Jacobin Magazine: on Health Care
Beto O`Rourke:
Supports Medicare for America as public option
O'Rourke is touting a proposal called Medicare for America, a public option bill that would enroll some Americans in a public plan while preserving private insurance for those who receive it from their employers. Rather than covering everyone equally
under a single program, it will maintain varying qualities of coverage with price tags based on income. It includes premiums of up to 10 percent of a person's annual income and out-of-pocket maximums of $5,000.
Source: Jacobin Mag., "Medicare for All," on 2020 Democratic primary
Mar 22, 2019
Gina Raimondo:
COVID: civil liability immunity for hospitals, nursing homes
On April 9, top officials from Rhode Island's nursing home lobbying groups sent a letter to Raimondo's office requesting immunity from civil liability if their residents faced injury or death from COVID-19. One day later, the governor's office issued an
executive order granting the lobbyists what they had asked for: hospitals and nursing homes were classified as emergency management facilities and granted immunity from civil liability, except in cases of gross negligence or willful misconduct.
Source: Jacobin magazine on 2021 Biden Cabinet
Dec 2, 2020
Gina Raimondo:
Privatized & cut budgets for Medicaid
Raimondo's plan involved privatizing management of Medicaid in the state, outsourcing management to private insurers. By 2018, over 60% of the state's Medicaid budget went to private health insurers. That year, hospital administrators called
Raimondo's round of cuts to Medicaid "devastating." The governor's proposed budget for 2020, introduced before the pandemic broke out in the United States, included nearly $60 million in Medicaid cuts.
Source: Jacobin magazine on 2021 Biden Cabinet
Dec 2, 2020
Jerry Brown:
How would we pay for single-payer?
[Some Democrats oppose single-payer plans]. Nancy Pelosi recently told frustrated town hall attendees that "if you want to move to single payer, what you should do is support state options," referring to state-level campaigns for single payer.
Democratic governor John Hickenlooper said that "it would be premature to dramatically remake our health-care system at this time" while existing reforms were "just beginning to bear fruit." He complained behind closed doors to a powerful lobby of
business leaders and political operatives that the "cost [is] going to be huge."
As California considered instituting a state-wide single-payer system on the eve of a possible GOP repeal of Obamacare, the state's Democratic governor Jerry
Brown rubbished the idea, asking: "Where do you get the extra money? How do you do that?" He compared it to solving a problem "by something that's a bigger problem," which "makes no sense."
Source: Jacobin Magazine, "Democrats Against Single Payer"
Mar 29, 2017
Kamala Harris:
Require pharmaceutical companies to allow generics
She filed a friend-of-the-court brief signed by thirty-one other state attorneys general in 2011 in a
Supreme Court case looking to end the practice of drug companies paying competitors to keep generic versions of their drugs off the market.
Source: Jacobin Magazine on 2018 California Senate race
Aug 10, 2017
John Hickenlooper:
Too soon to make changes in Obamacare
[Some Democrats oppose single-payer plans]. Nancy Pelosi recently told frustrated town hall attendees that "if you want to move to single payer, what you should do is support state options," referring to state-level campaigns for single payer.
Democratic governor John Hickenlooper said that "it would be premature to dramatically remake our health-care system at this time" while existing reforms were "just beginning to bear fruit." He complained behind closed doors to a powerful lobby of
business leaders and political operatives that the "cost [is] going to be huge."
As California considered instituting a state-wide single-payer system on the eve of a possible GOP repeal of Obamacare, the state's Democratic governor Jerry
Brown rubbished the idea, asking: "Where do you get the extra money? How do you do that?" He compared it to solving a problem "by something that's a bigger problem," which "makes no sense."
Source: Jacobin Magazine, "Single Payer," on 2020 Democratic primary
Mar 29, 2017
Michael Bennet:
Single payer would lead to massive tax increase
[Some Democrats oppose single-payer plans]. Nancy Pelosi recently told frustrated town hall attendees that "if you want to move to single payer, what you should do is support state options," referring to state-level campaigns for single payer.
Democratic senator Michael Bennett told a local paper that single payer wasn't "the right approach to solving our health-care problems," partly due to the "massive tax increase" involved.
Source: Jacobin Magazine, "Single Payer," on 2020 Democratic primary
Mar 29, 2017
Nancy Pelosi:
Single payer plans better handled by states
[Some Democrats oppose single-payer plans]. Nancy Pelosi recently told frustrated town hall attendees that "if you want to move to single payer, what you should do is support state options," referring to state-level campaigns for single payer.
Democratic senator Michael Bennett told a local paper that single payer wasn't "the right approach to solving our health-care problems," partly due to the "massive tax increase" involved.
