An unspecified number of medical staff have been fired from a Minneapolis hospital after illicitly accessing George Floyd’s medical records.
The Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC) sent a letter to Floyd’s family saying that Floyd’s records were accessed “multiple” times in violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act’s privacy rules, Floyd family attorney Antonio Romanucci told <a href="https://www.kare11.com/article/news/investigations/kare-11-investigates-hcmc-staff-fired-for-accessing-george-floyds-medical-records-autopsy/89-a4fbb1b6-bf06-401b-946d-2ed046f409dd">KARE 11</a>.
“There were multiple breaches by multiple people,” Romanucci said, citing the letter. HCMC told the family that the people responsible for the breaches “no longer work at the organization.”
Romanucci said that Floyd’s family believed the breaches were an attempt to malign Floyd’s character and that they are considering filing a lawsuit against Hennepin Healthcare.
“They feel it&#8217;s a continued assassination of George Floyd, his character. It&#8217;s a non-stop issue. And they were very upset, very disturbed, disappointed that even in death, that George Floyd&#8217;s character is being maligned by people that didn&#8217;t have any business looking at his private medical record,” Romanucci said.
In response to a question on the security breach, HCMC told <a href="https://apnews.com/aadf6517979294dbb6216d3808b169b1">The Associated Press</a> that while the hospital does not comment on specific cases, it conducts routine audits of its medical records system and can see which employees accessed records and when to determine if they were authorized.
“Any breach of patient confidentiality is taken seriously and thoroughly investigated. If it is determined that a violation has occurred, disciplinary action up to and including termination can be used,” HCMC said in a statement.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-police-bodycam-footage-shows-moment-by-moment-arrest-of-george-floyd-for-the-first-time">Floyd</a> died on May 25 after a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes. Four officers were fired and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/minneapolis-cops-murder-charge-to-be-upgraded-3-others-charged-report">charged</a> with either second-degree murder or aiding and abetting second-degree murder over the incident.
Floyd’s autopsy revealed a potentially lethal mixture of fentanyl and methamphetamines in his system. Court documents released in August revealed that the Hennepin County chief medical examiner found that Floyd likely died of a drug overdose.
As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/medical-examiner-concluded-george-floyd-likely-died-of-fentanyl-overdose-court-docs-reveal">The Daily Wire</a> reported at the time:
<blockquote>New court documents have uncovered two memorandums, dated May 26 and June 1, that suggest Chief Hennepin County Medical Examiner Dr. Andrew Baker concluded George Floyd likely died from a fentanyl overdose and found “no physical evidence suggesting” that he died of asphyxiation.
“AB (Andrew Baker) said that if Mr. Floyd had been found dead in his home (or anywhere else) and there were no other contributing factors he would conclude that it was an overdose death,” says a memo dated June 1, outlining a May 31 virtual with Dr. Baker.</blockquote>
Independent medical examiners hired by Floyd’s family put responsibility for Floyd’s death squarely on the arresting officers, saying that Floyd <a href="https://www.fox9.com/news/court-filings-medical-examiner-thought-george-floyd-had-fatal-level-of-fentanyl-in-system">died</a> from “traumatic asphyxia due to the compression of his neck and back during restraint by police,” according to court records.
Early Gray, who is representing one of the ex-officers charged in the case, filed a motion on Aug. 17 <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/attorney-for-ex-minneapolis-police-officer-george-floyd-overdosed-on-fentanyl">arguing</a> that Floyd had played a pivotal role in his own death, which could have been avoided had he not used drugs or had complied with officers’ directives from the outset.
“All he had to do is sit in the police car, like every other defendant who is initially arrested. While attempting to avoid his arrest, all by himself, Mr. Floyd overdosed on Fentanyl,” Gray wrote. “Given his intoxication level, breathing would have been difficult at best. Mr. Floyd’s intentional failure to obey commands, coupled with his overdosing, contributed to his own death.”
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George Floyd

Workers Fired After ‘Multiple Breaches’ Of George Floyd Medical Records At Minneapolis Hospital

Health Care

Minneapolis

An unspecified number of medical staff have been fired from a Minneapolis hospital after illicitly accessing George Floyd’s medical records. The Hennepin

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Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), running mate of Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden, suggested during an ABC News interview that aired on Sunday that eliminating private health insurance was one of the &#8220;great ideas&#8221; to fix problems in the health care system. Harris also blatantly lied about her past support for government-run health care.
&#8220;And you know I ask you this because you have pressure from the Left, you have pressure from the center, you&#8217;re trying to appeal to Republicans, and so on sort of the evolution on the issues when you talk about health care that you see eye to eye—do you see a day where private insurance would go away as you once proposed?&#8221; ABC News host David Muir asked.
&#8220;No, and in fact that my plan, when I was running, was that we would not eliminate private insurance,&#8221; Harris falsely claimed. &#8220;And Joe and I—”
&#8220;Even though you signed on for Medicare for All?&#8221; Muir asked.
&#8220;I signed on to that. I signed on to a number of bills that were about great ideas to fix the problem,&#8221; Harris claimed. &#8220;I want to fix the problem. And Joe has a plan to fix the problem, and I&#8217;m fully supportive of it.&#8221;
Harris was &#8220;the first Democrat to announce she&#8217;ll co-sponsor Sen. Bernie Sanders&#8217; single-payer health care bill when it&#8217;s introduced in September,&#8221; CNN <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/30/politics/kamala-harris-bernie-sanders-single-payer-medicare/index.html">reported</a> in 2017.
The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/23/health/private-health-insurance-medicare-for-all-bernie-sanders.html">reported</a> in March 2019:
<blockquote>
At the heart of the “Medicare for all” proposals championed by Senator Bernie Sanders and many Democrats is a revolutionary idea: Abolish private health insurance. &#8230;
But doing away with an entire industry would also be profoundly disruptive. The private health insurance business employs at least a half a million people, covers about 250 million Americans, and generates roughly a trillion dollars in revenues. Its companies’ stocks are a staple of the mutual funds that make up millions of Americans’ retirement savings. &#8230;
Senators Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Kamala Harris of California, and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts co-sponsored Mr. Sanders’s bill in the last Congress. &#8230;
The concept, in broad strokes, appeals to many Democratic voters. But overall support diminishes by a third or more when people are told that the plan would involve eliminating private insurance, raising taxes, or requiring waits to obtain medical care, according to surveys from the Kaiser Family Foundation.</blockquote>
During a debate in June 2019, the candidates were asked &#8220;Who here would abolish [employer-provided] health insurance in favor of a government-run plan?&#8221; Harris <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlaszewski2/2020/08/15/kamala-harris-has-had-some-difficulty-with-the-health-care-issue/#6d14f8465cce">raised</a> her hand but then tried to walk it back the next day.
In a 2019 NBC News <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/kamala-harris-wants-end-private-health-insurance-new-democratic-litmus-n964241">report</a> titled, &#8220;Kamala Harris wants to end private health insurance, a new Democratic litmus test,&#8221; NBC News highlighted remarks that Harris made during a town hall event.
&#8220;The idea is that everyone gets access to medical care, and you don&#8217;t have to go through the process of going through an insurance company, having them give you approval, going through the paperwork, all of the delay that may require,” Harris <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJhuPtIsUI0&amp;feature=youtu.be">said</a>. &#8220;Let&#8217;s eliminate all of that. Let&#8217;s move on.&#8221;
The next day, Harris again <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/flip-flop-kamala-harris-changes-position-ryan-saavedra">tried to walk back</a> her remarks after facing backlash from other Democrats who said that they did not support it.
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
MUST WATCH: Kamala Harris saying that banning 180 MILLION Americans private health insurance is &quot;a great idea.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/oImpqnaeZ2">pic.twitter.com/oImpqnaeZ2</a>
&mdash; Francis Brennan (@FrancisBrennan) <a href="https://twitter.com/FrancisBrennan/status/1297708486692950017?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 24, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Biden interrupted Muir as he questioned Harris on her past support for government-run health care, <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/transcript-joe-biden-kamala-harris-joint-interview-abcs/story?id=72541513">saying</a>, &#8220;David, I think, if I can just interrupt for just a moment. The degree to which we disagreed in the primaries is—was on tactic. We both believe Medicare, health care is a right, not a privilege.&#8221;
Harris added: &#8220;Joe Biden and I are completely aligned on the goal: making sure everyone has health care, and it&#8217;s not a function of how much money they have in their back pocket. He and I have personal experiences with people we love deeply, who have gone through the health care system and who ultimately passed away, and, and that is a personal and in a very deep held belief that is based on a shared value that all people should have access to health care.&#8221;
This report has been updated to include additional information.
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Vice Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris Addresses Virtual DNC From Delaware

Harris Suggests Eliminating Private Insurance Was One Of The ‘Great Ideas’ To Fix Problem; Lies About Past Support For Government-Run Health Care

2020 Election

Kamala Harris

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), running mate of Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden, suggested during an ABC News interview that aired on Sunday that

Harris Suggests Eliminating Private Insurance Was One Of The ‘Great Ideas’ To Fix Problem; Lies About Past Support For Government-Run Health Care | The Daily Wire

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Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib (MI) does not support the party&#8217;s 2020 platform.
The Michigan lawmaker said on Saturday that she can&#8217;t support the Democratic National Committee (DNC) platform because it does not include a plan for a single-payer health care system.
“Today, I cast my DNC ballot and voted NO on the proposed platform,” Tlaib wrote on Twitter. “I constantly hear from constituents demanding we push for a single-payer system and away from this for-profit system that is leaving people to suffer and die just because they cannot afford health care.”
&#8220;As a party, we must push for a future where every resident has the ability to thrive. That means we need a platform that works to rid our society of oppression and greed. Unfortunately, in my view this platform does not do enough,&#8221; she wrote.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
As a party, we must push for a future where every resident has the ability to thrive. That means we need a platform that works to rid our society of oppression and greed. Unfortunately, in my view this platform does not do enough. 2/2
&mdash; Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) <a href="https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1294799933955084288?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 16, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
In a photo of her ballot posted to Twitter, Tlaib voted to nominate Sanders, not Joe Biden. Tlaib had endorsed Sanders during the primaries, but he dropped out of the race in April and Biden went on to win the required number of delegates.
The Democratic platform set to be approved at the party&#8217;s convention next week includes a public option for health care, but not a single-payer “Medicare for All” proposal that progressives such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) support.
Sanders&#8217; supporters – known as &#8220;Bernie Bros&#8221; – could be key to a Biden win. In 2016, many stayed home as Hillary Clinton got soundly beat by President Trump. And on Sunday, Sanders sought to assuage his supporters who also aren&#8217;t happy with the Democrats&#8217; platform.
&#8220;I would say that the overwhelming majority of progressives understand that it is absolutely imperative that Donald Trump be defeated,&#8221; Sanders said on ABC&#8217;s &#8220;This Week.&#8221;
&#8220;Obviously, there may be disagreement,&#8221; he told host George Stephanopoulos. &#8220;A lot of my supporters are not enthusiastic about Joe Biden. You know why? I ran against Joe Biden. But I think there&#8217;s an overwhelming understanding that Donald Trump must be defeated, Biden must be elected, and that the day after he is elected, we&#8217;re going to do everything we can to create a government that works for all of us.&#8221;
Sanders also expressed optimism that the battle for universal health care will continue if Biden is elected.
&#8220;We&#8217;re going to continue the fight for Medicare for all. We have a health care system today that&#8217;s dysfunctional; too many people are uninsured; too many people are underinsured; too many people are going bankrupt because of medical bills. We pay almost twice as much per capita as the people of any other country. The function of health care is to guarantee health care to all, not make huge profits for the drug companies and the insurance companies. That fight continues the day after Joe Biden is elected president,&#8221; Sanders said.
RELATED: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-plans-to-give-convention-speech-on-white-house-grounds/">Trump Plans To Give Convention Speech On White House Grounds</a>
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Rep. Rashida Tlaib Votes ‘No’ On Democratic Party Platform, Nominating Biden

Bernie Sanders

Joe Biden

Rashida Tlaib

Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib (MI) does not support the party&#039;s 2020 platform. The Michigan lawmaker said on Saturday that she can&#039;t support the

