The party of the rich never stops searching for ways to deny health care insurance to the middle and the poor. ( Remember the “repeal and replace” Affordable Care Act battle that was missing one thing: Replace)?
The GOP leaders won’t admit it, but Senator McCain saved them from a disaster, had they succeeded in eliminating Obamacare.
To this day, the GOP has not come up with a viable replacement program that would guarantee health care insurance for even the poorest among us, (though the rich and the politicians are doing just fine, thank you.)
Well, here is yet another attempt to sabotage Medicare for All:
Single-Payer Health Care Will Increase Fraud, Corruption
By Chris Jacobs, June 18, 2019
(Chris Jacobs is founder and CEO of Juniper Research Group, and author of the forthcoming book “The Case Against Single Payer.” He is on Twitter: @chrisjacobsHC.)It seems fitting that the Democratic National Committee chose Miami to host the first debates of the 2020 presidential campaign.
Given that many of the candidates appearing on stage have endorsed a single-payer health care plan, the debates’ location epitomizes how government-run care will lead to a massive increase in fraud and corruption.
Right away, Jacobs tells us either he doesn’t understand the difference between “single-payer health care” and “government-run care,” or more likely, he doesn’t want you to understand.
And this is someone who has devoted an entire book to the subject.
Since he won’t differentiate between “pay” and “run,” I’ll try to help him.
“Pay” is what you do when you go to the grocery store and buy a loaf of bread. “Run” is what the owner of the grocery store does when he rents space, hires employees, runs ads, negotiates with vendors, and makes the thousands of decisions a business manager must make every day.
Get it, Mr. Jacobs?
Why does Jacobs try to confuse his audience? I assume it’s because he knows that Americans have been programmed to hate the word “socialism,” So Jacobs is setting you up to believe Medicare for All is “socialism” or “socialized medicine.”
It isn’t.
Socialism is the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution. All hospitals and most doctors accept Medicare.
Does the federal government run your local hospitals? No. Does it buy or rent hospital locations? No. Does it hire nurses, doctors, and the rest of the staff, from the phone people to the clean-up people? No.
Does the federal government maintain the hospitals’ roofs, walls, and parking lots? No. Your local hospitals, despite accepting Medicare, are not examples of socialism.
There are socialist hospitals in America. The United States Veterans Health Administration and the medical departments of the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force are examples.
Not only is the pejorative “socialism” incorrectly used to describe Medicare, but so is the term “socialized medicine,” and for the same devious reasons.
Per Wikipedia: When the term “socialized medicine” first appeared in the United States in the early 20th century, it bore no negative connotations.
However, by the 1930s, the term socialized medicine was routinely used negatively by conservative opponents of publicly funded health care who wished to imply it represented socialism, and by extension, communism.[
Universal health care and national health insurance were first proposed by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. President Franklin D. Roosevelt later championed it, as did Harry S. Truman as part of his Fair Deal and many others.
Truman announced before describing his proposal: “This is not socialized medicine”.
Government involvement in health care was ardently opposed by the AMA, which distributed posters to doctors with slogans such as “Socialized medicine … will undermine the democratic form of government.
Still today, the right-wing party of the rich wants to prevent health care for those of you who are not-rich (or Congresspeople) by confusing you.
Since calling Medicare for All “socialism” or “socialized medicine,” hasn’t ended the public’s desire for health care insurance, we now move on to “fraud.”
In South Florida, defrauding government health care programs doesn’t just qualify as a cottage industry — it’s big business.
One former fraudster admitted that likely thousands of businesses in the Miami area alone were defrauding Medicare.
A 2009 Government Accountability Office report also highlighted pervasive fraud within Medicare.
For instance, some South Florida home health agencies “have submitted claims for visits that were probably not provided, such as claims for visits that allegedly occurred when hurricanes were in the area.”
