supreme Court—and parental rights win, Trump once said Congress should "always" approve military strikes, The other reason MAGA is melting down over Iran
07 May 2025
It’s time for the US to guarantee healthcare to all 4MAI25
SENATOR Bernie Sanders I-VT continues to fight for Universal Healthcare for all Americans, rich, poor and everybody in between. We are the only major country on Earth that refuses to guarantee healthcare as a human right. The United States may have the best healthcare in the world, but only for those who can afford it. The time for Universal Healthcare is now, everyone should e mail their representative and senators and insist they support Sen Sanders', Rep Pramila Jayapal's D-WA and Rep Debbie Dingell's D-MI Medicare For All legislation. Here is the article Sen Sanders wrote that was published in the Guardian last week.
Last week, along within 15 other Senators and over 100 members of the House, Rep. Pramila Jayapal and I introduced Medicare for All legislation. All Americans understand that the U.S. healthcare system is broken and outrageously expensive. The function of a healthcare system is not to provide billions in profits for insurance companies and drug companies. It is to provide quality care for all as a human right. The time is NOW to pass Medicare for All.
Attached is an op-ed I wrote that recently appeared in the Guardian newspaper. - Bernie
It’s time for the US to guarantee healthcare to all
We spend almost twice as much per capita on healthcare as any other country on Earth. It’s time to change that.
Bernie Sanders
Tue 29 Apr 2025
I have held public meetings all over Vermont and in many parts of the country. At these gatherings I almost always ask a very simple question: is our healthcare system broken? And the answer I always receive is: Yes! The American healthcare system is broken. It is outrageously expensive. It is horrifically cruel.
Today, we spend almost twice as much per capita on healthcare as any other country on Earth. According to the most recent data, the United States spends $14,570 per person on healthcare compared with just $5,640 in Japan, $6,023 in the United Kingdom, $6,931 in Australia, $7,013 in Canada and $7,136 in France. And yet, despite our huge expenditures, we remain the only major country on Earth not to guarantee healthcare to all people as a human right.
While the insurance companies and drug companies continue to make huge profits, over 85 million Americans are either uninsured or under-insured. The result: some 68,000 people in our country die each year because they can’t afford to go to a doctor when they should, and more than half a million Americans go bankrupt due to medically related debt. In the US today, 42% of cancer patients deplete their entire life savings within the first two years of their diagnosis while one out of every four declared bankruptcy or lost their homes to foreclosure or eviction in 2022.
That is insane and unspeakable. Getting cancer in the US should not lead to financial ruin.
In terms of life expectancy, we live four years shorter, on average, than people in other wealthy countries, while the typical working-class person in the US lives seven fewer years than the wealthy. We also have the dubious distinction of having, by far, the highest infant mortality rate of any other wealthy country on Earth.
As bad as our overall healthcare system is, our primary care system is even worse. Today, tens of millions of people live in communities where they cannot find a doctor, a dentist or a psychologist even when they have insurance, while others have to wait months to get seen. Despite our massive healthcare expenditures, we don’t have enough doctors, dentists, nurses, mental health practitioners, pharmacists or home healthcare workers – and one out of four Americans cannot afford to purchase the medicine their doctors prescribe.
For all of these reasons and many more, I am proud to be re-introducing Medicare for All in the Senate. My colleague, the representative Pramila Jayapal, is introducing this same bill in the House.
Our legislation would provide comprehensive healthcare coverage to all without out-of-pocket expenses and, unlike the current system, it would provide full freedom of choice regarding healthcare providers.
No more insurance premiums, no more deductibles, no more co-payments, no more filling out endless forms and fighting with insurance companies.
And comprehensive means the coverage of dental care, vision, hearing aids, prescription drugs and home and community-based healthcare.
Importantly, Medicare for All would give Americans the freedom to switch jobs without losing their health insurance. Under our legislation, healthcare becomes a human right, guaranteed to all, and not a job benefit.