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President Donald Trump signed four <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/07/24/trump-administration-announces-historic-action-lower-drug-prices-americans.html">executive orders</a> on Friday designed to significantly lower prescription drug prices for Americans, including insulin and epinephrine.
The directives to the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) will &#8220;[e]nd a shadowy system of kickbacks by middlemen that lurks behind the high out-of-pocket costs many Americans face at the pharmacy counter,&#8221; the department announced Friday, and said they will provide Americans more options on purchasing the drugs.
During the signing ceremony on Friday, the president said that the high price of insulin and EpiPens have cut off low-income people in &#8220;desperate&#8221; need of the treatments.
“The four orders I’m signing today will be on the prescription drug market in terms of pricing and everything else to make these medications affordable and accessible for all Americans,&#8221; said <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-signing-executive-orders-lowering-drug-prices/">Trump</a>, surrounded by health care professionals. &#8220;The first order will require federal community health centers to pass the giant discounts they received from drug companies on insulin and EpiPens directly to their patients. You know insulin became so expensive people weren’t able to use it. They desperately needed it.&#8221;
“We have it to a level that you’re not going to believe,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;EpiPens — likewise you have been hearing horrible stories about EpiPens over the last six or seven years, horrible, horrible, horrible increases for where they went to almost nothing to massive amounts of money. We’re changing that right now.&#8221;
&#8220;Under this order,&#8221; Trump added, &#8220;the price of insulin for affected patients will come down to just pennies a day, pennies a day from numbers that you weren&#8217;t even able to think about. It&#8217;s a massive cost savings.&#8221;
Trump said providers &#8220;should not be receiving discounts for themselves while charging their poorest patients massive full prices.&#8221;
Along with the order ending the &#8220;shadowy system of kickbacks by middlemen,&#8221; another order will allow states, wholesalers, and pharmacies to offer &#8220;safe and legal importation of prescription drugs from Canada and other countries where the price for the identical drug is incredibly lower,&#8221; Trump highlighted.
“It is a difference like you would not believe — 70%, 80%, 90%, 30% — but massively lower than the identical drug made in the same plant, same factory. Same exact drug, same everything, same box, same pill, and yet, it’s 50, 60, 70% lower,” he said.
Trump boosted the fourth executive order as the &#8220;granddaddy of them all,” ending &#8220;global freeloading on the backs of American patients and American seniors.”
“For decades our citizens have paid the highest prices for drugs, prescription drugs, anywhere in the world, and it is not even close,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Foreign nations have paid vastly less for the exact same drug again and the exact same box from the exact same plant, from the exact same company. They would pay 10%, 20%, 30%. What our people are paying a pill that would sell for one dollar in certain countries.&#8221;
“This means that Americans are funding the enormous cost of drug research and development for the entire planet,&#8221; Trump continued. &#8220;We are bearing the entire cost of all of this. They are bearing none. They say that this is what we are going to pay. In some cases, it’s the socialist country. So we are paying to reduce drug prices in a socialist country. How does that work?”
Per the <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/07/24/trump-administration-announces-historic-action-lower-drug-prices-americans.html">HHS</a> website, below are the directives ordered by Trump to the HHS secretary:
<ul>
<li>End a shadowy system of kickbacks by middlemen that lurks behind the high out-of-pocket costs many Americans face at the pharmacy counter. Under this action, American seniors will directly receive these kickback as discounts in Medicare Part D. In 2018, these Part D discounts totaled more than $30 billion, representing an average discount of 26 to 30 percent.</li>
<li>Require federally qualified health centers who purchase insulins and epinephrine in the 340B program to pass the savings from discounted drug prices directly on to medically underserved patients. This will increase access to life-saving insulin and epinephrine for the patients who face especially high costs among the 28 million patients who visit FQHCs every year, over six million of whom are uninsured.</li>
<li>Finalize a rule allowing states to develop safe importation plans for certain prescription drugs.</li>
<li>Authorize the re-importation of insulin products made in the United States if the Secretary finds re-importation is required for emergency medical care pursuant to section 801(d) of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.</li>
<li>Create a pathway for safe personal importation through the use of individual waivers to purchase drugs at lower cost from pre-authorized U.S. pharmacies.</li>
<li>Take action to ensure that the Medicare program and seniors pay no more for the most costly Medicare Part B drugs than any economically comparable OECD country, ending foreign countries’ free loading off the backs of American taxpayers and pharmaceutical investments. This order takes effect in 30 days unless Congress acts.</li>
</ul>
H/t <a href="https://www.cnsnews.com/article/washington/melanie-arter/trump-says-executive-order-will-drop-price-insulin-down-pennies">CNSNews</a> 
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President Trump Signs Executive Order On Lowering Drug Prices

Trump Issues Executive Orders To Slash Insulin, EpiPen Prices; End ‘Global Freeloading’

Health and Human Services

President Donald Trump signed four executive orders on Friday designed to significantly lower prescription drug prices for Americans, including insulin

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If you&#8217;ve wondered who&#8217;s paying for all the people hospitalized with COVID-19, the answer sometimes is &#8212; you.
A Seattle man who spent two months in the hospital battling COVID-19 just got a 181-page bill for $1.12 million for treatment of the virus. Michael Flor, 70, was admitted to Swedish Medical Center in Issaquah, Washington, on March 4 and spent 62 days in the facility before finally recovering and being discharged.
&#8220;Flor, 70, who came so close to death in the spring that a night-shift nurse held a phone to his ear while his wife and kids said their final goodbyes, is recovering nicely these days at his home in West Seattle. But he says his heart almost failed a second time when he got the bill from his health care odyssey the other day,&#8221; the <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/inspiring-story-of-seattle-mans-coronavirus-survival-comes-with-a-1-1-million-dollar-hospital-bill/">Seattle Times</a> reported. &#8220;I opened it and said ‘holy [bleep]!&#8217; Flor says.&#8221;
The bill featured almost 3,000 itemized charges, an average of about 50 for each day of his hospital stay. He was billed $408,912 for 42 days in the intensive care room, which was equipped with a special isolation chamber, and $82,215 for ventilator use, which lasted 29 days.
&#8220;Just the charge for his room in the intensive care unit was billed at $9,736 per day,&#8221; The Times reported. &#8220;Due to the contagious nature of the virus, the room was sealed and could only be entered by medical workers wearing plastic suits and headgear. For 42 days he was in this isolation chamber, for a total charged&#8230;of $408,912.&#8221;
The Seattle Times reported that Flor&#8217;s condition grew very serious &#8220;for the two days when Flor&#8217;s heart, kidneys, and lungs were all failing and he was nearest death.&#8221; During that time, he received treatments by doctors for which he was billed nearly $100,000.
Because Flor is 70, he has Medicare, a federally funded health care program paid for by U.S. taxpayers. Plus, there are special financial rules enacted in place by Congress amid COVID-19. Under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) and Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, both approved in April, private health issuers and employer group health plans must &#8220;cover COVID-19 testing and services furnished during the pandemic, with no out-of-pocket expense.&#8221;
&#8220;As a result, Flor probably won’t have to pay even his Medicare Advantage policy’s out-of-pocket charges, which could have amounted to $6,000,&#8221; The Times wrote. &#8220;The insurance industry has estimated treatment costs just for COVID-19 could top $500 billion, however, so Congress is being asked to step up with more money.&#8221;
Still, the money&#8217;s got to come from somewhere, so check your wallet.
Flor told The Times he was surprised at his own reaction: guilt.
“I feel guilty about surviving,” he said. “There’s a sense of ‘why me?’ Why did I deserve all this? Looking at the incredible cost of it all definitely adds to that survivor’s guilt.”
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Hispanic doctor holding one hundred dollar bills in hospital

Man Receives $1.1 Million COVID-19 Hospital Bill With 3,000 Itemized Charges

Coronavirus

If you&#039;ve wondered who&#039;s paying for all the people hospitalized with COVID-19, the answer sometimes is -- you. A Seattle man who spent two months in the

Man Receives $1.1 Million COVID-19 Hospital Bill With 3,000 Itemized Charges | The Daily Wire

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As health care workers around the world are trying to help stop the spread of the novel coronavirus, many of them are getting attacked.
Peter Maurer, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), told the United Nations Security Council in a video call that since March, 208 attacks related to COVID-19 have been reported against healthcare workers and systems in 13 different countries around the world, Fox News <a style="color: #954f72;" href="https://www.foxnews.com/health/red-cross-reports-208-coronavirus-related-assaults-on-health-care-workers">reported</a>.
“The COVID-19 crisis is fast threatening to become a protection crisis,” Maurer said on the call.
In <a style="color: #954f72;" href="https://www.icrc.org/en/document/health-care-workers-save-lives-covid-19">a statement</a>, “a community of concerned advocates, representing 13 medical and humanitarian global organizations appearing for more than 30 million health care professionals,” issued a statement through the ICRC condemning the attacks:
<blockquote>Unfortunately, the sad reality is that health workers have for a long time been subject to many shocking forms of violence. The recent displays of public support for COVID-19 responders are heartwarming, but many responders are nevertheless experiencing harassment, stigmatization and physical violence. Some health-care professionals and the people they were caring for have even been killed. At least 208 reports of such incidents have emerged since the beginning of the pandemic, and each day brings new stories of intimidation and harm.
Violence against health care must not be tolerated. We stand firmly against it, and are working as a global community to build a world where health workers and patients are safe and respected. We call on everyone reading this message to join with us and protect health care from violence. And not only individuals: we call on all governments to act against misinformation and to ensure that health care is protected by domestic law, that all health-care professionals have a safe working environment, and that mental health support is offered not only to victims of violence, but also to those working under increased levels of stress.</blockquote>
Maurer, according to Fox News, said on the call that socioeconomic issues caused by the coronavirus pandemic will lead to increased abuse and exploitation of already vulnerable populations. The ICRC did not list the 13 countries where attacks have been recorded, but the ICRC did specifically condemn “recent attacks on health care facilities, staff, as well as patients, in Kabul and Darfur.” Maurer explained the 13 countries were in the Middle East, Asia-Pacific, the Americans, and Africa, <a style="color: #954f72;" href="https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation/red-cross-says-208-covid-related-attacks-on-health-workers/">according to The Seattle Times</a>. He added that it’s “likely the actual numbers are much higher than what we calculated.”
“Maurer said 23% of incidents included physical assaults, 20% were discriminatory-related attacks on health workers, and the rest included the deliberate failure to provide or deny assistance, verbal assaults and threats, and a disregard for health personnel protective measures,” the Times reported.
In a tweet, the ICRC listed doctors, nurses, paramedics, hospitals, ambulances, and clinics as being “protected under the rules of war.
“Yet since the COVID-19 pandemic began, there have been over 200 attacks on health care in just 13 countries,” the organization continued.
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Doctor wearing protective suit to fight coronavirus pandemic covid-2019.