Source: Jacobin Magazine, "Democrats Against Single Payer"
Mar 29, 2017
Rahm Emanuel:
Wrote op-ed "Medicare-for-All is a Pipe Dream"
Emanuel began attacking Medicare for All in the media. In a September 2019 appearance on ABC's This Week, Emanuel called the policy "untenable." The following month, he authored a Washington Post op-ed headlined, "Medicare-for-All is a Pipe Dream."
Within months of publishing the op-ed, Emanuel was rewarded with a board seat by GoHealth--a company he had promoted as mayor, and whose business is built on profits reaped by getting private health insurance corporations more customers.
Source: Jacobin Magazine on Ambassadorial Confirmation Hearings
Aug 24, 2021
Xavier Becerra:
2016: rescind patents for government funded medicine
Back in 2016, Becerra was one of the 51 House Democratic lawmakers who signed a letter calling on Obama's Health and Human Services secretary to use "march-in rights" to effectively rescind exclusive patents for medicines whose research and development
was originally funded by government agencies. The lawmakers wrote, "The failure to act in the past has undoubtedly sent an unfortunate signal that prices for federally-funded inventions can be set as high as a sick or dying consumer will pay."
Source: Jacobin magazine on Biden Cabinet
Dec 7, 2020
Barack Obama:
2009: preferred single-payer if were starting from scratch
In 2009, Obama said that if the US was starting its health care system over from scratch, he would prefer a "single-payer" system--what would later became known as Medicare for All. But because we weren't "starting from scratch," what Obama actually
proposed was a market-based patchwork of regulations. He never actually explained why the fact that we weren't "starting from scratch" meant that we can't switch to single-payer health care now. And it says a lot about the dismal political landscape of
2009 that hardly anyone at the time challenged him on that point.Obama's original proposal at least included a public option that would compete with private health insurance plans. This always would have been something much less than a half measure.
Americans poor enough to qualify for Medicaid have long had a "public option"--and many doctors don't take it.
Even so, a public option would be better than nothing. But Obama abandoned the public option by the time the ACA's final form took shape.
Source: Jacobin e-zine, "Medicare for All"
Jun 9, 2023
Gavin Newsom:
Public option is not the right thing
Gavin Newsom recently announced that California is going to start manufacturing its own insulin later this year. The California news is one small indication of the way health care policy debates have shifted in the last decade and a half.
I can remember watching then president Barack Obama on TV when he first rolled out the Affordable Care Act (the ACA, otherwise known as "Obamacare") in 2009.
Obama said that if the United States was starting its health care system over from scratch, he would prefer a "single-payer" system--what would later became known as Medicare for All.
But because we weren't "starting from scratch," what Obama actually proposed was a market-based patchwork of regulations.
Source: Jacobin e-zine on California insulin deal
Jun 9, 2023
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:
Public option not right thing, unless part of single-payer
Kennedy was asked whether, given the hostility to the pharmaceutical companies he often expresses while talking about vaccines, he'd be willing to support a "public option" for pharmaceuticals. He immediately dismissed this, saying, "Oh, I don't think
that's the right thing," and switching the subject to how to insulate regulatory agencies from the industry's influence. He didn't even pause to explain why it wouldn't be the right thing. Apparently, he finds the suggestion too outlandish to consider.
Last month, Kennedy was asked if he would support "universal health care through a Medicare for All program." In his response, Kennedy shifted the goalposts in a more moderate direction, redefining "single-payer" health care to mean something more
like the Obama/Biden "public option" proposal. He said, "my highest ambition would be to have a single-payer program where people who want to have private programs can go ahead and do that, but to have a single program that is available to everybody."
Source: Jacobin e-zine on 2023 Presidential hopefuls
Jun 9, 2023
Tim Walz:
2020 COVID restrictions resulted in lower death rates
Walz's strategy to deal with the pandemic: spending big--partly thanks to the federal money cannon put into use by Trump--and using emergency powers to expand government authority to keep people whole while keeping them out of indoor spaces.
Walz put in place a pause on evictions, made it easier to get unemployment insurance, and expanded support for food banks and homeless shelters to the tune of $100 million. Republicans increasingly objected to and tried rolling back
Walz's emergency powers, and protesters chafed at his stay-at-home orders. But Walz's approach--which combined near-constant public visibility with stubbornly defying political and business pressure to reopen before the vaccine rollout--ultimately paid
off: by June 2021, Minnesota had a lower death rate from COVID than any surrounding state, at 136 deaths per 100,000. For Iowa and North Dakota, governed by Trump-emulating anti-restriction Republicans, that figure was 194 and 200, respectively.
Source: Jacobin magazine on 2024 Vice Presidential hopefuls
Aug 6, 2024
Page last updated: Aug 15, 2024