Would a Medicare-for-all healthcare system be expensive? Yes. But, while providing comprehensive healthcare for all, it would be significantly LESS expensive than our current dysfunctional system because it would eliminate an enormous amount of the bureaucracy, profiteering, administrative costs and misplaced priorities inherent in our current for-profit system. In fact, the congressional budget office has estimated that Medicare for All would save Americans $650bn a year.
Under Medicare for All there would no longer be armies of insurance employees billing us, telling us what is covered and what is not covered and hounding us to pay our hospital bills. This simplicity not only substantially reduces administrative costs, but it would make life a lot easier for patients, doctors and nurses who would never again have to fight their way through the nightmare of insurance company bureaucracy.
As we speak, Republicans are working overtime to make a bad healthcare situation even worse. They want to pass a “reconciliation bill” that would decimate Medicaid and throw millions of Americans off the healthcare they have in order to give huge tax breaks to billionaires.
Obviously, we must defeat that terrible legislation. But we must do much more. We cannot simply defend the status quo in healthcare and the Affordable Care Act – legislation that has provided massive amounts of corporate welfare to the big insurance companies and big drug companies – while premiums, deductibles, co-payments and the price of medicine has soared.
The time is NOW to rethink healthcare in America. The time is NOW to declare that healthcare in our country is a right and not a privilege. The time is NOW to stand up to the greed and power of special interests who make huge profits off of a cruel and broken system. The time is NOW to pass Medicare for All.
Enacting Medicare for All would be a transformative moment for our country.
It would not only keep people healthier, happier and increase life expectancy, it would be a major step forward in creating a more vibrant democracy. Imagine what it would mean for the people of our country if we had a government that represented the needs of ordinary people and not just powerful corporate interests and billionaire campaign donors.
This is America. We can do it.
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PO BOX 391, Burlington, VT 05402
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25 March 2014
She couldn't stop crying and hugging everyone in sight . . .21MAR14
God of the oppressed, we call out to you. Hear our cries of anguish and see the suffering of your people. Your daughters and sons are condemning each other. Help us remember our commonality in you. Amen.
THE Christians who help spread the lies, distortions and misrepresentations about Obamacare, the Christians who give their time and money to the politicians and organizations working to deny people health insurance through Obamacare and Medicaid, the Christian politicians whose main agenda is to repeal Obamacare and so revoke the health insurance millions have just received, these people may end up achieving their goals, may declare victory politically, but their euphoria will be short lived. Once achieved, they will realize what they have done, because it won't be just the poor, needy and disadvantaged suffering, they will end up suffering too. This from Daily Kos is a perfect example of why so many have worked so hard to make the Affordable Care Act a reality and to help as many as possible get the health insurance they need.
Old Redneck
We Democrats in my rural, very red Virginia county are sponsoring ACA sign-up clinics 22 and 29 March at our local library. In preparation for the clinics, several of us volunteers spent a few hours helping our regional navigator as he worked with uninsured people to help them get insurance.
One of the people he assisted was a single mother of three -- husband killed a few years ago in an industrial accident. She works a part-time cashier's job and cleans houses; her mother and sister take turns keeping the kids. Of course she has no medical insurance and doesn't remember when she or any of the three children saw a doctor.
The Navigator found her a policy that pays 95% of her medical costs, has lots of free stuff (mainly regular exams and check-ups for her and the kids), and with subsidies will cost her $51 a month.
She couldn't believe she didn't have to pay the Navigator. She didn't believe she did not have to promise to vote for Democrats. She didn't believe it when the Navigator printed her insurance card on the spot. When the fact of what she had done finally sunk in, she couldn't stop crying and hugging everyone in sight. Neither could the rest of us.
Episodes such as this make me proud to be a Democrat and make me realize how fortunate I am to have Medicare and TriCare For Life. And it makes me want to punch out the next dozen or so Republicans I hear spreading bullshit about the ACA.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/21/1286537/-She-couldn-t-stop-crying-and-hugging-everyone-in-sight?detail=email
21 March 2014
John Boehner says more people are uninsured since Obamacare took effect 18MAR14
The United States has seen "a net loss of people with health insurance" because of Obamacare.