Red Cross Says More Than 200 Health Care Workers Have Been Attacked In Coronavirus-Linked Assaults

COVID-19

As health care workers around the world are trying to help stop the spread of the novel coronavirus, many of them are getting attacked. Peter Maurer,

Red Cross Says More Than 200 Health Care Workers Have Been Attacked In Coronavirus-Linked Assaults | The Daily Wire

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A rural Michigan hospital is petitioning Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to relax emergency rules banning elective surgeries before it is forced to close from lack of funds.
Hillsdale Hospital Vice President and COO Jeremiah Hodshire published an <a href="https://www.hillsdalehospital.com/whats_new_details.cfm?rowID=D67C24ED25C89C474C97095B645033E8">open letter</a> to Whitmer on Tuesday, warning the governor that rural hospitals like Hillsdale may shut down soon if not allowed to support themselves through conducting elective surgeries. Whitmer has said she will reconsider Michigan’s ban on certain medical procedures on Thursday.
&#8220;If there is one thing that we need now more than ever, it’s patients using our services instead of living in fear of leaving their homes while their health needs are left unmet,&#8221; Hodshire said.
Whitmer banned elective surgeries throughout Michigan on March 20. The ban is set to last for the duration of the state of emergency, which times out at the end of the day on Thursday unless the legislature approves the governor’s request for an extension. Whitmer has suggested that she may try to extend the emergency order anyway.
&#8220;Blanket restrictions in your executive orders have placed our small, rural hospital in the same standing as those in large, highly-populated areas like Detroit, busy with 75 percent of the state’s COVID-19 patients,&#8221; Hodshire said. &#8220;The most devastating order required closure of every hospital operating room to elective procedures, even while 22 Michigan counties have less than ten confirmed COVID-19 cases.&#8221;
Elective surgeries account for 20% of Hillsdale Hospital’s net income, according to the COO. The hospital is on track for a $10 million budget shortfall because of the ban on elective surgeries and significant losses in the stock market because of the coronavirus and severe restrictions on business. Hillsdale Hospital has received roughly $1 million so far in aid from the federal government’s coronavirus relief efforts.
Hodshire called on Whitmer to let bans and regulations on healthcare be made at the local level as the coronavirus has hit the rural areas of Michigan far differently than the urban areas of Detroit.
&#8220;Executive orders based on science are important and we unequivocally support them. But those that go beyond are reckless and senseless, crippling already fragile rural economies for the sake of managing highly-populated areas,&#8221; Hodshire said. &#8220;Without opening up hospitals to appropriately perform elective surgeries within the next week, and better government support to help make up for lost revenue, hospitals like ours (and, I would submit, others throughout Michigan) will be forced to close their doors — forever.&#8221;
Whitmer’s heavy-handed regulations have sparked outrage across Michigan as hundreds of people have gathered in the state’s capital to protest and demand she lift the stay-at-home order. The latest round of protests came on Thursday as the emergency order was set to expire. Many protesters, some carrying firearms, entered the state capitol building after the weather turned sour.
&#8220;Directly above me, men with rifles yelling at us. Some of my colleagues who own bullet proof vests are wearing them. I have never appreciated our Sergeants-at-Arms more than today,&#8221; state Sen. Dayna Polehanki (D) said on Twitter.
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Directly above me, men with rifles yelling at us. Some of my colleagues who own bullet proof vests are wearing them. I have never appreciated our Sergeants-at-Arms more than today. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/mileg?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#mileg</a> <a href="https://t.co/voOZpPYWOs">pic.twitter.com/voOZpPYWOs</a>
&mdash; Senator Dayna Polehanki (@SenPolehanki) <a href="https://twitter.com/SenPolehanki/status/1255899318210314241?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 30, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Detroit Ambulance

Rural Michigan Hospital Posts Open Letter To Whitmer, Begs For Relief From ‘Senseless’ Regulations

Gretchen Whitmer

A rural Michigan hospital is petitioning Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to relax emergency rules banning elective surgeries before it is forced to close from lack

Rural Michigan Hospital Posts Open Letter To Whitmer, Begs For Relief From &#039;Senseless&#039; Regulations | The Daily Wire

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To hear the Trump administration tell it, tests for the coronavirus are everywhere and everyone can get them.
&#8220;We’ve done more testing than any country anywhere in the world,&#8221; President Trump said on Friday. &#8220;We have now completed more than 3.5 million tests — by far the most anywhere in the world.&#8221;
But then Trump got to the numbers. &#8220;We have now distributed over 600,000 Abbott ID NOW point-of-care diagnostic tests,&#8221; which take just five minutes to work (previous tests were invasive and took up to a week for results to come in). &#8220;We have seen a dramatic increase in the number of tests performed by hospitals and academic institutions, with more than 120,000 tests recently reported in a single day.&#8221;
Here&#8217;s the problem: There are 328 million people in America.
Dr. Deborah Birx, who serves as the Coronavirus Response Coordinator for the Trump Administration&#8217;s White House Coronavirus Task Force, says excess testing capacity of 1 million tests per week is available.
At that rate, it would take more than six years to test every American.
More numbers: In New York, they&#8217;re testing about 28 people per 1,000 &#8212; and that&#8217;s the state with the highest rate. In places like Virginia, where I live, they&#8217;re testing fewer than six people out of 1,000. And there are now 706,830 confirmed cases in the U.S., according to the <a href="https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6">Johns Hopkins</a> Center for Systems Science and Engineering. That means just 0.21% of Americans have been tested.
But testing is now the key to reopening the U.S. economy. Once people know they&#8217;ve had it, they&#8217;ll know they&#8217;re now immune (for a year or two, at least, doctors say) and can return to work.
“Anybody who wants a test can get a test,” Trump said more than a month ago. But have you tried to find a test?
I have. I called my doctor&#8217;s office. &#8220;Hey, are you guys doing testing for the coronavirus?&#8221; They told me to call my local hospital. When I did that, they told me to call my health care provider. When I did that, they told me to check  the website for the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
So I did that. First, the closest testing center is 25 miles from my house. And second, the website for the testing center said this: &#8220;Call your doctor for their procedures on testing after a clinical assessment.&#8221; The center said it &#8220;evaluates all patients and ensures necessary testing is conducted while preserving the capability to continue sustained testing.&#8221; That makes sense: Test the sickest first. But it also means that many people are simply turned away without a test.
How do I know that? Here&#8217;s another story.
My wife, who had been sick for more than a week (most likely with COVID-19, which I&#8217;m pretty sure she caught from me), recently passed out. Luckily, she was able to sit down first when she felt light-headed. We called 911. They came and assessed her, then said they thought she should go to the hospital, which she did. Once there, they ran a few tests and decided that she&#8217;d had an episode of vasovagal syncope (Google that, very interesting).
We couldn&#8217;t go into the hospital to see her, but she was quickly discharged. And on the way home, I asked if she&#8217;d had a test for COVID-19 (she had every single symptom). &#8220;I asked for one and they said no,&#8221; my wife said. They did, however, test her for the flu. (She&#8217;s much better now, thank you for asking.)
&#8220;Anybody who wants a test can get a test&#8221;? Not at all.
The <a href="https://apnews.com/9983363b779562ec9ebaaf6303922ecb">Associated Press</a> said this in an article Friday: “&#8217;There are places that have enough test swabs, but not enough workers to administer them. There are places that are limiting tests because of the CDC criteria on who should get tested,&#8217; said Dr. Megan Ranney, an emergency physician and associate professor at Brown University. &#8216;There’s just so many inefficiencies and problems with the way that testing currently happens across this country.&#8217;”
Trump is now shoving the responsibility off to the states. “The governors are responsible for testing,” Trump said at his daily briefing Friday, adding that the federal government would ship 5.5 million nasal swabs to states in the “next few weeks” to help address shortages.
“Swabs can be done easily by the governors themselves,” Trump said. “Mostly it’s cotton, it’s not a big deal.”
So there you go: Check with your governor if you want a swab.

Donald Trump Holds Campaign Rally In Dallas

CURL: The Main Question Now Is — Where Are The Tests?

To hear the Trump administration tell it, tests for the coronavirus are everywhere and everyone can get them. &quot;We’ve done more testing than any country

CURL: The Main Question Now Is -- Where Are The Tests? | The Daily Wire

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Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) claimed during an interview this last week that the United States has “not earned the right” to call itself a “humane society.”
Ocasio-Cortez made the remarks during an interview on far-left Democracy Now! about the coronavirus outbreak as she pounced on the opportunity to attack the Trump administration.
&#8220;We should have universal systems where every person can see the doctor free of charge when they need to see it so that they can get the care that they need,&#8221; Ocasio-Cortez said. &#8220;That is what it means to live in an advanced and modern and humane society, and so long as we don&#8217;t do that, we have not earned the right to call ourselves one.&#8221;
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/AOC?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@AOC</a> blames Trump for Coronavirus deaths, particularly among illegal immigrants, in NYC: 
These &quot;are deaths of incompetence, they are deaths of science denial, they are deaths of inequality and &#8230; [a] particular cruelty toward undocumented immigrants&quot; <a href="https://t.co/GeDmdkAMym">pic.twitter.com/GeDmdkAMym</a>
&mdash; Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) <a href="https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1247526339336261634?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 7, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
TRANSCRIPT:
<blockquote>DEMOCRACY NOW: Overall, your response to President Trump, his antagonism against any kind of criticism, the well-known documented lack of tests, lack of PPE, protective gear for people who work in hospitals, and now this, saying “Sure, test them before we deport them.”
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): Well overall, you know, uh, not just President Trump but this entire administration knew what was coming. Trump knew this pandemic was coming. The military knew this pandemic was coming. The CDC knew this pandemic was coming. HHS Health and Human Services knew this pandemic was coming, and there was a structural but also universal refusal to acknowledge and more importantly to act, and this pandemic is, you know, and and the casualties that we are seeing are, again, not just due to coronavirus.
There are people dying unnecessarily, as you mentioned earlier, there are people not just dying in hospitals. In New York City City alone, we are seeing 200 to 300 people dying in their homes a day, per day in New York City inside their homes in addition to the hospitalizations. These numbers that you&#8217;re seeing, all in all, many of them are confirmed coronavirus cases, as you mentioned, many people do not have access to tests, so a lot of these deaths that you are seeing, there are many more that are uncounted that are being counted as pneumonia or being counted as other causes of death because those people were not able to get a COVID-19 test. And so, these additional deaths, many of them are unnecessary, they are deaths of incompetence, they are deaths of science denial, they are deaths of inequality, and so it&#8217;s important for us to acknowledge how unnecessary the level of crisis that we are at right now that is due to the incompetence of this administration, that is due to the lack of responsiveness [of] this administration. And when it comes to the particular cruelty to undocumented immigrants, it is also a form of denial of the fact that many of these undocumented people pay taxes, they fund our public schools, and they fund a very public health system that they are being denied access to right now through the billions of dollars of taxes that they pay, billions more, by the way, these undocumented workers pay billions more in taxes than Facebook does, than Amazon does, and than many other corporations do. And so when it comes to contributions to our public systems, they do far more than these than these corporations do, and it&#8217;s extraordinarily important that they have safe access to our public health system, and by the way, it shouldn&#8217;t just be for COVID-19 cases, our public health system should be free at the point of service for every single person in this country.
There are folks that are saying, “Oh, you&#8217;ll get paid sick leave if it&#8217;s COVID-19 related,” as we&#8217;re seeing with Amazon, they&#8217;ll take your fever, if you don&#8217;t have a test, then you will not receive paid sick leave. We should have universal systems where every person can see the doctor free of charge when they need to see it so that they can get the care that they need, that is what it means to live in an advanced and modern and humane society, and so long as we don&#8217;t do that, we have not earned the right to call ourselves one.</blockquote>

Mark Zuckerberg

Ocasio-Cortez: U.S. Has ‘Not Earned The Right’ To Call Itself A ‘Humane Society’

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Medicare for All

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) claimed during an interview this last week that the United States has “not earned the right” to call itself

Ocasio-Cortez: U.S. Has ‘Not Earned The Right’ To Call Itself A ‘Humane Society’ | The Daily Wire

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As some have warned for weeks, an unintended though anticipated consequence of nationwide shutdown measures is the mass layoffs of tens of thousands of healthcare workers, and that number is climbing.
As highlighted by both The New York Times and The Associated Press, hospitals and healthcare facilities across the nation have delayed so-called elective surgeries and non-COVID-19 related medical actions in preparation for the predicted onslaught of novel coronavirus patients, mostly by state order.
&#8220;Governors in <a class="css-1g7m0tk" title="" href="https://www.ascassociation.org/asca/resourcecenter/latestnewsresourcecenter/covid-19/covid-19-state" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">dozens of states</a> have delivered executive orders or guidelines directing hospitals to stop nonurgent procedures and surgeries to various degrees,&#8221; <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/us/politics/coronavirus-health-care-workers-layoffs.html">The New York Times</a> noted. &#8220;Last month, the United States surgeon general, Dr. Jerome M. Adams, also <a class="css-1g7m0tk" title="" href="https://twitter.com/Surgeon_General/status/1238798972501852160?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">implored</a> hospitals to halt elective procedures.&#8221;
The massive decline in revenue, however, has resulted in at least 42,000 healthcare workers filing for unemployment, Department of Labor numbers revealed last week.
&#8220;Tens of thousands of medical workers across the United States are suddenly out of work as operating rooms and doctor&#8217;s offices go dark, casualties of urgent calls to prioritize coronavirus patients at overwhelmed hospitals and of the economic waves the crisis is churning,&#8221; <a href="https://www.newswest9.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/health-care-jobs-are-a-mounting-casualty-of-coronavirus-crisis/507-d656ba85-b425-49c3-85b5-b325340e3a64">The Associated Press</a> reported Saturday. &#8220;Big-city physician and specialist groups, tiny independent hospitals from Oregon to Connecticut, and big multistate hospital systems such as Steward Health Care are seeing big dropoffs in revenue and laying off or furloughing hundreds of workers.&#8221;
Even in coronavirus &#8220;hot spots,&#8221; healthcare workers are having their hours cut or given pink slips, the Times highlighted: &#8220;[T]rained health care workers sidelined, even in areas around Detroit and Washington, where infection rates are climbing, and even as hard-hit hospitals are pleading for help.&#8221;
The cuts to healthcare are expected to continue, and the numbers available currently are seemingly only the tip of the iceberg.
&#8220;Not all states release that data in real time,&#8221; the AP explained, &#8220;although Minnesota reported that from March 16 through March 31, more than 13,600 health care practitioners or technicians filed unemployment claims in that state alone.&#8221;
While &#8220;[s]ome layoffs, the generally permanent loss of a job, and furloughs, a reduction in hours or a leave of absence with the option to return, are focused on nonclinical staff,&#8221; the report says, &#8220;[e]lsewhere, clinical professionals — specialists, lab techs, operating room staffs, nurse specialists, support staff — suddenly find themselves with a cut in pay or hours, or sitting at home, including some in coronavirus hotspots.&#8221;
In Tennessee, Erlanger Health System said they lost millions of dollars in one week of the shutdown alone, according to AP.
Sarasota Memorial Health Care System in Florida had to drastically cut employees on Friday, after losing an estimated $16 million in expected revenue in March alone.
&#8220;Sarasota Memorial Hospital announced it will furlough some workers and reduce hours for others due to a &#8216;sudden and drastic drop in patient volumes and revenues,'&#8221; an ABC affiliate <a href="https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/region-sarasota-manatee/sarasota-memorial-hospital-furloughs-employees-due-to-drastic-drop-in-patient-volumes">reported</a> Friday. &#8220;According to officials, Sarasota Memoria Hospital experienced a $16 million reduction in revenue in March. After non-emergency procedures were canceled due to the pandemic, surgery cases fell by more than 50 percent and the hospital saw a 30-percent drop on the number of inpatients, according to the press release.&#8221;
The entire state of Florida has <a href="https://www.bing.com/covid/local/florida_unitedstates">12,350</a> active cases of COVID-19 as of Monday morning, and a total of 221 fatalities associated with the virus.