Lest anyone believe that much has changed in the past decade, the spring of 2019 saw not one but two billion-dollar fraud rings against Medicare exposed in a single week.
If you think that the single-payer bills promoted by Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and others would stop this rampant fraud, think again.
Both the House and Senate single-payer bills include not a single new provision designed to stop crooks from defrauding government health programs.
The bills would apply some existing anti-fraud provisions to the new government-run health program.
However, given the widespread fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, expanding the failed status quo would increase corruption rather than reducing it.
Mr. Jacobs wants you to be shocked to “learn” that where there is money, there is fraud. That includes all government programs and private programs, alike.
Since it is impossible to come up with provisions that will “stop crooks from defrauding government health programs,” you can be sure that any attempted provisions will be scorned by the GOP as not sufficient to eliminating fraud.
What Mr. Jacobs doesn’t mention is that defrauding the federal government may be the least harmful crime imaginable in that it costs no one, anything.
While fraud of any sort insults our Puritanical instincts, Medicare financial fraud actually stimulates economic growth.
Because the federal government (unlike state and local governments) is Monetarily Sovereign, it neither needs nor even uses your tax dollars to pay its bills. In fact, the federal government destroys (gasp!) your tax dollars upon receipt.
To pay its bills, the federal government creates brand new dollars, which is why federal deficit spending is stimulative and federal taxing is depressive.
Every dollar the federal government pays to fraudsters circulates through the economy, helping to grow honest business and employment.
Now, I am not advocating fraud. Far from it. I merely am saying that yes, for moral and some economic reasons, we should try to reduce fraud. But, because fraud against the federal government actually grows the economy, it certainly is not a valid reason to deny health care insurance for the masses.
If lawmakers like Bernie Sanders want to see the ways in which socialized medicine will increase fraud, they don’t have far to look.
And there it is: The ignorant and misleading pejorative “socialized medicine.”
No Mr. Jacobs, Medicare for All most certainly is not “socialized medicine.” And I suspect you know it.
At next week’s debates, moderators should ask candidates supporting Sanders’ plan whether they think concentrating all power in a government-run health plan will increase or decrease the incidence of fraud and corruption within our health care system.
The American people deserve better than to pay massive tax increases for this $32 trillion scheme, only to see much of that money end up in the hands of criminal fraudsters.
Jacobs ends his fakery with a series of . . . what else can you call them (?) . . . lies.
- Medicare for all does not concentrate all power in anything. It only requires the federal government to pay for health care insurance.
- The insurance is “government-run” but the health care is not — an important distinction Mr. Jacobs does not want you to understand or perhaps doesn’t understand, himself.
- There is need be no “massive tax increases,” or even tiny tax increases. In fact, FICA and all other federal taxes could (and should) be eliminated, and Medicare for All could be funded by the federal government, forever.
In summary, the rich do not want you to have health care, even if it would cost them nothing. This is their way of increasing their distance from you and retaining power over you. (See: “Why you believe the Big Lie. The Gap Psychology con job.“)
This is the same battle the rich fought to prevent Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare. All benefits to the poor and middle classes are obtained only by a long struggle against disinformation.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty
Twitter: @rodgermitchell
Search #monetarysovereigntyFacebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
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The most important problems in economics involve the excessive income/wealth/power Gaps between the richer and the poorer.
Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics.
Implementation of The Ten Steps To Prosperity can narrow the Gaps:
Ten Steps To Prosperity:
2. Federally funded Medicare — parts a, b & d, plus long-term care — for everyone
3. Provide a monthly economic bonus to every man, woman and child in America (similar to social security for all)
4. Free education (including post-grad) for everyone
5. Salary for attending school
6. Eliminate federal taxes on business
7. Increase the standard income tax deduction, annually.
8. Tax the very rich (the “.1%”) more, with higher progressive tax rates on all forms of income.
9. Federal ownership of all banks
10. Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99.9%
The Ten Steps will grow the economy, and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and you.
MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY
