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Friday, August 14, 2020

WTF is going on in our nation, where two parties run national candidates who hate us and all four are not answerable to US?

 Polls show the compelling majority of citizens time after time want Medicare for All.

That is a fact no dissembling can overcome. Truth is out, known, and ignored by DC.

Trump - worse of the bunch but not alone in fault - responsible for a federal Covid response which is plain shameful. Deriliction of duty, White House, Congress, the Agencies, all of federal government complacent beyond acceptability of any sane person affected or threatened by the rampant pandemic. 

But Trump-Pence has its anti-Medicare for All mirror image in Biden-Harris, Harris being the one who used MFA as a trampoline for early appeal, but she failed miserably as a presidential candidate on her own behalf, showing single digit consistency among white, hispanic and black population segments. Nobody wanted her besides her packed staff of Clinton people. Now she's foisted off on us, with an attitude if you don't think much of Biden-Harris, go vote trump-pence. 

In short, a total crock. Handed to a distressed population by two-party politicians bought and owned by big money. It is shameful, and shows US as in a nation run not by morons, but by outright hateful rich bastards. 

Trump - the worse of the DC mavens - engineered a Christmas time tax cut for the super-wealthy, no wealth tax on the horizon for portfolios of those living off the proceeds of their accumulated capital holdings; while ordinary people at the state and local level - homeowners - face a disproportionate tax hit on their wealth via local real property taxation. Even McMansion owners pay a disproportionately low rate on their wealth because the homes are taxed while the personal property - the portfolios skate.

Trump - the worse of th DC mavens - wants to hand off costs to state and local government, which unlike the feds cannot run deficits year after year but must balance spending and revenue. He is hateful toward all but the rich. He is worse, get this, worse than Joe Biden who laid bankruptcy law against little people with student or medical debt, while Trump astoundingly bankrupted casinos and stiffed lenders disdainfully. Being worse than Joe Biden is something, given Biden being Biden. Biden becoming a millionaire as a career politician while Trump in the private sector made a small fortune - from inheriting a big fortune. 

Back to Medicare for All and the pandemic showing what's what. And where is truth? Sirota has a guest commentator writing his latest site post -

New infections are still surging in the U.S. while countries with national health care programs have long since gotten a handle on the virus. On Tuesday, the U.S. reported more new COVID cases in a single day than Italy, France, and the U.K. reported last month combined, and roughly 45 percent of their total deaths.

With 53,344 new cases and 1,450 deaths, Tuesday’s numbers were not extraordinary. There have been days with far higher counts on both statistics. But compared to the numbers coming out of Europe and elsewhere, they serve as a bleak reminder that America has completely failed to manage the pandemic. For the entire month of July, Italy reported just 6,959 new cases and 374 deaths; France reported 23,118 new cases and 434 deaths; the U.K. reported 19,424 new cases and 2,389 deaths.

In other words, it took the U.S. one average day to record more new cases and almost half the deaths that Italy, France, and the U.K. recorded in the month of July combined.

 


Polls Show Surging Support for Medicare For All

Outside of Europe, countries with national health care programs have also outperformed the United States.

Taiwan, which has single-payer, reported 20 new cases and no deaths in July. 

New Zealand -- also a single-payer country -- declared itself COVID-free in early June. On Tuesday, it recorded its first locally-transmitted COVID case in 102 days.

The U.S. currently leads the world in active COVID cases with more than 5 million -- despite the fact that other nations are conducting more tests. Today, less than half of U.S. states are seeing a decline in infections. The U.S. also leads in the number of deaths with more than 162,000. The country represents just four percent of the planet’s total population but a stunning 25.5 percent of all COVID cases and 22 percent of all COVID deaths. 

By comparison, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, a body of the European Union, all of Europe, which has a population of 741 million, has about 3 million active cases and roughly 207,215 deaths since the pandemic started. All of Asia, with a population of 4.5 billion, has just over 4.8 million active cases and has seen roughly 106,711 deaths.

[links in original]. Truth is that our nation, and our beloved two parties, are fucking us year after year after year because they are owned by the health-industrial complex. And if we squeal in dissatisfaction, they give us a coarse "fuck you" go vote for the other party crock.