Empty nurses station in hospital

Coronavirus: Hospitals Across Nation Lay Off Tens Of Thousands Of Healthcare Workers

As some have warned for weeks, an unintended though anticipated consequence of nationwide shutdown measures is the mass layoffs of tens of thousands of

Coronavirus: Hospitals Across Nation Lay Off Tens Of Thousands Of Healthcare Workers | The Daily Wire

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Roger Severino, civil rights office director at the Department of Health and Human Services, has posted a bulletin warning “entities” receiving HHS funds against deciding which patients can receive treatment on the basis of discrimination, including age and disability. 
The director issued <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/03/28/ocr-issues-bulletin-on-civil-rights-laws-and-hipaa-flexibilities-that-apply-during-the-covid-19-emergency.html">the bulletin</a> in response to fears of health care shortages at hospitals in areas strongly affected by the coronavirus epidemic, a crisis that has allegedly led some hospitals in Italy to ration care away from the elderly.
“Our civil rights laws protect the equal dignity of every human life from ruthless utilitarianism,” said Severino in a press release Saturday evening. “[The Department of Health and Human Services] is committed to leaving no one behind during an emergency, and helping health care providers meet that goal.”
While hospitals across the country have not been forced to ration care, the fear of such a situation has resulted in health care providers developing contingency plans.
Medical leaders in Washington state began developing a triage document last week to create state-wide policies that would establish criteria for who would, and would not, receive treatment in the event of a health care rationing, reports <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/us/coronavirus-in-seattle-washington-state.html">The New York Times</a>.
“They look at the criteria — in this case it would likely be age and underlying disease conditions — and then determine that this person, though this person has a chance of survival with a ventilator, does not get one,” said Cassie Sauer, chief executive of the Washington State Hospital Association.
“It’s protecting the clinicians so you don’t have one person who’s kind of playing God,” Sauer told the news agency. “It is chilling, and it should not happen in America.”
After posting the discrimination bulletin, Severino told <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/us/coronavirus-disabilities-handicapped-rationing-ventilators-triage.html">The New York Times</a> that the warning wasn’t intended to prohibit states from developing triage contingency plans. 
Rather, Severino says his goal is to make sure “entities” begin “considering the civil rights implications of any crisis standards of care plans they may be putting into effect if it were to come to that.”
Last Thursday, a draft of a Henry Ford Health System contingency plan leaked online and revealed how the Detroit health system tentatively plans to approach patients in the event of a health care shortage.
“We currently have a public health emergency that is making our supply of some medical resources hard to find,” reads the leaked draft. “Patients who have the best chance of getting better are our first priority. Patients will be evaluated for the best plan for care and dying patients will be provided comfort care.”
The document emphasizes that the decision to remove a ventilator and provide comfort care instead will be based on the patient’s “medical condition and likelihood of getting better.” It also states the decision can be appealed by asking your individual doctor to request an evaluation from a clinical review committee.
A spokesperson for the healthcare system told <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-crisis-forces-hospitals-to-consider-rationing-treatment-11585336785">The Wall Street Journal</a> that the draft “is part of a ‘worst-case scenario’ planning document, and we are not in the worst case scenario.”
The Journal notes that states such as Oklahoma and Utah have given more leeway to individual doctors to decide on treatment plans for patients.

Waiting Room

Civil Rights Office Warns Hospitals Against Discriminatory Healthcare Rationing

Roger Severino, civil rights office director at the Department of Health and Human Services, has posted a bulletin warning “entities” receiving HHS funds

Civil Rights Office Warns Hospitals Against Discriminatory Healthcare Rationing | The Daily Wire

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The Democratic presidential primary has consolidated into a showdown between former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). One of the key issues on which the Democratic candidates are running is health care.
While the progressive gold standard seems to be a single-payer system, there’s a break within the party, with some preferring a more “moderate” approach to reform. Both Biden and Sanders have presented health care plans that would greatly expand the role of the federal government, and increase government spending by billions to trillions of dollars over a decade.
The “Medicare for All” plan put forth by Sanders is estimated to cost more than $32 trillion over a decade, while Biden’s plan is estimated to cost approximately $750 billion.
The Daily Wire recently spoke with health care policy expert Avik Roy about Medicare for All and the Biden plan, as well as what more conservative, free market solutions would look like. Roy is the co-founder and president of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP), which “conducts original research on expanding economic opportunity to those who least have it,” according to the organization’s <a href="https://freopp.org/our-mission-3b16e8e8c656">official website</a>.
In parts one and two of this interview, which you can read <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/interview-part-i-health-care-policy-expert-talks-medicare-for-all-the-so-called-moderate-alternative-and-free-market-solutions">here</a> and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/interview-part-ii-health-care-policy-expert-talks-about-what-free-market-reform-actually-looks-like">here</a>, Roy discussed what “Medicare for All” really means, the flaws of such a system, the dangers of the “moderate” counterpoint, and what a conservative solution could look like.
In part three of this interview, Roy discusses hospital monopolization, the real progress conservatives have made on health care legislation, the pressure faced by elected officials to retain the status quo, and more.
<blockquote>DW: Is there a reason that hospitals have been able to consolidate in the way that they have, and how can we break those up?
ROY: The short answer is that both at the state level and at the federal level, the people who have the authority to regulate, to block mergers that create regional monopolies, haven’t been able to do so, for one reason or another. That&#8217;s been the first-order problem. The second-order problem is even in the occasional situation where the Federal Trade Commission or related state entities have brought lawsuits, a lot of times the courts have sided with the hospital. They said, &#8220;Oh well, you&#8217;re a nonprofit hospital, therefore you must be doing the right thing. Nonprofits can do no wrong. You’re not like the greedy for-profit people.&#8221; And that&#8217;s completely wrong. Just because you are tax-exempt does not mean you can&#8217;t be greedy.
“Nonprofit” in that sense is a bit of a misnomer. So-called nonprofit hospitals are among the most rapacious practitioners of monopoly power in the hospital sector. These are huge problems. Every year that these regional monopolies gain more power, they become harder to reign in because the more power they have, the more ability they have to influence their local politicians to do whatever they want. This has become an increasing threat to the living standards of America, the fact that hospitals are charging 8% more for the same stuff that they were doing last year simply because they have the power to do so. They’re just charging more every year. At a certain point, it becomes unsustainable. In fact, it already is.
If you actually look at the share of Americans&#8217; income that they send to the IRS, and the share of Americans&#8217; income that they send to the hospital industry, they send more of their income to the hospital industry than they do to the IRS on average. That is catastrophic. So, that can&#8217;t continue. We&#8217;re starting to see, on both the Left and the Right, constructive proposals to try to reign in hospital monopolies.
DW: What are the most prominent roadblocks to the implementation of your plan?
ROY: Well, first let&#8217;s talk about the progress. There’s actually been enormous progress in terms of developing legislation that reflects these principles. Last year, Bruce Westerman, a congressman from Arkansas, introduced the Fair Care Act of 2019, which is health reform bill that&#8217;s based on all of the principles I just described. A new version of that bill is forthcoming in the next several weeks or months that will build on the Fair Care Act of 2019, and potentially attract broader support. So, there&#8217;s real progress. There’s actually a bill now that&#8217;s online, that people can look at and critique and read and think about and add ideas to. That process has led to this second version of the bill that will be coming out in the next couple of months.
That&#8217;s the good news. The good news is that there&#8217;s a lot progress being made in turning these ideas into actual legislation that members of Congress can support and advance. As you would expect, the monopolies and crony capitalists who benefit from the current system are going to fight hard at any attempt to curtail their revenue streams. And of course people on the progressive Left are going to oppose plans like this because they strengthen and expand the role of private sector innovation in solving the problems of affordability and access to care and coverage. Those would be the two groups that you could expect to not like this approach – but there&#8217;s a lot about this approach that otherwise is pretty attractive.
It&#8217;s going to be appealing to a broad segment of the public. In order to pass health reform, it&#8217;s really important to remember, we can all throw up on a blackboard our dream system of what we think the health care system should look like, but at the end of the day, if you want to pass reform in Congress, you have to get 60 votes in the Senate. To get 60 votes in the Senate, it&#8217;s not going to be an ideological fantasy of what the health care system should look like. You have to have a reform that has enough public support that it can attract 60 votes in the Senate, and that means attracting some Democrats. Not all, but some.
The approach that we&#8217;ve designed is meant to do that. It&#8217;s meant to say, &#8220;This represents a gradual evolution of the system. It does deploy the private sector to do it, but it also achieves goals that moderate Democrats should appreciate, which is more people will be able to afford their health insurance, and there will be fewer people who will be uninsured.&#8221;
DW: Republicans don&#8217;t seem to be unifying around and really heavily promoting an alternative to what&#8217;s being offered by the other side. Why do you think that is? Is it pressure from monopolistic organizations?
ROY: There’s obviously partisan pressure to do partisan things, particularly if you&#8217;re running for president in the Democratic primary, or running for Congress in the Democratic primary. You&#8217;re going to want to do things that enable you to win that primary, so that&#8217;s going to be a more partisan ideological approach. The same is often true, obviously, in Republican primaries. The other piece of it, as you suggested, is that if you want to get elected, it&#8217;s easier to get elected if you don&#8217;t offend the powerful industry interests that otherwise could run a lot of ads claiming you&#8217;re a bad guy or bad gal.
So, don&#8217;t make waves, don&#8217;t really disrupt the status quo in terms of the crony capitalists, and that increases your chances of winning. The formula is to talk big, but not really actually do a lot to tackle hospital monopolies or other monopolies of crony capitalists, because if you really mean it, then you&#8217;re going to have those industry components and sectors against you. That&#8217;s what happened with Bernie. If Bernie had been the nominee, he would have elicited a lot of opposition from the industries that make a lot more money under the status quo than they would under Bernie&#8217;s plan, in theory.
That’s kind of the dynamic right now, but after the election, we&#8217;ll see. If Trump wins, then there are going to be more Democrats willing to come to the table and say, &#8220;Okay, we didn&#8217;t succeed in getting a Democratic president, but I still want to do work on health reforms. Let&#8217;s work together.&#8221; If Biden or some Democrat wins, and they&#8217;re approach fails to get through Congress, that could also elicit more interest in a bipartisan approach. So, the more partisan approaches have to fail for people to be willing to come to the table. That&#8217;s kind of what&#8217;s happened with Republicans.
Repeal and Replace failed, so there&#8217;s much more interest in what I&#8217;m describing in terms of a more gradual evolution to a better system. Similarly, I think the Medicare for All and public option type approaches have to fail for there to be more interest in a bipartisan approach.
DW: Is there anything that we haven&#8217;t touched on in this interview that you would want our readership to know about this particular issue?
ROY: Yeah, I would say that we haven&#8217;t really talked about what the Trump administration has already done, and what Republicans in the Senate are already trying to do to address some of these issues.
We talked about the Fair Care Act of Bruce Westerman, which is, I think, the most wide-ranging and ambitious and important attempt to achieve free market health reform, but it&#8217;s also worth nothing that there are things on a more incremental level that both the White House and the Senate are trying to do that would be helpful. The Trump administration has been trying to do a lot of work on price transparency. That could do a lot to benefit patients and businesses that are trying to keep their healthcare costs down.
The Senate Finance Committee has been doing some important work in trying to reduce Medicare spending on drugs in ways that I think are really constructive. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee – the Senate health committee led by Senator Lamar Alexander – is trying to do some good work to combat anti-competitive practices by hospital monopolies and others.
So, those are not the total solution, they wouldn&#8217;t on their own achieve free market health care, but they&#8217;re important reforms that your readers should be aware of and, in my view, get behind.</blockquote>
I’d like to thank Avik Roy for taking the time to speak about such an important issue. For more information, you can follow him on <a href="https://twitter.com/Avik?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">Twitter</a> or visit the FREOPP website <a href="https://freopp.org/the-freopp-founders-avik-roy-53719dfcaf05">here</a>.

