DragonI

Health Care and Insurance Industries Mobilize to Kill ‘Medicare for All’

Doctors, hospitals, drug companies and insurers have a simple message: The Affordable Care Act works reasonably well and should be improved, not repealed or replaced with a big new public program.

www.nytimes.com

1. Who profits from Americans pain and suffering? Who loses?
2. Who benefits from Medicare for All? Who loses?

"We have a structure that frankly works for most American" health care providers, pharmaceutical companies and medical device suppliers. Not so much for the millions of Americans who can't afford the insurance premiums or co-pays.”,  Steve C.Highland, Michigan

The chief sponsor of the House buy-in bill, Representative Brian Higgins, Democrat of New York, said: “The critics lump our bill with the bigger Medicare-for-all proposal. That’s strategic, and I think it’s deliberate.”

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“Insurance companies are fighting it because they are afraid of the prospect of a potent new competitor that will cut into their profits,” Mr. Higgins said. “Medicare has lower administrative costs and lower executive salaries and could use its bargaining power to get better deals from hospitals and other health care providers.”

1. Health Insurance companies
2. Investor-owned Hospitals
3. America’s Health Insurance Plans ** Lobbyist
4. Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America ** Lobbyist
5. Federation of American Hospitals ** Lobbyist
6. Partnership for America’s Health Care Future  ** Lobbyist -  has more than 25 members, including the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association and the nation’s Blue Cross and Blue Shield

“This is a slippery slope to government-run health care for every American,” David Merritt, an executive vice president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, a lobby for insurers.

“We have a structure that frankly works for most Americans,” said Charles N. Kahn III, the president of the Federation of American Hospitals, which represents investor-owned hospitals. “Let’s make it work for all Americans. We reject the notion that we need to turn the whole apple cart over and start all over again.”

The hospital federation and two powerful lobbies, America’s Health Insurance Plans and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, created a coalition last June to pre-empt what they saw as an alarming groundswell of interest in proposals to expand the federal role in health care.

In a daily fusillade of digital advertising, videos and Twitter posts, the coalition, the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, says that Medicare for all will require tax increases and give politicians and bureaucrats control of medical decisions now made by doctors and patients — arguments that echo those made to stop Medicare in the 1960s, Mrs. Clinton’s health plan in 1993 and the Affordable Care Act a decade ago.

The coalition will step up the tempo in the coming week as Democrats in the House and the Senate plan to introduce bills to establish a single-payer system.

The name of the coalition is intentionally nondescript, and its executive director, Lauren Crawford Shaver, who led Mrs. Clinton’s efforts in 2016 to put marginal states into play, is cagey when asked for details. She says only that the group is planning “a big nationwide effort” with grass-roots allies.