In February America got its first introduction to Rep. Pramila Jayapal sweeping “Medicare-for-all” healthcare plan. Then the Democrat from Washington State acknowledged at the time her bill would largely outlaw private insurance along with the roughly 150 to 170 million individuals who now enjoy and receive employee group insurance at reasonable premium rates.
The bill at the time was co-sponsored by more than 100 House Democrats, and will mirror the single-payer disaster that both the U.K. and Canada currently have.
Earlier this week Jayapal was forced to admit that aside from putting private insurance companies out of business and forcing roughly 150 million individuals off their private insurance, over 1-million individuals who currently work within the healthcare insurance industry would also lose their jobs.
She made the remarks during a town hall meeting at American University while stressing her goal is to try and help those “displaced” by a shift to a government-managed health care system.
“There are a lot of people who work in the private insurance industry,” Jayapal said. “We have thought carefully about how we’d take care of those folks because we think those people are very important.”
In a video clip produced by the conservative group “America Rising”, the lawmaker from the 7th congressional district acknowledges that her bill would displace a massive number of private insurance jobs stating “there’s about a million people we think will be displaced if ‘Medicare-for-all’ happens” she then suggested her bill would also “take care” of those people whose jobs are made redundant.
Stating, “We have set aside one percent a year of the total cost of the bill for five years to take care of a transition for employees in the private insurance sector,” Jayapal said. “If they are able to retire, that might be one, pension guarantees, job training so they can move into a different system.”
The displacement of private insurance workers would be inevitable given the kind of sweeping overhaul being proposed by Jayapal. Moreover, the issue of replacing a single payer government run healthcare system with the current private insurance enjoyed by millions of Americans has proven to be a thorny issue on the campaign trail for the 51-year old lawmaker.
The bill as written clearly states that private policies would be eliminated. One clause that stands out confirms that it would be “unlawful” for a private health insurer “to sell health insurance coverage that duplicates the benefits provided under this Act.” The text prohibits employers from doing the same.
The estimated cost could be as high as $32 trillion dollars, which no doubt would mean raising taxes across-the-board, with the middle-class paying the highest share.
Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., weighted on the massive government entitlement saying, “Medicare-for-All would require all Americans to pay more in taxes, wait longer for care and receive potentially worse care, even worse it would put our existing Medicare recipients at risk.”
“America’s Health Insurance Plans”, an advocacy group for the private health insurance industry also weighed in stating that the vast majority of Americans are happy with their private insurance coverage as it is, adding “Americans want to improve what’s working for them and fix what’s broken. This bill will hurt patients, consumers, and taxpayers: Americans will pay more, to wait longer, for worse care,” spokeswoman Kristine Grow told Fox News in an email. “Let’s focus on real solutions that deliver real results, not a one-size-fits-all government system.”
To better understand what Americans might be facing with Rep. Pramila Jayapal sweeping “Medicare-for-all” healthcare plan. One needs only to look at the healthcare crisis in the U.K., which is on the brink of collapse.
Frustrated physicians in the U.K., have described England’s Healthcare System of having to practice “battlefield medicine,” while another apologized for its “3rd world conditions” caused by overcrowding.
In November, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, announced an additional $475 million, for the National Health Service, describing the additional funds as an “exceptional measure” to ease pressures on services during the winter months.
As with everything else she thinks she knows she’s wrong about a million jobs will be cut with her plan. It is true that a million private sector jobs may be lost but some multiple of that number will become fedgov employees. The trouble is that the jobs lost in the healthcare industry are productive while fedgov specializes in paper-pushing.
Lose service and productivity gain counter-productive expense. Typical Dem!
More proof that we desperately need to limit the terms of Congress! http://www.termlimits.com
Do we define “jobs lost in the healthcare industry are productive” as meaning denying coverage to the claimants? Lots of even conventional treatments don’t seem to be covered by anything but the wallet of the person needing the treatment. When that wallet is empty………tough.
My friend paid a doctor out of pocket because Kaiser completely misdiagnosed her and even she could tell they were wrong. He prescribed a one month supply of an antibiotic that turned out to cost $5,300 at Costco, and that was with the 50% orphan drug discount!. That was out of the question for my friend, so he prescribed another. It turned out to cost $55,200.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Fortunately, the doctor’s office searched Canadian pharmacies and found the same drug for $67.10. Perhaps not everything is wrong with the Canadian system.