Healthcare.

INTERVIEW (Part III): Health Care Policy Expert Talks About Free Market Options, Cronyism, Monopolies, And Progress Already Being Made

Avik Roy

The Democratic presidential primary has consolidated into a showdown between former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). One of the

INTERVIEW (Part III): Health Care Policy Expert Talks About Free Market Options, Cronyism, Monopolies, And Progress Already Being Made | The Daily Wire

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The Democratic presidential primary has consolidated into a showdown between former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). One of the key issues on which the Democratic candidates are running is health care.
While the progressive gold standard seems to be a single-payer system, there’s a break within the party, with some preferring a more “moderate” approach to reform. Both Biden and Sanders have presented health care plans that would greatly expand the role of the federal government, and increase government spending by billions to trillions of dollars over a decade.
The “Medicare for All” plan put forth by Sanders is estimated to cost more than $32 trillion over a decade, while Biden’s plan is estimated to cost approximately $750 billion.
The Daily Wire recently spoke with health care policy expert Avik Roy about Medicare for All and the Biden plan, as well as what more conservative, free market solutions would look like. Roy is the co-founder and president of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP), which “conducts original research on expanding economic opportunity to those who least have it,” according to the organization’s <a href="https://freopp.org/our-mission-3b16e8e8c656">official website</a>.
In part one of this three-part interview, which you can read <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/interview-part-i-health-care-policy-expert-talks-medicare-for-all-the-so-called-moderate-alternative-and-free-market-solutions">here</a>, Roy discussed what “Medicare for All” really means, the flaws of such a system, the dangers of the “moderate” counterpoint, and if a nation can achieve so-called universal coverage without a health care mandate.
In part two, Roy talks about how the current health care system in the United States is neither free market nor government-run, and what a conservative solution could look like.
<blockquote>DW: Can you describe the United States health care system as it compares to a free market system versus a much more regulated system? Are we not somewhere in between?
ROY: That’s exactly right, we&#8217;re somewhere in between. We&#8217;re not a 100% public system, and we&#8217;re not a 100% private system. We&#8217;re somewhere in between. Roughly half of all health expenditures – and actually more if you define it in certain ways – are paid for by the taxpayer through taxes and spending. It&#8217;s more like two-thirds of all health care spending in America is public spending if you include the value of the exclusion from taxation of employer-sponsored coverage, which is effectively a form of subsidy for that kind of coverage. So, if you put all that together, it&#8217;s like two-thirds. If you don&#8217;t include the tax expenditures, it&#8217;s more like half. The government’s role in health care in America is considerable and growing all the time. It’s a misperception out there that the American health care system is a free market system, and European countries are all socialists. That&#8217;s not true at all. There are countries in Europe that are much more market-oriented than the United States.
In fact, at FREOPP, we&#8217;re doing some research on this topic, really trying to identify which countries have the most market-oriented systems, and which ones have the most socialized. We&#8217;re coming to an analysis that suggests that there&#8217;s somewhere around a half dozen countries that are more market-oriented than the United States. The most notable example is Switzerland. In Switzerland, you have a system in which everybody has private insurance. There are not government insurers, there are no public options, there&#8217;s no Medicare, there&#8217;s no Medicaid. Everyone buys private insurance. There is an individual mandate in Switzerland, and in terms of our own health reform proposals, we are opposed to an individual mandate.
In Switzerland, it&#8217;s all individual private insurance. Everyone shops for their own coverage much like we do in Medicare Advantage, and that coverage is subsidized for people in the bottom fifth of the spectrum in terms of income, illness, and things like that. So, it&#8217;s a pretty good system that&#8217;s much more fiscally sustainable than ours, and where everyone has universal coverage. That&#8217;s an example of the model that we can look to and say, &#8220;Hey, if you want to achieve universal coverage, you don&#8217;t have to go the socialist route. You can actually go the market-based route. You can learn from Medicare Advantage, you can learn from Switzerland.&#8221; That&#8217;s why at FREOPP, our health reform plan is called “Medicare Advantage for All,” because we really want to highlight that Medicare Advantage is a great model for thinking about how to expand coverage in an affordable way.
DW: What is the conservative solution to healthcare? What are the tentpole ideas of the solution to what we have now?
ROY: First of all, it&#8217;s very important to embrace the concept of universal coverage. I think too often conservatives have fallen into the trap of saying that just because the Left supports a certain policy outcome, we must be against it. That doesn&#8217;t make any sense because if you are a true believer in free enterprise, if you are a true believer in capitalism, you know that it’s free enterprise and free markets that have led to almost everyone in America being able to have a job, to almost every American having a smart phone, to almost every American being able to afford a laptop. These things are possible because of free market innovation and competition.
So, if we believe that free market innovation and competition can make those kinds of services cheaper and more accessible and more abundant and more available to every American, why don&#8217;t we think the same about health care? We should. We should understand that it&#8217;s actually free enterprise that does the best job of delivering affordable health insurance to every American.
Using that as our philosophical premise, we start by saying we should embrace the cause of universal coverage, and show how markets can achieve it. So, how would markets achieve it? The simple answer is, we should learn from Medicare Advantage. The irony of Bernie Sanders talking about “Medicare for All” is that if you look at the Medicare program today, from 15 years ago to now, there has been zero growth in the number of people enrolled in the single-payer component of the Medicare program.
All the growth and enrollment in Medicare has come from private insurance, from the Medicare Advantage program. Why is that? Because the private insurers have shown that they can deliver the benefits of the Medicare program at a lower cost, on average about 10% less expensive than the traditional government-run Medicare program. They&#8217;ve gotten so much more efficient that they&#8217;re now adding extra benefits like vision care and dental care on top of the traditional Medicare benefits – and prescription drug coverage. So, you&#8217;re getting a lot more benefits at a lower cost.
Every year, the gap between private plans under Medicare Advantage and the single-payer or government-run approach under the traditional Medicare widens. Our concept, what we propose, is to learn from that, to offer more affordable options to people elsewhere who are under the age of 65.
We basically describe “Medicare Advantage for All” with four core principles. The first is that you have to have a system that&#8217;s affordable for every generation. What do I mean by that? It means that we haven&#8217;t solved the problem if we&#8217;ve made health care and health insurance affordable for the Americans living today, but made the system fiscally unsustainable for future generations. It&#8217;s incredibly important to do both, to make health care affordable for those who need it today, but also make health care and health insurance affordable for the taxpayers of tomorrow. That’s number one because if we have a system we can&#8217;t afford, either today or tomorrow, we haven&#8217;t solved anything.
Principle number two is to have personalized insurance and personalized options. Milton Friedman famously wrote a book called “Free to Choose,” and that is an essential principle of market-based health reform, that all Americans should have the freedom to choose among a wide variety of plans that suit their needs. So, under Medicare for All, you have no choices, you just have the government0-run plan, so-called Medicare for All. Under the current system, under the status quo American system, very few Americans actually have a choice in the way they get their health insurance.
If you&#8217;re in Medicaid, you&#8217;re basically handed a government-assigned plan. If you get insurance from your employer, yes, it&#8217;s a private insurance plan, but you didn&#8217;t choose it – some HR bureaucrat at your company chose it, and imposed it on you whether or not that&#8217;s a good plan for you. That&#8217;s not a choice. And a lot of people who are in the Medicare program are basically in a single-payer system where they don&#8217;t have any choice. All Americans should have the freedom to choose among a wide variety of private plans, just like they can in the Medicare Advantage program. That&#8217;s a core element of our approach.
The next element is fairness to taxpayers. What does that mean? That means that to the degree that we publicly finance our health care system, those taxpayer revenues must be as focused as possible on the vulnerable population. The sick, people with pre-existing conditions, people with birth defects, and childhood genetic disorders, and the very poor and the disabled. Not the wealthy.
One of the things that&#8217;s most wrong with our system today is that you and I pay taxes so that the wealthiest Americans – millionaires and billionaires, to borrow a phrase – can have government-subsidized insurance. Why is it that steel workers and truck drivers are asked to pay taxes so that millionaires and billionaires can have government-subsidized health insurance? That&#8217;s insane, and that&#8217;s something we absolutely have to reform. If we do that, we can save an enormous amount of money in terms of the deficits and debt, and what we spend on health care without threatening coverage for anyone.
The fourth point is innovation and competition for patients. What we&#8217;re talking about there is the rise of monopoly power, and crony capitalism in the U.S. The problem of crony capitalism and monopolies that both extract favors form the government and extract monopoly prices from patients is a huge problem in the United States – and they go together because regional monopolies, like a regional hospital monopoly, has incredible power not only to charge higher prices to patients, but also to lobby their congressman and say, &#8220;Hey, we control a lot of the economy in this district and we control a lot of jobs in this district, and unless you do what we want, we will scream bloody murder.&#8221;
A lot of congressmen and state legislators cave into that. That’s a huge problem. We&#8217;ve got to do more to curtail the power of monopolies to raise prices on patients, and also because monopolies prevent the rise of innovation. You have to have competition in order to have a more innovative system.
Competition is really important for reducing prices and also for increasing quality and increasing innovation. Innovation and competition for patients is essential. Monopolies are not the solution. Again, there are a lot of people in conservative and Republican circles who are confused about this. They say, “If it’s a monopoly, but it&#8217;s a private sector monopoly, that&#8217;s okay.” What we&#8217;re arguing is that monopolies are bad regardless of whether they&#8217;re private sector monopolies or government sponsored monopolies. If you really want a market-based system, you actually have to have a market, and having a market means that you have to have choices as to where you get your care and your coverage.</blockquote>
In part three of this interview, which will be released on Sunday, Roy discusses hospital monopolization, the real progress that conservatives have made on health care legislation, the pressures faced by elected officials to retain the status quo, and more.
I’d like to thank Avik Roy for taking the time to speak about such an important issue. For more information, you can follow him on <a href="https://twitter.com/Avik?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">Twitter</a> or visit the FREOPP website <a href="https://freopp.org/the-freopp-founders-avik-roy-53719dfcaf05">here</a>.

