Sen. Michael Bennet is one of the Democratic Party’s chief mouthpieces for private insurance, promoting “Medicare X,” a plan that maintains private health insurance as its centerpiece. As a major recipient of money from insurance, PhARMA, hospitals and other segments of the medical industrial complex, Bennet adopts many of industry’s talking points, as former insurance executive and whistle blower Wendell Potter describes in this February 11, 2019 article that will continue to resonate into the coming year and months of presidential campaigning.

Values of many Americans include security, justice, and freedom.  A recent HealthCare for All Colorado Foundation (HCACF) presentation by Tom Gottlieb suggests that health care reform, such as a public national health insurance, must assure that these values are honored.  The success of Medicare in America as a social insurance has fulfilled these values.

Employers have provided private health insurance as remuneration (fringe benefit) for workers since WWII.  Beyond 1980, this benefit has become more destructive than beneficial.  (See the New York times article written by Matt Bruenig on April 29, 2019).

Understanding current Medicare structure and law leads to a logical extension of Medicare that includes all Americans. HealthCare for All Colorado Foundation provides a summary that defines implementation of a financial plan for an Extended Medicare (aka Medicare-for-All). 

Libby Watson from Splinter News, reported on a recent Gallup Poll which showed that millions of Americans have to borrow money in order to pay their healthcare bills.  April 2, 2019.   This article supports HCACF's position on the importance of implementing a Public National Health Insurance to finance universal public and private health care delivery.

Private health insurers seek to defund and privatize traditional Medicare by supplanting it with the much less efficient, more costly, Medicare Advantage Plans that are paid tens of billions of dollars in extra subsidies annually. This piece by American Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), representative of private insurers, thanks 368 Congress members for their “strong bipartisan” advocacy for enrollment of those over 65 in Medicare Advantage Plans. Even Congress members who ostensibly support “Medicare-for-All,” have endorsed AHIP’s letter effectively promoting privatization of Medicare. Most of Colorado’s delegation, Democrats & Republicans, have signed. Check to see if your representatives signed - let them know that privatizing Medicare by replacing it with Medicare Advantage is the wrong way to go.

February 7, 2019

Dylan Scott from Vox interviewed Matt Bruenig from the People's Policy Project "on what he worries about — and what he doesn’t — for Medicare-for-all".  Matt answered some tough healthcare questions such as "How do you finance a single-payer health care system?" " Is it possible for the health care supply to meet its demand?"  and "What can the government do for rural hospitals that feel a pinch under single-payer?"
 

The video Big Money Agenda: Democracy on the Brink by CEO Richard Master, demonstrates how commercial insurance is failing the people with inflated administrative costs and inadequate policies, even as crony capitalism derails democracy. Lobbyists outnumbered Congress members 8 to 1 at the time of the ACA, guaranteeing continued high prices for Big Pharma. Fifty percent of Congress members move through the lobbyist revolving door. Founded on the common good, U.S. government has been bought by special interest money, and further compromised by the Supreme Court decision Citizens United, equating money in politics with speech.

In the article We Don’t Need Private Health Insurance, a case is made that Medicare for All (M4A) health care reform is in fact a simple substitution of the private health insurance by a public national health insurance that provides access to basic health services. The article further defines the role for private health insurance including; “duplicative” plans, “supplementary” plans, and “complementary” plans, all of which are defined by the writer.

The people will win Medicare for All. Thousands united this week to prove it. Mark Dudzic, National Coordinator of Labor Campaign for Single Payer, was on Nurse Talk discussing the need for a grassroots movement in support of healthcare justice. His organization, Labor Campaign for Single Payer, deems healthcare to be a necessity and strongly supports a Single-Payer Medicare-for-All healthcare system for all Americans.  Mark Dudzic calls for activists to get involved, especially during the Week of Action February 9-13, when there will be Barnstorm events throughout the country in support of Medicare-for-All.