John Boehner on Thursday, March 13th, 2014 in a press conferenceJohn Boehner says more people are uninsured since Obamacare took effect
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In a press conference on March 13, 2014, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, claimed "there are less people today with health insurance than there were before this law went into effect."
A reporter later asked him if he really meant that. Boehner doubled down.
"I believe that to be the case," Boehner said. "When you look at the 6 million Americans who've lost their policies, and (government officials) claim 4.2 million who've signed up — I don't know how many have actually paid for it — that would indicate to me a net loss of people with health insurance. And I actually do believe that to be the case."
There are a lot of holes in the administration’s data for new signups. Further clouding the stats are fluctuations in the existing insurance market caused when insurance companies canceled plans that didn’t meet Obamacare’s coverage standards.
But to say that has resulted in a net loss is a stretch.
The Washington Post Fact Checker beat us to the punch on this. He gave Boehner’s comment Four Pinocchios, his worst rating.
We have looked at similar claims before. We mostly heard it late last year, when several million Americans received notices from their insurance provider that their current policies would no longer be offered.
Since it came from Boehner, though, we decided it was worth looking into again.
Polls and projections
We took the issue first to Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck. He offered this explanation: "The speaker explained the statement at the presser: More people have had plans canceled than signed up, especially when considering how inflated the enrollment numbers appear to be."
But that's not what Boehner said. He twice claimed that the number of people with insurance overall is down since the health care law went into effect, a considerably more audacious statement.
While there isn't a final tally that looks at those numbers yet, Boehner's assertion goes against a recent Gallup poll, which said the number of uninsured Americans declined from 17.1 percent at the end of last year to 15.9 percent in the first quarter of 2014, the lowest level since 2008. Also, the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan policy scorekeeper, estimates over time that the percentage of insured Americans will rise as a result of the health care law.
Boehner claimed the math, though, is simple. According to him, there were 6 million people told their policies were canceled because they didn't meet the health law's minimum benefits and coverage. And the administration announced that through February, 4.2 million had purchased insurance through the state and federal marketplaces. (A few days after Boehner spoke, the administration announced enrollment through the marketplace surpassed 5 million.)
By that logic, 1.8 million people must have lost insurance.
But Boehner misses a lot of important factors. We'll go through them one by one.
What happened to canceled plans
There were many Americans notified that their insurance plans were canceled because they did not meet Obamacare's standards of coverage, despite promises that wouldn't happen. Boehner puts this at 6 million. It's a hard figure to pin down exactly.
Through an extensive reporting project, the Associated Press found at least 4.7 million Americans received notices about canceled policies; it could be higher.
Some of those policies, about half, were restored when Obama administratively allowed canceled plans to continue for another year and later through 2016.
Many others were moved to new plans, either through their insurance company or by purchasing a new policy on the marketplaces set up for Obamacare. The administration estimated that of the people with canceled plans, just 500,000 were left without coverage, and catastrophic coverage was extended to those individuals.
That's not to say this wasn't a difficult ordeal for people who lost their plans, especially if they thought the law would allow them to keep their coverage. But most of them were able to find new plans, meaning Boehner's 6 million uninsured people basically vanishes.
We could probably stop there, but let's dissect the rest of the numbers, since this is a debate that won't subside any time soon.
Marketplace signups
Boehner also casts doubt that the administration's figures for new insurance purchases is inflated, which they put at 4.2 million (now 5 million).
He does have a point there.
First, many of the people who lost coverage due to Obamacare were shifted to the marketplace to buy coverage. Just as those individuals shouldn't be included in Boehner's figure of people without insurance, they also don't count as a net gain, since they previously had insurance.