Nurse

INTERVIEW (Part II): Health Care Policy Expert Talks About What Free Market Reform Actually Looks Like

INTERVIEW (Part II): Health Care Policy Expert Talks About What Free Market Reform Actually Looks Like | The Daily Wire

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The Democratic presidential primary has consolidated into a showdown between former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). One of the key issues on which the Democratic candidates are running is health care.
While the progressive gold standard seems to be a single-payer system, there’s a break within the party, with some preferring a more “moderate” approach to reform. Both Biden and Sanders have presented health care plans that would greatly expand the role of the federal government, and increase government spending by billions to trillions of dollars over a decade.
The “Medicare for All” plan put forth by Sanders is estimated to cost more than $32 trillion over a decade, while Biden’s plan is estimated to cost approximately $750 billion.
The Daily Wire recently spoke with health care policy expert Avik Roy about Medicare for All and the Biden plan, as well as what more conservative, free market solutions would look like. Roy is the co-founder and president of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP), which “conducts original research on expanding economic opportunity to those who least have it,” according to the organization’s <a href="https://freopp.org/our-mission-3b16e8e8c656">official website</a>.
In part one of this three-part interview, Roy discusses what “Medicare for All” really means, the flaws of such a system, the dangers of the “moderate” counterpoint, and if a nation can achieve so-called universal coverage without a health care mandate.
<blockquote>DW: Medicare for All has become kind of the gold standard for progressives, despite Bernie losing some currency in the race as of Super Tuesday and beyond. What are the major flaws of such a system?
ROY: Well, before we get to the flaws, I think it&#8217;s important to actually define what so-called “Medicare for All” is, because when pollsters ask questions about whether people support Medicare for All, the polls make it clear that people don&#8217;t actually understand what it is. So, let&#8217;s define what Medicare for All is or at least – I always put quotes around “Medicare for All” because it&#8217;s not actually Medicare for All, what Bernie Sanders is proposing. More than a third of the people enrolled in the Medicare program today have private insurance through a program called Medicare Advantage, which is a robust, competitive market-based program to give seniors the coverage they need.
That would be abolished under what Bernie Sanders and others call “Medicare for All.” Under what they call Medicare for all, all private insurance would be abolished. So, it would end Medicare as we know it first and foremost because nearly 40% of all seniors are enrolled in private plans in Medicare today. That&#8217;s just for the Medicare physician and hospital benefit. Even more seniors, almost all seniors, enroll in private plans to offer prescription drug coverage through the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act. That would also be abolished under the Bernie Sanders plan. So, if what Bernie calls “Medicare for All” were enacted, Medicare as we know it would be wiped out. It would be repealed and replaced by an entirely new program in which there is no room for private insurance.
That&#8217;s really important to understand, that what Bernie and the Left call “Medicare for All” would repeal and replace Medicare along with Obamacare, and the employer-based market, and everything else about our healthcare system. So, it is truly a dramatic, if not a radical, departure from the system we have. It does not resemble Medicare in its current form.
On the polling side, when you ask voters what do they understand the term “Medicare for All” to mean, the vast majority understand it to mean that if somebody is uninsured or they don&#8217;t have an affordable option to get their coverage, they&#8217;d have an option that resembles Medicare. And because overwhelming majorities of Americans want every American to have health insurance – just like we want every American to have a good public school education – people support that. People support every American having affordable health insurance. Again, that is not what Medicare for All is. Medicare for All is not an option for people to buy affordable coverage if they don&#8217;t have any affordable options today; it’s a removal of options, because any choice you have today in your insurance care, it would be eliminated under “Medicare for All.” Instead of having more affordable options, you would have only one option, the government run option, and that option would be not necessarily more affordable than what you had before.
The two most important gaps between what is described as “Medicare for All” and the reality of single-payer health care is one, that under Medicare today, most seniors have some form of private coverage whether it&#8217;s through Medicare Advantage or the Medicare prescription drug program – and those options would be abolished. Two, it&#8217;s important that people understand that Medicare for All is not the same thing as what Bernie is describing as “Medicare for All.”
DW: What are the primary flaws of Sanders’ system, or something like “Medicare for all who want it,” which was proposed by former candidate Pete Buttigieg?
ROY: The first is that the plan that Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren and others have put out there would basically make healthcare &#8220;free&#8221; at the point of care. There would be no premiums, no co-pays, no deductibles. You could basically go to the doctor, go to the hospital, get any kind of healthcare service you want, and the government would pay for it. That&#8217;s the theory.
Of course, if you set up that kind of system, you create a health care system that&#8217;s the equivalent of me at an open bar at an in-law&#8217;s wedding, where I&#8217;m going to consume everything and anything that I can pull off the shelf because it&#8217;s free to me. So, what you see in every single-payer system, particularly the British system and the Canadian system, is that there are massive restrictions on access to care, and heavily regulated prices and controls on prices of care.
Because otherwise, if you just have a system where everyone can consume any health care they want and they don&#8217;t have to pay a bill, you&#8217;re just going to have massive over-utilization of the health care system, and prices can go up because if you&#8217;re a hospital or a doctor or a drug company, you can charge whatever you want and pass the bill off to the taxpayer. That&#8217;s a great model for the health care industry, but it&#8217;s not a great model for the taxpayer. What most rational single-payer systems do is ration care. They say, &#8220;We are going to make it free on the front end, but we&#8217;re going to restrict your ability to use the health care system so that we don&#8217;t go broke.&#8221;
And Sanders&#8217; plan doesn&#8217;t really account for that. It tries to have the “free Christmas tree for everybody,” but tries to minimize, from a political standpoint, how the plan would restrict access to care or restrict payments to hospitals and doctors, because Bernie understands that those details are politically problematic.
It would result in massive increases in taxes, and that would also be controversial. So, those are the various ways in which single-payer is problematic and even unworkable. That’s why, frankly, I think it has been a mistake for conservatives to spend all their energy debating single-payer. Single-payer is bad. If Republicans were to ever run against a Democratic nominee who was a genuine advocate of single-payer, I think that would be pretty clearly expressed.
I think what conservatives and Republicans have done a pretty bad job of doing is really thinking through things that are more incremental than single-payer, but are also things that restrict human freedom and may increase costs in the healthcare system.
DW: Such as?
ROY: Well, let&#8217;s talk about the Biden plan. Joe Biden&#8217;s plan is not a “Medicare for All” plan. If we’re spending all this time talking about Medicare for All, and Medicare for All is not really what’s mainstream in the political conversation, even among Democrats, then the utility of that discussion is somewhat lower. What&#8217;s really important to discuss is what Joe Biden wants to do, which is much more reflective of, let&#8217;s call it the Democratic establishment, or the center-left Democratic establishment.
To oversimplify, there are two major components to Joe Biden&#8217;s health reform plan. One is a $750 billion bailout of Obamacare. As we all know, Obamacare has doubled or tripled health insurance premiums, particularly for younger and healthier people who need to buy insurance on the ACA exchanges. Biden doesn&#8217;t want to reform the dumb regulations that have driven those premiums upward; instead, he wants to ask taxpayers to spend another $750 billion over the next decade to paper over those mistakes.
That is a much more serious threat, I guess you could say, or policy probability, than single-payer health care. Single-payer health care, the Bernie plan, would increase federal spending by $38 trillion, give or take a few trillion, over ten years. The Biden plan is considerably smaller in scope relative to the Bernie plan. It would increase federal spending by about $750 billion over ten years. So that&#8217;s something like 50 times smaller than the Bernie plan in it&#8217;s ambition, but $750 billion is still a lot of money. Obamacare spent $2 trillion over ten years trying to cover the uninsured. So, $750 billion is a lot, especially when you consider the net spending of Obamacare.
Because Obama also cut Medicare spending by $800 billion over ten years to fund that coverage expense, the net spending increase of Obamacare is more like $1.2 trillion over ten years. So, Joe Biden&#8217;s plan is comparable in scale to Obamacare, at least fiscally, in terms of what it would do to paper over the rising premiums that Obamacare caused.
So, that&#8217;s much more important for liberty-oriented people to consider because it&#8217;s the kind of plan that is now described as the “moderate plan.” The “responsible, pragmatic, moderate” plan on the Democratic side is to increase federal spending by $750 billion over the next ten years.
DW: Is there any successful health care system anywhere in the developed world that does not offer universal coverage or include an insurance mandate?
ROY: “Mandatory” is a complex topic actually in the context of the international discussion of health care. For example, if you&#8217;re in the U.K. system, it&#8217;s not mandatory that you sign up for health care under the NHS, but your taxes go to pay for it. The analogy is – and this is true of a lot of single-payer systems in particular – it&#8217;s a lot like what we do in America for public schools. We all pay property taxes and sometimes income taxes to pay for the cost of public school, but not every American sends their kids to public school.
But the parents that send their kids to private school are still paying the taxes to send their kids to public school. So, is that mandatory or is it not? Because you&#8217;re not being mandated to go to public school, but you&#8217;re being mandated to finance public school.
The way a lot of European systems work is like that, where you&#8217;re mandated to pay taxes to fund the public system, but you&#8217;re not mandated to participate in the public system – and that varies among countries. The British NHS is on one end of this in terms of really trying to steer you or pressure you to participate in the public system. On the other end of the spectrum are countries like Australia. In Australia, there&#8217;s a public system that works exactly like American public schools, where everybody pays taxes to pay for the public system, but a considerable proportion of Australians opt to buy private insurance to have access to private hospitals and private doctors.
So, the answer is yes. You can achieve universal coverage without a mandate.
Not every country has a mandate for you to participate in a public system, but universal coverage does involve taxes that are used to finance the public system. By the way, that&#8217;s true in America, too. Everyone who pays taxes pays taxes to fund the public health care system. If you&#8217;ve ever received a paycheck, it includes something called FICA taxes, which go to fund the Social Security trust fund and the Medicare trust fund. So, every single one of us who has taken a job of any kind has paid taxes to finance public health care in America. In that sense, America is not that different from a lot of those other countries. So, I do think you can say that there are countries that have achieved universal coverage without a mandate.
A lot of it depends on how you define “universal coverage.” Does universal coverage mean that every single person has health insurance? 100% enrollment? Is that universal coverage? That&#8217;s not actually how most scholars define universal coverage. Most scholars define universal coverage as everybody in the country having access to an affordable option for health insurance. Even in the Medicare program – which Bernie Sanders would call universal coverage for the elderly, and most of us would too – 2% of seniors don&#8217;t sign up for one reason or another. There are a small minority of people who don&#8217;t actually participate in Medicare.
So, if you define universal coverage in that way, saying it may not be that every single person has health insurance, but every single person has the opportunity to buy reasonably affordable health insurance, we can definitely get there without a mandate.</blockquote>
In part two of this interview, which will be released later today, Roy talks about how the current health care system in the United States is neither free market nor government-run, and what a conservative solution could look like.
I’d like to thank Avik Roy for taking the time to speak about such an important issue. For more information, you can follow him on <a href="https://twitter.com/Avik?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">Twitter</a> or visit the FREOPP website <a href="https://freopp.org/the-freopp-founders-avik-roy-53719dfcaf05">here</a>.

Avik Roy of FREOPP

INTERVIEW (Part I): Health Care Policy Expert Talks ‘Medicare For All,’ The So-Called ‘Moderate’ Alternative, And Free Market Solutions

Free market

INTERVIEW (Part I): Health Care Policy Expert Talks ‘Medicare For All,’ The So-Called ‘Moderate’ Alternative, And Free Market Solutions | The Daily Wire

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Sen. Bernie Sanders said: &#8220;I believe that health care is a right of all people.&#8221; He&#8217;s not alone in that contention. That claim comes from Democrats and Republicans and liberals and conservatives. It is not just a health care right that people claim. There are &#8220;rights&#8221; to decent housing, decent food, a decent job and prescription drugs. In a free and moral society, do people have these rights? Let&#8217;s begin by asking ourselves: What is a right?
In the standard usage of the term, a &#8220;right&#8221; is something that exists simultaneously among people. In the case of our U.S. Constitutional decree, we have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Our individual right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness imposes no obligation upon another other than the duty of noninterference.
As such, a right imposes no obligation on another. For example, the right to free speech is something we all possess simultaneously. My right to free speech imposes no obligation upon another except that of noninterference. Similarly, I have a right to travel freely. Again, that right imposes no obligation upon another except that of noninterference.
Sanders&#8217; claim that health care is a right does impose obligations upon others. We see that by recognizing that there is no Santa Claus or tooth fairy who gives resources to government to pay for medical services. Moreover, the money does not come from congressmen and state legislators reaching into their own pockets to pay for the service. That means that in order for government to provide medical services to someone who cannot afford it, it must use intimidation, threats and coercion to take the earnings of another American to provide that service.
Let&#8217;s apply this bogus concept of rights to my right to speak and travel freely. In the case of my right to free speech, it might impose obligations on others to supply me with an auditorium, microphone and audience. It may require newspapers or television stations to allow me to use their property to express my views. My right to travel freely might require that others provide me with resources to purchase airplane tickets and hotel accommodations. What if I were to demand that others make sacrifices so that I can exercise my free speech and travel rights, I suspect that most Americans would say, &#8220;Williams, you have rights to free speech and you have a right to travel freely, but I&#8217;m not obligated to pay for them!&#8221;
A moral vision of rights does not mean that we should not help our fellow man in need. It means that helping with health care needs to be voluntary (i.e., free market decisions or voluntary donations to charities that provide health care.) The government&#8217;s role in health care is to protect this individual right to choose. As Senator Rand Paul was brave enough to say, &#8220;The basic assumption that you have a right to get something from somebody else means you have to endorse the concept of theft.&#8221;
Statists go further to claim that people have a &#8220;right&#8221; to housing, to a job, to an education, to an affordable wage. These so-called rights impose burdens on others in the form of involuntary servitude. If one person has a right to something he did not earn, it means that another person does not have a right to something he did earn.
The provision by the U.S. Congress of a so-called right to health care should offend any sense of moral decency. If you&#8217;re a Christian or a Jew, you should be against the notion of one American living at the expense of another. When God gave Moses the Eighth Commandment — &#8220;Thou shalt not steal&#8221; — I am sure that He did not mean, &#8220;Thou shalt not steal — unless there is a majority vote in the U.S. Congress.&#8221;
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Medicare for All sign

