Kelly Coogan-Gehr of National Nurses United tells Paul Jay that healthcare represents one-fifth of the US economy, and to bring that fully into the public sector would be an important step towards transferring economic power to the public interest
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Private for-profit insurance is probably the most immoral thing ever created. Insurance is supposed to be about spreading risk and cost so that major economic burdens can become manageable. A national insurance program has incentive to research and eliminate environmental illnesses, to mitigate fraud, to promote healthy activities, things that actually counter private interests.
I remember a story, a few years ago now, that an American doctor told, a man turned up in a A&E department with his thumb barely hanging onto his hand.
Upon examining the injury the doctor told the patient that the thumb could be saved and reattached successfully.
The patient then asked the doctor what the cost would be, he was told more than $50 000, at this point the patient asked how much it would be to remove the thumb, he was informed around $5000
The guy then said remove the thumb, I cannot afford the cost of reattachment.
This horrified the doctor, as a doctor who had spent his career believing the healthcare system he worked in was the best in the world, he was seeing the stark reality of the American system!
But the doctor in all good conscience couldn’t remove this guy’s thumb, knowing full well how important the thumb is to the dexterity of the human hand, so he reattached it.
When the patient awoke from the surgery he asked the doctor what he had done, upon which he was notified of the reattachment.
“Congratulations doc, you have just bankrupted me!” was the reply he heard.
This is a true story, and a true indicator of how screwed up a healthcare system is.
When someone has to decide between a thumb, or no thumb, because of finance the system needs serious questioning.
Universal healthcare works successfully in many countries, along side private healthcare, so why can it be seen by those people who want to pay for their healthcare as a negative to their chosen method of treatment – the only thing I can say is “money” its that simple.
Those with the money to pay, resent paying a few dollars on securing a healthcare system for the vast majority of their countrymen.
Health care is a basic right for a country to give its people, especially when those who could bring in this essential right, politicians, are constantly asking for these people to make their country great again by working their arses off for that country!
The majority want a national healthcare system, fine, but the question is not only about how to pay for it.
Deep debt is carried by the Public and deep tax cuts to the Rich, limit the income of the government. Socializing health care asks other social classes to cover the cost of another health is not the way to do it.
The military has its own health care system, why not open it up to citizens? Social security card is all you need to get your teeth fixed, or lung patch up! The military health care system is fully nationalized, meaning medical technology is not private property by law. The whole military falls under the Public Domain, all it needs, is to become socialized by allowing citizens access to its services even if they are not veterans. Makes no sense to get health care from employers, let the worker get that money instead, stimulate the economy with it, the military can charge a nominal co-pay per 330 million people for services is already a source of income for improving the system the government is less obligated to cover through revenue. Employers make enough money to pay their own lifetime healthcare costs because the presence of a fully socialized military health care system brings down the cost of health care generally, that employers in private care and services are given to them at home. What billionaire dies in a hospital bed? The objective is to die with dignity if you have to die in a hospital. At home is the ideal but the majority have to make a second home out of the military for a dignified system of service.
The various entry points of privatization into a partially socialized health care system is not a permanent condition in my view.
Capitalizing on medical technology leads to privatization, if medical technology is made illegal to buy as a commodity, this would make it a fully nationalized health care system. America already has a nationalized system, its just being used as part a basket of goodies, selfishly for more recruits for private aims, if opened to civil society its control would fall under the Public Domain and not in the hands of the private domain. That leaves Bernie with what to do about the national debt and the tax cuts to the rich, two problems not three.
VICE articale: "Modern Monetary Theory is a school of economics that says our panic over government budget deficits is delusional, a misguided and atavistic remnant of the gold standard. MMT has become increasingly influential on the left, giving progressives like Myerson a reason to believe that a high price tag shouldn’t stop the US from instituting wide-ranging social reforms like Medicare for all."
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a34n54/modern-monetary-theory-explained
You can have healthcare and everything else for free, just move to venezuela or cuba, heck if you are too picky go to canada then. And enjoy ur welfare crumbs achieved via direct democracy. So much for rugged freemen, and free enterprise.
You would think this conference and it’s information would be on every “news” channel in the country!!! But I’m sure it was not. Thank you 🙏🏻 RealNews.✊🏻
A lot of “politico” speak which most couldn’t tell you what she said or more importantly what it would cost the average family. You’ll NEVER here the cost to the average family!