So, trump-pence or biden-harris. Neither ticket deserves capitalization of the names of the scoundrels. We are being mocked, MOCKED by the two parties, with members working e-mailing lists for contributions, with a repetition that sours quickly but continues apace, and the message: give some of you small amount of money to one or another of those positioned to do US in more. If that is not a mockery, what is? Downfund police. Downfund the military. Shrink the beaucracies. Start treating US as would at least be marginally decent, instead of the two-party mockery of US as some form of enemy because we want fairness and justice.

They are shameful bastards. Pick a presidential ticket. Bless all of US.

________UPDATE_______

Sirota's post presents the tail of the graph online here, which gives a more complete picture. The full picture shows initial deaths per million population higher in healthcare-as-a-right nations, which cleaned up their act, whereas our nation is ineffective in bringing down the tail of the graph. This may have other causes in addition to our national denial of healthcare-as-a-right, federal propaganda about the worse being over echoed by corporate media outlets being one coming to mind; the mask-hating movement being another. Trump's failure to better meet his responsbility - the federal responsibility given mobility in our nation making state-by-state variation unacceptable. Deny that? Then look at Sturgis. From all over. Back to all over. Not from overseas, since they ride their bikes in, and then out. Yes, a particularized instance, but mobility within our borders is the reality, in general.

________FURTHER UPDATE_________

ABOVE - That's not enough quoting from the Sirota post - ending paragraphs state:

Public support for Medicare for all swelled in April according to the Koch-funded Pacific Research Institute, a think tank dedicated to “advancing free-market policy solutions.” A recent The Hill-HarrisX poll found that Medicare for all had the support of 87 percent of Democrats and 69 percent of independents. Indeed, even naysayers are beginning to change their tune.

Retweeting a call for Medicare for all by Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), MSNBC host Joy Reid, who has been a frequent critic of Bernie Sanders, acknowledged that while she’d been “a past M4A skeptic,” she couldn’t “think of one good reason today to keep the current system.” It’s a sentiment shared by many in the medical field. 

Democratic Establishment Remains Opposed To Medicare For All

Even so, Biden has remained steadfast in his opposition to single-payer, which was not included in the recently released draft of the 2020 Democratic platform as a result. In response, 360 delegates have threatened to oppose the final platform if it does not include Medicare for All. 

While the Democratic Party leadership battles things out with the base, many doctors are sounding the alarm, arguing the need for single-payer is urgent.

“Hospitals are now run as businesses and it doesn't make money to have empty beds, so ICUs and such are designed to be at 90-ish percent capacity to minimize loss,” explained Dr. Peter Possidente, a family medicine resident in upstate New York. “Not great when you have a massive surge of patients.”

To his point, New York experienced this problem of space in April. In mid-July, Florida, Arizona, and Texas hospitals struggled with the same problem.

Dr. Adam Gaffney — the president of Physicians for a National Health Program, a group that supports single-payer — said cost barriers to health care are making the crisis worse. 

“The pandemic is laying bare the lethal inequality of American society and American health care,” he explained. “COVID-19 threatens the health of people everywhere, but only in the U.S. will it also ruin patients financially. When people avoid testing and care because they fear the costs, it fuels the epidemic’s spread.”

Gaffney’s point is not controversial. Back in April, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesu encouraged all nations to remove cost barriers to care as a means of stemming the spread of the virus.

Possidente also echoed this warning, noting that health care rationing has left the U.S. population needlessly vulnerable to pandemics. 

“Overall, if people have preventative and proactive health care, as opposed to just going when they’re on death’s door, they’ll be healthier and stand a better chance of surviving things when something does happen because they’ll be up to date on all the stuff that should have been done,” he explained. “Our population is not as healthy as it could be because it’s such a burden to have consistent medical care and medications in our system.”

Possidente worries that rationing will almost certainly be made worse with the recent surge in the number of uninsured Americans, a result of spiking unemployment as businesses let people go or fail altogether. 