WILLIAMS: Rights Versus Wishes

Free Speech

human rights

Sen. Bernie Sanders said: &quot;I believe that health care is a right of all people.&quot; He&#039;s not alone in that contention. That claim comes from Democrats and

WILLIAMS: Rights Versus Wishes | The Daily Wire

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Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) made a recent appearance on &#8220;The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon&#8221; where he cited the current spread of the coronavirus as a perfect example of why America needs a single-payer health care system.
&#8220;We should talk about coronavirus if you don&#8217;t mind, I watch the news, I read the news, and I just don&#8217;t know who to really trust,&#8221; Jimmy Fallon said to Bernie Sanders.
The socialist senator from Vermont then used the moment to paint President Trump as being &#8220;anti-science,&#8221; while criticizing his decision to appoint Vice President Mike Pence as head of the task force.
&#8220;That is the problem we have today, we have a president who is anti-science, doesn&#8217;t believe in the reality of climate change, who has appointed Mike Pence, who is also not known to be much of a scientist, to lead the task force,&#8221; said Sanders. &#8220;Clearly, at this moment, you need somebody who you can trust who is going to bring together the best scientists, doctors, researchers, work with the entire world, to do everything that we can to halt this terrible pandemic.&#8221;
&#8220;And I think there are clearly some things we need to do right away,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;The idea that we have so many people in this country, the only country on earth, major country, that doesn&#8217;t guarantee healthcare to all people, we have to make sure that everybody, right now, feels free when you’re sick to go to a doctor, regardless of your income.&#8221;
Sanders then segued into a major pitch for single-payer, government-run healthcare.
&#8220;And you know what? The government will pay that bill,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Number two, we are the only major country on Earth not to guarantee paid medical leave. If you can believe it, there are people who are sick today, who may actually believe they have symptoms of the coronavirus, who are going to work because they have no income. &#8230; We have got to do what every other country on Earth does and guarantee paid family and medical leave, and do it right now on an emergency basis.&#8221;
<iframe title="Sen. Bernie Sanders on the Trump Administration&#039;s Coronavirus Missteps, Greed, Grandkids" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/y2P5QbaJt_g?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
As noted by Christopher Jacobs at <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/10/no-bernie-sanders-single-payer-wouldnt-eliminate-the-coronavirus-outbreak/">The Federalist</a>, a single-payer healthcare system would not exactly be a panacea, considering that Bernie was essentially echoing recent claims made by Britain&#8217;s Jeremy Corbyn regarding the coronavirus outbreak:
<blockquote>Yesterday, our part-time prime minister finally published the steps that his government will take to tackle the outbreak of the disease. The strategy broadly has our support, but a decade of Tory austerity means that our national health service is already struggling to cope. Bed-occupancy levels are at 94% and hundreds of our most vulnerable people are being treated on trolleys in corridors. What additional funding will our overstretched and underfunded NHS be given to deal with this crisis?</blockquote>
On Wednesday night, President Trump spoke from the Oval Office where he announced &#8220;several strong but necessary actions&#8221; to combat the coronavirus, which has now begun to hurt the American economy. One of his top actions included ensuring that &#8220;working Americans impacted by the virus can stay home without fear of financial hardship.&#8221;

Sanders on Fallon

WATCH: Bernie Sanders Says Coronavirus Shows Why U.S. Needs Single-Payer Healthcare

Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) made a recent appearance on &quot;The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon&quot; where he cited the current spread of the coronavirus

WATCH: Bernie Sanders Says Coronavirus Shows Why U.S. Needs Single-Payer Healthcare | The Daily Wire

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Senator Chuck Schumer&#8217;s threats against Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch on the steps of the Supreme Court yesterday were clearly meant to be physical intimidation. His spokesman now claims Schumer&#8217;s warning that the named justices would &#8220;pay a price,&#8221; &#8220;reap the whirlwind,&#8221; and &#8220;not know what hit them,&#8221; was referring to political backlash. But members of the nation&#8217;s highest court are, by design, insulated from political backlash. They aren&#8217;t elected. They can&#8217;t be kicked out of office for issuing an unpopular opinion. So if he wasn&#8217;t referring to a political price – and he couldn&#8217;t have been – then we must ask ourselves: what other sort of price can a public figure be made to pay by an enraged mob? It&#8217;s not hard to connect the dots. Schumer was attempting to intimidate sitting Supreme Court justices, to make them feel physically unsafe, so that they would decide a case how he prefers. That is not only disgraceful but illegal, and he should be arrested and charged.
The rest of the abortion enthusiasts rallying in D.C. have not behaved much better. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) <a href="https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1235377676371845123?s=20">launched</a> into one of her patented spittle-flecked rants, shouting that pro-lifers &#8220;shouldn&#8217;t want to have sex&#8221; with her. On that point, I expect broad bipartisan support. A woman who calls herself &#8220;the Beyonce of abortion storytelling&#8221; (which presumably means she lip-syncs her speeches) <a href="https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1235313000162217987?s=20">bragged</a> about having killed her child, and encouraged the crowd to applaud all women who&#8217;ve had abortions. She was rather explicitly celebrating abortion, even as pro-aborts claim that nobody celebrates abortion. This is what we&#8217;ve come to expect from that side. They do and say things while insisting that nobody does or says the very things they are currently doing and saying.
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The actress Busy Phillips <a href="https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1235642093713924098">vowed</a> to never stop talking about her abortion, of which she is very proud because it helped further her D-list career. Is there anything sadder than someone who trades in their soul and their child for bit parts on &#8220;Drunk History&#8221; and &#8220;Cougar Town&#8221;? Bizarrely, she also promised to continue shouting from the rooftops about her &#8220;periods&#8221; and her &#8220;yeast infections.&#8221; It is not clear what yeast infections have to do with anything or why any sane person would bring them up, unsolicited, in front of an audience. But this is likewise to be expected. The mark of a modern feminist is that she loves to speak in graphic terms about her body and its functions, and she also wants you to know that all of the things she&#8217;s telling you, which you didn&#8217;t ask or want to hear about, are none of your business.
But we can&#8217;t allow the reason for these hysterics to get lost in the mayhem. The pro-abortion rage mob and its ringleaders weren&#8217;t mobilized by a case that threatens to overturn Roe v. Wade. In fact, the case at issue does not have any direct bearing on abortion rights at all. June Medical Services v. Russo stems from a lawsuit brought by abortionists against the state of Louisiana over a law that would require abortion clinics to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. The point is to protect women who <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK430793/">suffer serious complications</a> during an abortion procedure. The law would ensure that the abortion-injured patient can be admitted directly to a hospital and receive the potentially life-saving treatment she needs. In Louisiana, all ambulatory surgical centers are required to have admitting privileges. This is a very normal regulation that many types of medical clinics all over the country must comply with. If abortion is health care, and abortion clinics are health care facilities, there should be no objection to state laws that treat them accordingly.
Of course, in keeping with the theme, abortion proponents want to have their <a href="https://www.lifenews.com/2019/06/04/miley-cyrus-thinks-licking-a-cake-will-make-you-support-abortion/">abortion cake</a>, and eat it too. They want to present child murder as a legitimate medical procedure while reserving the right to go into spasms of fury if anyone proposes a law that treats abortion as a legitimate medical procedure. That&#8217;s because abortion, for them, isn&#8217;t so much medicinal as it is sacramental. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) was telling the truth when she <a href="https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1232363356213981184?s=20">linked</a> abortion with &#8220;religious freedom.&#8221; No law, policy, regulation, or limitation may get within a thousand miles of the sacred ritual. They will defend unlimited abortions with the same satanic enthusiasm that the Aztecs defended their temples of human sacrifice from the Spanish invaders. All decency and dignity goes out the window. The idol must be protected at all costs. That is what we are witnessing in D.C. this week.

Abortion protest

WALSH: With Their Freak Out In D.C. This Week, Abortion Proponents Have Admitted That Abortion Isn’t Health Care 

Abortion

Charles Schumer

Supreme Court

Senator Chuck Schumer&#039;s threats against Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch on the steps of the Supreme Court yesterday were clearly meant to be physical

WALSH: With Their Freak Out In D.C. This Week, Abortion Proponents Have Admitted That Abortion Isn&#039;t Health Care  | The Daily Wire