It should be plain to see; sickness and death of the working class eventually leads to sickness and death of the large corporations…!
Hey there is too much money involved . They won,t let it happen. DYSTOPIA!! The american dream!! Disneyland is out of reach to the average american!! We think twice about going to the local diner in the heartland that is as cheap as posible because all the cooks are mexicans!!!! MEXICANS AREN,T RUINING AMERICA!! They are feeding us!!! The chinese are too. If my town didn,t have the chinese buffet and a mexican restaurant and a local diner run by a greek immigrant. They would have to eat corporate food like mcdonalds value menu or hardees!!! IT,S THE TRUTH!!!
But the shortage of doctors!! They will be swamped. The shortage of doctors is planned so that admittance to that elite group of gauranteed millionaires club.
Medicare for all is something that "coulda/shoulda/woulda" been done long, long ago, if "The 1%," aided and abetted by the "moron minority," hadn't been looting the country for the past four decades.
Now the country is bankrupt and the psychos have all the loot.
We're a nation of thieves, arguing, fighting, and killing over the spoils.
To the real News Network while I appreciate your efforts focusing on Medicare and how you're going to pay for it question you failed to ask the one person present at the Sanders Institute who is a senior fellow at the Sanders Institute who can tell you definitively how Medicare for all will be paid for Professor Stephanie Kelton could tell you everything you want to know about how it would be paid for but yet you fail to interview the one Authority why is that
Not to change the subject, but here is some important information:
NEWS ALERT!
Pence is in Mueller's crosshairs.
NANCY PELOSI is next in line for the Interim President.
BUT, a POWERFUL SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP (MIC ?) is planning to set up a Pro Republican CARETAKER GOVERNMENT!
See:
Disclosure Status Report: The Way
Forward. # caretakergov.
The Paradigm Research Group.
11/3/18.
Will a Democratic Presidency be
stolen once again?
Do we want another Republican Government?
HELP!
People who eat nothing processed by man or animal, only whole food as grown, with none of the vitamins, minerals or complex carbohydrates refined out, such health-nuts have 95% less illness. And so, pass a bill giving 5,000 of them free healthcare, for in less then one year everyone will know the truth and the truth will end 95% of illness.
1. Not one word in video about the root cause for why the uneducated lower-half of society has little to no healthcare. Namely, the more intelligent upper-half of society owns all the land, wealth, political power and quality healthcare.
2. The four main tools that the ruling elite use to keep the 50% working poor doing all the manual labor for
starvation wages are:
(a) Poverty.
(b) Killer-cop terrorism.
(c) Keeping the poor half-sick with a 50% fat diet that cuts off oxygen to the brain and clogs up every internal organ in the body.
(d) Keeping the poor suffering sever depression, and anxiety driven knowing that they will die in agony without healthcare.
3. Illness in the U.S. is 95% self-inflected:
70% caused by the average American diet of 50% fat.
20% caused by smoking.
5% caused by addictions.
4. The 50% working poor have 300% more illness and children then the privileged upper-half of society. Which means that
without a healthy low fat diet, healthcare for all would cost tax payers 300% more than private health insurance.
5. No one in the 50% working poor pays income tax, the main reason why the 50% privileged class oppose healthcare for all.
6. If everyone in America suddenly kicked their addictions and ate healthy, surely GDP would decrease by 19%, one in six workers would be unemployed and so bankrupt would be Empire USA that all of our war materials would be auctioned off to the highest bidder.
7. Democracy has always been crap stupidity. For the 51% more intelligent always vote to treat the 49% lesser beings as cattle being led to the slaughter.
With a majority in the U.S. railing about how horrible socialism is, why is a socialist takeover of healthcare ok?
Thanks once again for another compelling interview, RNN.
By the way, according to Bloom berg news, Schumer and Pelosi are still not on board for Medicare for all." Washington has to do a lot more on health care, and it will be a major issue in 2020". Very reassuraning Chuck. I"m sure the family that has to start a Gofundme campaign for a sick relative will sleep better knowing that.
DAMN she is good! Kelly Coogan-Gehr for president! She lays it on the line: CREEPING FASCISM, and that is what it is. To hell with Lizzie Warren, the fake progressive, transparently attempting the next mass sheepdogging back into the clutches of the corporate dems. To hell with Kamala Harris. To hell with all the fake "progressives".