By May, an estimated 27 million Americans had lost their insurance plans, according to a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

According to a WestHealth/Gallup poll from late April, one in seven Americans said they would not seek treatment for COVID due to cost. Indeed, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo noted in May that 66 percent of people newly diagnosed with COVID were not seeking care. In cities across the country -- Houston, New York, Boston -- there have also been upticks in the number of Americans dying at home from coronavirus without seeking care. This trend, however, may reflect multiple causes including the late onset of the virus’s severe symptoms or fear by patients of contracting COVID at the hospital.

To solve the rationing problem and get COVID patients treatment, Congress has allocated billions in relief funding to hospitals and health care providers to cover free pandemic-related care. Meanwhile, large insurers like Aetna, Cigna, Humana, Blue Cross Blue Shield, UnitedHealthcare have made announcements waiving cost-sharing for COVID-related treatment -- even as they rake in record profits from people holding off on seeking care. As one recent headline put it, “Health insurers strike gold with COVID-19.” 

UnitedHealth Group, for example, recorded its highest quarterly profit ever in the second quarter with a $6.6 billion haul. Even though the Affordable Care Act placed caps on health insurer profits and requires companies to pass any extra profits back to customers through rebates, companies are retaining their massive hauls.

Meanwhile, patients still face significant out of pocket expenses related to COVID treatment and testing. Last month, progressive California Rep. Katie Porter revealed that she had received a bill for $56.60 for a COVID test in addition to her $20 co-pay. Others have been less fortunate, facing charges of thousands of dollars.

[highlighting added] The bastard Biden picks the one person who highlighted herself by first embracing Medicare for All, and then, when traction disappeared, callously switched against it. Harris is as bad as Biden that way, and both are as bad as the profiteers at UnitedHealth; who are despicable. 

End of story - after again noting trump/pence are worse. We have to overcome the entrenched self-serving bastards of both parties who are in thrall to the bastards of UnitedHealth and bastards such as Bloomberg, who is mean for no good reason since he has more wealth than the lower quarter to half of US and is an old fart who cannot take it with him. (May he test that premise.)

It is sickening to see how two-party politics is hurting everybody but inner party types who take bribes or suck money via over-padded bureaucratic employment.

AND I SURELY DO NOT MEAN THE POST OFFICE in that latter observation. Those people earn their money. And if you cannot understand how for-profit prisons have grown, it is because public sector prisons have been so prosperous for staff but not for inmates. Privateers saw opportunity, much like Bush the Elder with Carlyle Group and Pentagon contracting windfalls. Look at all the traffic in and out of the trump/pence executive revolving door. Look at all the consultants burning through campaign cash - and then look at what they have to offer - biden/harris is a sick joke. DC is a big-time money sink. Then - the fat and overbloated military, brass heavy with cushy defense contractor jobs after retirement added on top of generous retirement benefits. War mongering, while keeping military deaths well below Covid killing is a racket deserving RICO prosecution, not standing hand on heart while a tune plays.

________FURTHER UPDATE________

A policy look at Harris, from a month ago, before Biden's picking a clone of himself, but of the opposite gender.

_______FURTHER UPDATE_________

Sen. Harris, three YouTube segments, in hearings here and here, and then in a CNN friendly softball game, here. More hearings - asking questions, getting what? Zuckerberg. Sessions. Barr testifying he took the multi-month million-dollar Mueller report as the factual basis - findings of fact - on which he opined that as a matter of judgment on the law there was no crime, that happens all the time with appellate courts and Barr should have suggested she'd be familiar with the process. Mueller heard testimony and was placed where he could assess witness demeanor. Why would anyone second guess his findings of fact? With Kavanaugh on the "do you know of any law about a man's body being restricted" question, he should have mentioned that not now, but previously and likely in the future, the draft. Beyond that -

We could have had Karen Bass. 

 It will be interesting in the VP debate, her approach against the Pence studied calm demeanor, which act plays as better theater. Trump-Biden debates? My God! Waterboarding could be more comfortable than watching that. Although it's a guess, having never seen a Trump-Biden match, nor having been waterboarded. (It's more an expression of disdain than actually wanting to test the comparison.) 

Everybody already knows whether they'll vote and how, so really - avoid the storm of garbage ads conjured up by well paid consultants chasing paychecks. Wait and vote. November 3 cannot come soon enough.