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When I first began to read, listen to, and watch political commentary, and identify my position on the socio-political spectrum, I felt a great passion about numerous issues. I was young, and the fire burned brightly. A decade and a half later, I’ve slowly come to realize that passion can act as a sort of cataract to political decision-making.
It’s entirely reasonable and even appropriate to feel passionately about certain political issues – after all, without passion, we would have little motivation to engage in politics at all. That said, we must be keenly aware of the ways in which our fervor is influencing our ideology as it pertains to the way in which we would like to see things be accomplished.
There are two apt examples that illustrate the poison of passion – one on the Left and one on the Right.
The debate about how the health care system can be fixed has raged for decades, and despite some disruptive changes, e.g. the Affordable Care Act, little has actually been accomplished for good or ill.
Groups on both sides have their arguments locked and loaded, and are so settled into what they perceive to be the truth that no amount of data or reasoning will break their line of thinking. As a self-identified conservatarian, I have a set of ideas based on my conversations with several experts, as well as what I believe to be a logical assessment of the data set before me, of how to reform the health care system in such a way as to improve quality and make it both more affordable and accessible.
What I have tried to do is allow new information and perspectives to inform my ideology so long as such information and perspectives stand up to scrutiny. This has led to moments of evolution in the way I view the means by which the health care system can be made more effective. In other words, I have worked diligently to keep passion from infecting my perspective to the extent that I would not countenance information that challenged my ideology as it’s currently framed.
I have not always been successful, having on several occasions dug my heels in when my desire to be “right” meant more to me than understanding the issue more fully.
Setting aside politicians, many of whom seem to be driven not by a craving for solutions but by an appetite for votes, I believe that the average progressive American is just as motivated to find solutions as their counterparts on the other end of the political spectrum – they have simply allowed passion to infect their perception, leading to the formation of blind spots.
Progressive Americans want to see the less fortunate have access to health care, they don’t want surprise medical bills sending families to the brink of bankruptcy, they want more affordable medications for chronic medical problems, among other things. None of these wants are bad. In fact, they are the exact opposite.
Conservatives want very similar things. Where good faith progressives and conservatives diverge is over the “how” of it all. Progressives generally believe that government intervention is how these things can be appropriately achieved. Conservatives generally believe that deregulation and the free market is the answer.
Watching the health care discussion as it occurs during the Democratic primary process is illustrative of the idea that passion often overrides common sense. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has proposed a “Medicare for All” plan that would, according to him, provide every American with “free” access to health care. He admits that middle-class taxes would increase, but claims that the positive impact outweighs the higher taxes. The estimated cost of the plan is approximately $32 trillion over a decade.
Whether Sanders is a genuine believer is unimportant in this case. Supporters of the senator, as well as supporters of other candidates offering similar plans featuring massive increases in government spending and scope, have been essentially blinded by their passion for the issue. They see an opportunity to accomplish a desired good, and are blinded to the negative externalities.
However, the negative externalities of such a plan are numerous – the elimination of private care, untenable increases in government spending, allowing the federal government full control over an extraordinarily large, multifaceted industry. These initial negatives are only exacerbated by what would follow. As can be seen in other nations that have nationalized or semi-nationalized systems, giving the government control over the health care industry inevitably leads to access burdens, ballooning costs, subpar care, talent loss, and innovation shrinkage.
Because of this blind fervor, supporters of nationalized health care cannot properly assess, with any intellectual vigor, the pros and cons of the situation. If they were able to look at the issue with dispassion, they could engage with those who do not support such a plan, and work toward a meaningful, effective, and feasible solution.
But since passion has coated their eyes, they have lost all depth of perspective, and can only push out talking points crafted by progressive politicians. They cannot reach any deeper, or wrestle with information that doesn’t comport with their established worldview. This is why when pressed, they often become angry or indignant. They cannot fathom the notion that someone wouldn’t see the world as they do. They are ill prepared for such a confrontation because they haven’t taken the time to learn to articulate their point of view, and the only option left is to short-circuit.
Dispassion could alleviate this ideological rigidity.
On the Right, there is a similar rigidity when it comes to President Donald Trump. Prior to the 2016 nomination of Trump, there was a divide among Republicans as to who was the best choice to represent conservative values in the general election against Hillary Clinton.
Conservatives of all stripes had their favorites. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), and even former Ohio Governor John Kasich were favorited by different segments of the Republican Party. Many individuals who supported these candidates saw Donald Trump as a cruel, unstable, ideologically chaotic narcissist.
After Trump won the November 2016 election, there was a small band of conservatives who dug their nails in. They didn’t support Trump during the general, and they weren’t going to support him as president. These people are known colloquially as “Never Trumpers.” It doesn’t matter if some of the president’s policies are good – they don’t like him, and they will oppose him at every step of his presidency.
On the other end, there is a base of Trump backers who, regardless of his policies, are hellbent on supporting the president. Conservative policies? Great! Not-so-conservative polices? He’s playing 4D master chess, and you’re just a fool! There isn’t any in-between for these supporters. Let’s call this group of people “Always Trumpers.”
Somewhere in the middle is a third group who applaud the president when he enacts conservative policies, appoints originalist judges, and fights back at the dishonest media, but condemn him when he behaves poorly or supports policies or agendas that are not so conservative.
The “Never Trumpers” and those who support Trump no matter what are equally blinded by passion.
It has to be acceptable to reward good behavior while taking the president to task over his shortcomings. Donald Trump has appointed at least one stellar Supreme Court Justice in Neil Gorsuch, reduced the unemployment rate to record lows, cut taxes, repealed regulations, taken a dishonest media to task, and sided with pro-life and religious freedom causes, among other things.
He has also failed to do anything about the rapidly increasing national debt despite swearing to reduce spending, his long-promised border wall is essentially nonexistent, and his childish cruelty has shoved political discourse further into the mud, facilitating the greater tribalization of the American people.
This isn’t to say that the Democrats are any better. They’re not. They’re actively running a socialist in the primary race for president. However, the “Always Trumpers” are the type who will, when reading the above paragraph, become indignant at the very notion that a Republican or conservative would dare say anything negative about the president. They will take to the comments section in a huff to excoriate the author, calling them a disloyal cuck or something equally ridiculous, despite the clearly articulated message above that one can support President Trump, even vote for him, and still recognize the less flattering aspects of his presidency.
These “Always Trumpers” cannot handle dissent or any information that doesn’t comport with their worldview that President Trump is the greatest of all time and must not be criticized. Because of this, much like the far-left Medicare for All advocates who have lost all depth of perspective, they will respond to critics with ad hominem attacks and meltdowns.
Dispassion would allow “Always Trumpers” to step back, and see the world in colors other than black and white.
There’s no such thing as a world without passion. As mentioned at the beginning of this piece, passion is a necessary component of politics, and of life in general. However, when passion isn’t tempered by dispassion, it can evolve into a monstrous blindness that devours anyone and anything it perceives to be a threat.
Blind passion is poisoning us. The United States is two milky-eyed beasts on a collision course.
The tonic of dispassion is sometimes unpleasant, and it requires humility and a willingness to open oneself up to contrary notions, but if we don’t take this tonic, we risk destroying beyond salvage our credibility to fight for and defend the ideas in which we strongly believe.

Donkey &#038; Elephant

CAMP: Blind Passion Is Poisoning Our Political Process

Donald Trump

Politics

When I first began to read, listen to, and watch political commentary, and identify my position on the socio-political spectrum, I felt a great passion

CAMP: Blind Passion Is Poisoning Our Political Process | The Daily Wire

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Socialist Bernie Sanders, the current front runner in the Democratic nomination race, told CBS News on Sunday night that his government-run health care system would not be &#8220;run by the government,&#8221; and that it just gets &#8220;rid of the private insurance companies.&#8221;
Sanders, whose proposal would force all Americans off of their private insurance plans and onto a government-run system, made the contradictory remarks during an interview with Anderson Cooper on &#8220;60 Minutes.&#8221;
&#8220;Isn&#8217;t that a dangerous message for Democrats to say, &#8216;You know what? We&#8217;re gonna take away your private insurance. We&#8217;re gonna give you something better run by the government,'&#8221; Cooper said. &#8220;A lot of people don&#8217;t trust that.&#8221;
&#8220;It&#8217;s not run by the government,&#8221; Sanders falsely claimed. &#8220;Medicare allows you to go to any doctor you want for better or worse, this is not socialized medicine. This is keeping the same system intact, but getting rid of the private insurance companies, giving people another card, which allows them complete freedom.&#8221;
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Bernie on his government-run health care system: &quot;It&#39;s not run by the government. Medicare allows you to go to any doctor you want for better or worse, this is not socialized medicine. This is keeping the same system intact, but getting rid of the private insurance companies&#8230;&quot; <a href="https://t.co/bTkISJTASp">pic.twitter.com/bTkISJTASp</a>
&mdash; (((Jason Rantz))) on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) <a href="https://twitter.com/jasonrantz/status/1231766919042068480?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 24, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;Sanders is a longtime support of single-payer socialized medicine, and in many ways is the intellectual progenitor for the current Democratic Party candidate trend of favoring &#8216;Medicare for All,'&#8221; The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/where-does-bernie-sanders-stand-issues-heres-josh-hammer">reported</a> last year. &#8220;He has often been critical of Obamacare for not going far enough with respect to health care coverage for all uncovered Americans. Sanders has never indicated any willingness to structurally reform fiscally ruinous health care-related entitlement programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid.&#8221;
There is no denying that Sanders is lying with his false claim that his government-run health care system is not &#8220;run by the government&#8221; and that it is not &#8220;socialized medicine.&#8221;
The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/23/health/private-health-insurance-medicare-for-all-bernie-sanders.html">reported</a> last March:
<blockquote>At the heart of the “Medicare for all” proposals championed by Senator Bernie Sanders and many Democrats is a revolutionary idea: Abolish private health insurance.
Proponents want to sweep away our complex, confusing, profit-driven mess of a health care system and start fresh with a single government-run insurer that would cover everyone.
But doing away with an entire industry would also be profoundly disruptive. The private health insurance business employs at least a half a million people, covers about 250 million Americans, and generates roughly a trillion dollars in revenues. Its companies’ stocks are a staple of the mutual funds that make up millions of Americans’ retirement savings.
Such a change would shake the entire health care system, which makes up a fifth of the United States economy, as hospitals, doctors, nursing homes and pharmaceutical companies would have to adapt to a new set of rules. Most Americans would have a new insurer — the federal government — and many would find the health insurance stocks in their retirement portfolios much less valuable.</blockquote>
While some view health care as a winning issue for Sanders, the opposite could very easily be true as the overwhelming majority like their private health insurance and are not willing to give up their private insurance.
The Hill <a href="https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/428958-poll-voters-want-the-government-to-provide-healthcare-for">reported</a> last year, &#8220;A new poll finds that about only one in 10 registered voters want the equivalent of Medicare for all if it means abolishing private health insurance plans.&#8221;
The Washington Post reported last year, &#8220;You wouldn’t know it to read most of the news coverage, or to listen to politicians, but that is one of the more consistent results in health-care polling: Over and over again, roughly 7 out of every 10 Americans <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/245195/americans-rate-healthcare-quite-positively.aspx">report</a> that they’re fairly satisfied with the quality of their personal coverage.&#8221;
Gallup <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/245195/americans-rate-healthcare-quite-positively.aspx">reported</a> at the end of 2018, &#8220;As the incoming Congress prepares to debate further changes to the U.S. healthcare system, solid majorities of Americans rate the coverage (69%) and quality (80%) of the healthcare they personally receive as &#8216;excellent&#8217; or &#8216;good.'&#8221;

Democratic Presidential Candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders Campaigns In Texas

Bernie On His Government Health Program: Not ‘Run By The Government,’ Just Gets Rid Of Free Market

Socialism

Socialist Bernie Sanders, the current front runner in the Democratic nomination race, told CBS News on Sunday night that his government-run health care

Bernie On His Government Health Program: Not ‘Run By The Government,’ Just Gets Rid Of Free Market | The Daily Wire

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At the debate in Las Vegas on Wednesday night, heart attack survivor Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) appeared to praise free-market healthcare on the same night he advocated abolishing it.
Last October, Sanders suffered a heart attack and received treatment at the Desert Springs Hospital Medical Center in Nevada. During the debate, he thanked Las Vegas for the &#8220;excellent&#8221; care he received while being there. &#8220;Thank you, Las Vegas, for the excellent medical care I got in the hospital for two days,&#8221; he said.
As <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/hearts-attack-survivor-bernie-sanders-called-out-for-praising-free-market-system-health-care">pointed out</a> by former George H.W. Bush staffer Brad Blakeman on Fox Nation, Sanders was in fact praising private healthcare at that moment despite being a staunch advocate against it.
&#8220;What I really liked was he thanked the health care system of Nevada, which saved his life, which is a private health care system,&#8221; said Blakeman. &#8220;He had the best of the best. Why? Because it&#8217;s a free-market system. You go to DMV&#8230; that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m calling Medicare-for-all. If you like going to the DMV, you&#8217;re going to love Medicare-for-all.&#8221;
During the debate, Sanders&#8217; took a beating on his Medicare-For-All plan, especially due to the fact that one of Nevada&#8217;s most powerful unions, the Culinary Union, recently denounced it prior to the upcoming caucus. From <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/483769-democratic-clash-over-medicare-for-all-reaches-new-heights-in-debate">The Hill</a>:
<blockquote>The Culinary Union in Nevada, a powerful force in the state, has made waves by criticizing Sanders’s plan for taking away the health benefits they negotiated and replacing them with a new government plan.
Sanders sought to offer reassurance that the government plan would be even more generous.
“I will never sign a bill that will reduce the health care benefits they have,” he said of the union.
However, Buttigieg called it “condescension and arrogance” to say the government knows better than unions as to which health insurance plan is best.
Like Klobuchar, Buttigieg is pushing for an optional government health insurance plan that would allow people to retain their private insurance.</blockquote>
The issue of Bernie&#8217;s health was also the subject of conversation at the debate on Wednesday night, a serious topic in light of the fact that the socialist senator has refused to release all of his medical records.
&#8220;We released the full report of heart attack, full 29 years in Capitol medical history, and furthermore, we released reports from two leading Vermont cardiologists who describe my situation and, by the way, who said Bernie Sanders is more than able to deal with stress and vigor of being the president of the United States,&#8221; Sanders <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/bernie-doubles-down-on-health-record-secrecy-attacks-bloomberg">told his critics</a> on Wednesday night.
Prior to the debate, Sanders’ spokesperson Briahna Joy Gray told CNN that Sanders is fully fit to be President of the United States.
“I think the American people deserve to know exactly as much as every other candidate in this race, currently and historically,” Gray said. “It’s really telling given that none of same concern is being demonstrated for Michael Bloomberg, who is the same age as Bernie Sanders, who has suffered heart attacks in the past.&#8221;
If Bernie Sanders were elected, he would be the oldest president in history.

Democratic Presidential Candidates Debate In Las Vegas Ahead Of Nevada Caucuses

Did Heart Attack Survivor Bernie Sanders Mistakenly Praise Free Market Healthcare In The Debate?

At the debate in Las Vegas on Wednesday night, heart attack survivor Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) appeared to praise free-market healthcare on the same

Did Heart Attack Survivor Bernie Sanders Mistakenly Praise Free Market Healthcare In The Debate? | The Daily Wire

https://www.dailywire.com/news/did-heart-attack-survivor-bernie-sanders-mistakenly-praise-free-market-healthcare-in-the-debate/

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