More importantly, we must first get our terms straight. What we have now is NOT health care. It is SICK care. And early detection so we can consume more drugs sooner and for longer is NOT HEALTH care.
Among the issues of SICK care is reducing drug costs, which everyone but Big Pharma recognizes. It is also reducing the number of drugs prescribed. Drug interactions are rarely studied, and the info that exists comes mainly from people’s bad experiences. I have read that taking more than 3 Rx drugs at a time virtually guarantees interaction. That sounds plausible, but nobody really knows if that is true, because it is impossible to know the truth of most things these days. “Fake news” is not just the media. Witness Marcia Angels’ 2009 quote: “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.”
But back to taking too many drugs. Drugs are routinely prescribed to treat symptoms caused by other drugs and the whole thing spirals out of control. Sometimes this is recognized, usually by the patient’s friend of family member. If nothing changes, usually the patient gets sicker and sicker and sometimes dies. Sometimes a physician will assist in the reduction of the number of drugs, but sometimes the patient is on their own.
All that is about SICK care. What is really needed is HEALTH care. First we must remember that not all people have the same needs, so requiring everyone to consume the same diet, do the same exercise, get the same sleep, take drugs for everything, etc, are NOT valid solutions. Individuals and their knowledgeable HEALTH care providers need to figure what works for each person and to take action.
There are a vast number of SICK problems that are better treated without drugs. Licensed, properly trained SICK and HEALTH care providers who are not MDs like chiropractors and acupuncturists know tons of diagnostic and treatment techniques that are safe, effective and relatively cheap. Many of these are learned outside their respective formal training. Many if not most of these techniques are not covered by any insurance that recognizes even limited treatments by these providers.
Just what I personally have learned of these non invasive modalities to address HEALTH and SICK care, enables me to identify and handle nearly any SICK or HEALTH problem I encounter other than a broken bone, injury requiring surgery, or trauma from something like a severe car accident. How do I know this? I do all I know to remain healthy. Every time I feel SICK I do what is necessary to negate that and SICK nearly always goes away within 30 minutes. Occasionally it can take up to 12 hours. A very few minor things remain. The last time I saw an MD was some time in the 1980s, and there have been precious few MD visits in my lifetime because my parents knew how to care for my HEALTH so I wasn’t SICK very often.
Every health care practitioner above a CNA should be capable of learning this same information. A significant portion of the general population should be able to learn as well. What kind of freedom is that? Wouldn’t THAT cut SICK care costs????
Unfortunately, there is more to this picture. Government and industry (including MDs) have REFUSED to make it possible for even the most informed and conscientious consumer to access clean food, water and air. Added to this, the hazards of present levels of electromagnetic pollution that will escalate massively and become nearly 100% inescapable once 5G is fully rolled out are vociferously denied by government and industry. Everything in our environments, controllable by the individual or not, is designed to destroy our health, but not necessarily without sickening us to the point of needing SICK care until we and our country are disabled, dead or bankrupt. The Trump administration is doing everything possible to worsen this situation. We don’t even need to get into the pollutants and unrecognized infectious agents from chemtrails and contaminated pharmaceuticals.
So leave the current SICK care system intact and open Medicare SICK care to those who want/need it. Safe, effective, non drug diagnostics and treatment MUST become more widely known and combined with what we already know. Medicare could pioneer this, but we can be sure that monied interests and ideologues will prevent this. Research that counters the status quo must not be defunded, discredited and denied publication. Researchers and practitioners must not be discredited, de licensed, and often murdered (the newest, most effective, form of attack) so that harmful and ineffective aspects of the status quo can remain. The public has been denied much truth in our lifetimes. Our political freedoms are nearly gone and mass surveillance using 5G will surely finish these off. I have no optimism that these will change, despite heroic efforts from many. I expect us and this country to become sad footnotes in any pages of history that may survive us. We can hope I am wrong.
Do these people just look for votes and not pay attention to what is happening in the world? Europe is coming out of socialism and what it has done to them and we have idiots who think we should go that way. May God help this country.