It's ultimately difficult to tell how many people who bought insurance didn’t have coverage last year. A survey by McKinsey & Company found that 27 percent of the people who reported buying a new policy in February for 2014 were previously uninsured.
It's equally difficult to know how many of the people who bought plans actually paid their premiums. The New York Times reported that 20 percent of people buying insurance on the exchanges never made their first payment. The McKinsey & Company survey reported similar results for the previously uninsured.
So Boehner's skepticism toward that 4.2 million figure is not misguided. But even if it includes a lot of people who didn't pay their premiums or people who were previously insured, there were some previously uninsured people who found and paid for policies. That alone makes it a net gain.
It also doesn't include the people who are buying insurance directly from insurance companies or through other Obamacare approved third-party sites. In Washington state, for example, 184,000 of the 300,000 projected new enrollees bought coverage outside the marketplace.
Medicaid
Boehner also completely ignores individuals who gained coverage through the expansion of Medicaid, the federal-state health care program.
The administration says 4.4 million people were deemed eligible for Medicaid when signing up for coverage through the marketplace.
That doesn't count all of the people who signed up through local state offices, not through an exchange. But it also includes those who were assessed as eligible but didn’t complete the sign up. There could be duplication in the process as well.
But whatever the actual number is, it still points toward a net gain in insured Americans.
Kids up to 26
One of the earliest provisions of the law to take affect allowed children to stay on their parents' insurance until age 26.
The administration has estimated 3.1 million young adults took advantage of this change. The Washington Post Fact Checker noted the number hasn't been updated for a number of years and questioned whether it was that high.
Not all of those children were previously uninsured. And presumably some of those initial sign ups could have aged out of their parents insurance by now. It's possible many were included among the previously insured who transitioned to the marketplace.
But like the Medicaid number, for the purpose of this check the actual number isn't as significant as knowing there are a lot of young adults that gained insurance through this provision.
Our ruling
Boehner said the Affordable Care Act so far has caused "a net loss of people with health insurance." Boehner's logic is based on reports that about 5 million had their insurance policies canceled while 4.2 million signed up for policies on the state and federal marketplaces. It's bad math for two reasons.
First, most of the people who lost their insurance have seen those policies extended to them through an administrative fix, or they received new coverage through their previous insurer or they bought a new plan.
Second, he ignores the millions of people who bought coverage off the exchange, those who gained coverage through Medicaid and the under-26 crowd able to remain on their parents' insurance.
We don't yet know how many new Americans will ultimately gain coverage. But every indicator right now suggests it will be a net gain. We rate Boehner's statement False.
Subjects: Health Care, Medicaid, Public Health
Sources:
House Speaker John Boehner weekly press conference, March 13, 2014
Email interview with Brendan Buck, spokesman for Boehner, March 14-17, 2014
Congressional Budget Office, "Insurance Coverage Provisions of the Affordable Care Act — CBO’s February 2014 Baseline," accessed March 17, 2014
Gallup, "U.S. uninsured rate continues to fall," March 10, 2014
Washington State Office of the Insurance Commissioner, "Individual health market projected to top 300,000 by March 31", Feb. 13, 2014
ABC News, "White House Allows Mandate Exemption Over Canceled Plans," Dec. 20, 2013
McKinsey & Company, "Individual market enrollment: Updated view," March 2014
Washington Post Fact Checker, "Boehner’s claim that Obamacare has resulted in a ‘net loss’ of people with health insurance," March 17, 2014
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, "Marketplace Enrollment Hits 5 Million Milestone," March 17, 2014
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, "New health care law helps more than 3 million young adults get and keep health coverage," June 19, 2012
The Associated Press, "Policy notifications and current status, by state," Dec. 26, 2013
The Associated Press, "2-year extension offered for current health plans," March 5, 2014
Healthcare.gov, "Can children stay on a parent’s plan until age 26?" accessed March 17, 2014
Written by: Steve Contorno
Researched by: Steve Contorno
Edited by: Angie Drobnic Holan