I heard that medical care is around the number 3 killer of americans right after heart disease and cancer. Probably better to prevent disease than try to treat disease and obesity with medical care. Obesity and most chronic diseases like heart disease, cancer and diabetes are mostly preventable with lifestyle changes like unrefined high fiber diet and exercise. Americans are eating mostly junk food made from refined substances like oil, sweeteners, refined flour, protein powder, salt, additives like flavor and color, most supplements, etc. and overeating of animal products (all animal products have 0 fiber). With 0 fiber, all animal products are also sort of a type of junk food. If reducing or eliminating animal products, should take vitamin b12 supplement.
MEDICARE-FOR-ALL. …PROMOTES FREEDOM, MOBILITY, AND PEACE-OF-MIND
This is not about "democratizing" anything. It is about forcing the productive citizens to buy health care for the unproductive. That is theft, not democracy.
The only country with no healthcare for anyone is the USA. The death rate is creeping up in the USA. The insane greed that is daily allowed is the reason. The insurance, pharma, medical, hospital craziness in the USA is not healthcare. My HgbA1C went just a couple of points above normal, my blood sugar normal. My doctor immediately wanted to start me on Victoza. Victoza has many long warnings in the prescribing information and it is approved to be added to the regimen of medication for diabetics already maxed out on conventional medications and still having high HgbA1C. That's not healthcare, that's a greed induced homicide attempt. Stop advertising medicine.
Even Ben Bernanke once said “Monetary policy is not a panacea.” Evidently, not. So, the obvious solution is to switch to a strong fiscal policy for public purpose to drive up aggregate demand, which has always been the solution. The world can no longer suffer the intellectual immaturity of libertarian ideology. Unfettered, “self-regulating” capital is just one of the many myths upon which neoliberalism is founded. This economic policy of doublespeak has weakened the edifice of every industry.
Everything is fraud! Once belief in something vanishes, as it has with corporate media, austerity as a practical solution and the recent revelations about MIC fraud in this series (https://therealnews.com/series/reality-asserts-itself-lester-earnest), so too does the power it once held. The 40+ yr. capitalist revolt against the nation-state has only proven to the world that sovereignty, control of one’s own currency and destiny, is still important and essential to keeping democracy alive. As the EU experiment continues to crumble, the world returns to sanity.
I recommend a book by William Mitchell reclaiming the state. 267 pages of truth and facts. .. a must must read
Kelly gets that we’re facing fascism from the Right and acquiescence from the Right Lite Democrats.
But, that also means that Medicare for All is an Antifascist Action. ♥️
Fighting on the inside isn’t good enough in my eyes. People can start going off the grid while we do this. We’re here today because we depend to much on the system. When that system falls apart the people that won’t feel it are the people growing their own food and have their own means of electricity and water collection. We can fight on two fronts. It’s a personal goal of mine to learn about geothermal and ways I can use it to properly heat/cool and give a house electricity. Then share that knowledge with as many people as I possibly can.
Let's start with education on health issues
Great interview TRNN. Good to hear new voices (at least new to me).
A great video. I was struck by how both Kelly and Paul understood that there would be a huge fight to get Democratic representatives to do what is axiomatically the right thing to do. What have we become as a nation, that both parties, with malice of forethought, choose to be on the wrong side of such an important human issue? What happens when both parties choose the profits of the few over the death and despair of the many? It may not be too strong to say that America is entering its age of Caligula.
70% of the people want Single Payer Medicare for All. A people of a Democratic nation where they choose the leaders. Single payer healthcare has proven to be less expensive worldwide for decades, a system where the government replaces multiple insurance companies to be the single payer of our medical expenses. No more people dying and going bankrupt from medical bills. No more go fund me posters. No more let’s wait before we see the doctor, hoping the pain or illness will go away. No more insurance premiums, high deductibles, copays, out of pocket expenses, HSA contributions, ….
I like how we use "democratization" in lieu of "redistribution". It's a much more palatable word and the rich will not notice we are about to take their stuff!! Good one
The Pentagon fails audit, trillions unaccounted for. Really, I just can't see this as a serious conversation anymore.
Stop Associating your food intentions with Olinsky!
Honestly the very name Sol Ollinsky, ruins the presentation.
Medicare For All Is An "Economic Empowerment Imperative." Full Stop!