America's Biggest Lie: We Can't Afford MEDICARE FOR ALL

[appalachiablue]

Last edited Tue Apr 23, 2019, 08:34 PM - Edit history (1)

'America’s Biggest Lie: We Can’t Afford Medicare for All.' Think about how much your income would go up if you didn't have to pay for healthcare at all. That would begin to close the gap between productivity and wages for the first time in a generation. By Les Leopold, Common Dreams, April 23, 2019. *Excerpts:

.."The point is to give Americans what they have been long denied – high quality universal healthcare AND a real wage increase by providing Medicare for All with no co-pays, no deductibles and no premiums." We are the richest country in the history of the world, however, and certainly could afford vastly expanded and improved vital public services if we had the will. What stands in the way is runaway inequality. Our nation’s wealth has been hijacked by the super-rich, with plenty of aid from their paid-for politicians.



Over the past 40 years the top fraction of the top 1% have systematically denied working people the fruits of their enormous productivity. The results of this wage theft can be seen clearly in the chart below which tracks productivity (output per hour of labor) and average weekly wages (after accounting for inflation) of non-supervisory and production workers (about 85 % of the workforce)...As we can see clearly, the productivity trend has been ever upward. Today the average worker is nearly three times as productive per hour of labor as he or she was at the end of WWII. And the workforce is more than three times as large. That means we are a colossal economic powerhouse. But unless you are an economic elite, it doesn’t feel that way...

The fatalistic story sold to us by elite-funded think tanks is that the rise of international competition and the introduction of advanced technology crushed the wages of those without the highest skill levels. The typical worker, it is claimed, is now competing with cheap labor from around the world and hence sees his or her wages stall and even decline. And since there really isn’t much anyone can do about globalization or automation, there’s nothing we can do about the stalling wages. Such a convenient story to justify runaway inequality! "So next time you hear someone say we can’t afford a public good, that we need to tighten our belts and get used to austerity, think about all that wealth that has flowed to the very top."

The real story is far more complex and troubling. Yes, globalization and automation contribute to stagnant wages. But as the International Labor Organization shows in their remarkable 2012 study, only about 30 % of this wage stagnation can be attributed to technology and globalization. The main cause is the neo-liberal policy agenda of deregulation of finance, cuts in social spending and attacks on labor unions. And within that mix the biggest driver of wage stagnation can be attributed to financialization – the deregulation of Wall Street which permitted — for the first time since the Great Depression — the rapacious financial strip-mining of workers, students, families and communities...

There are numerous ways for these economic elites pay their fair share:
Financial transaction tax on stock, bond and derivative transactions;
Wealth tax on those with over $50 million in wealth;
Minimum corporate tax of 35 percent on all corporations with over $100 million in profits who now pay little or nothing like Amazon did this past year;
Raise the marginal tax bracket to 70% on all income over $10 million per year;
Increase the inheritance tax on the super-rich to prevent the creation of a permanent oligarchy…and so on.

More, https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/04/23/americas-biggest-lie-we-cant-afford-medicare-all

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

1. Biggest lie alright... leave it to Bernie to set the record straight.

Bernie & Elizabeth 2020!!!
Welcome to the revolution!!!

[appalachiablue]

2. Mainstream news fallacy- 'shaky SS, Medicare' & comment solutions

"Medicare, Social Security Face Shaky Fiscal Futures, Report Shows," Bloomberg News, April 22, 2019.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142306298

[BeckyDem]

4. We the people can't afford to ignore this right. The lie people like their insurance carrier is

blowing up too. I bet these folks are so happy, right?

As health plan costs hit $1,000 a month, teachers take side jobs, delay care
By Allie Morris, Austin Bureau Feb. 7, 2019
https://www.expressnews.com/news/politics/texas_legislature/article/As-health-plan-costs-hit-1-000-a-month-teachers-13601129.php

[appalachiablue]

5. The entire for profit system is largely a failure but

a boon for insurance companies in the past 20+ years, as part of the 'FIRE sector'- Finance, Insurance, Real Estate that expanded with financialization of the economy in the neoliberal era.

Teachers and administrators like the Texas couple are being exploited and driven out of their profession as per the extreme right goal to break public schools and replace them with private, commercial education. It was exploding health care costs and requirements to report to carriers body measurements including waist, on a daily basis, that partly caused WVa. teachers to go on strike 2 years ago.

Working people cannot afford the obscene costs and requirements of the current system. We need Medicare For All. I hope that more Americans have learned how advanced countries with strong safety nets don't pay these amounts and have far better benefits as seen in Michael Moore's film, "Where To Invade Next" (2016).

______________________

AUSTIN — Stephanie C. Quinn works year-round at New Braunfels ISD as a curriculum specialist, but after hours she consults for smaller districts as far away as the Panhandle and Gulf Coast. Her husband, an assistant principal, has started bar tending at music festivals in Austin. The couple needs the extra money to cover their soaring health insurance costs. Premiums for family coverage under the state-sponsored plan for Texas educators *start at over $1,000 a month* — roughly twice as much as a decade ago.* To avoid that cost, Quinn and her husband split the family onto two insurance plans, but still face big bills.

> “It’s over $1,000 a month out of my pocket every month just for medical stuff, sometimes up to $1,500,” said Quinn, who has four children, ages 6 to 17. “We’re trying to offset that.”

Texas educators, like Quinn, and local school districts are increasingly shouldering the burden of skyrocketing health care costs as the state has kept its own contribution flat over the past 16 years. So as the Legislature pledges to boost pay for teachers — wages in Texas lag the national average by $7,000 a year — many educators say that without a serious fix for health insurance, >rising health care costs would quickly eat up any pay bump. Premiums for TRS ActiveCare — insurance offered at roughly 90 percent of Texas school distrts — have steadily risen since the plan started in 2002.