Daily Archives: 1 April 2019

A Thought on Medicare for All

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University of Massachusetts-Amherst Economics Professor and Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute, Robert Pollin, had a thought on this.

Of course, so do I.

Pollin opened his tract with this:

All Americans would be able to get care from their chosen providers without having to pay premiums, deductibles or copayments.

No, we’ve already seen the lie in this. We experienced the broken, falsely presented promise with the sales job on Obamacare and the oft-repeated lie that if we liked our doctor, we could keep him and the associated lie of lower premiums.

Roughly 30 million people, 9% of the US population, are uninsured. Another 26%, 86 million people, are underinsured…

With millions of those Americans thrown off insurance plans they preferred because Obamacare made them illegal. This “economist” carefully elided that small fact.

We propose that all businesses that currently purchase health insurance for their employees be mandated to pay 92% of what they now spend into Medicare for All—saving 8% of their health-care expenditures.

Thereby throwing even more people off the plans they prefer.

This person also ignores another salient fact: the complete failure that is an existing single-payer plan, the VA.

And one more: even now, folks with surgical needs or prompt-but-expensive care needs or any other non-cookie cutter needs in other nations’ “free for all” health programs come here for those needs’ satisfaction rather than bear the interminable delays in getting that care in their nations’ programs.

Inconsistent

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Venezuela’s interim President—and only legitimate President—Juan Guaidó has sent his emissaries, his ambassadors around the globe to represent his government to other nations, as ambassadors are designated to do.  He has sent Otto Gebauer to Germany to represent his government to the German government.

There’s the rub.  Germany recognizes Guaidó’s presidency, but that government refuses to recognize his ambassador.

For the purposes of conducting official talks, on March 13 the government described him as the “personal representative of interim President Juan Guaidó….”

The rationalization for this inconsistency has been articulated by the Social Democratic Party’s Helge Lindh (and per his resume, Head of Working Group “Strengthening Foundations” (together with Andreas Bialas MdL):

Recognizing Guaidó was a political decision and a signa.  But, in the current situation, it doesn’t make sense to confirm Guaidó’s shadow ambassadors, as that ignores the fact that the power remains with Maduro and his system.

Sadly, Maduro’s ability to cling to power is facilitated by this willingness to continue to recognize—to tacitly support—his power. This paralysis also contributes to Germany’s maintaining Maduro’s policy of denying entry into Venezuela even the most basic survival foods and medicines, solely on the basis of their originating from the wrong nations.

It’s time for Germany to get off the dime, accept Gebauer as Venezuela’s ambassador, and eject the Maduro man.

Germany’s Hans-Joachim Heintze, of the Ruhr University Bochum’s Institute for International Law, is worried about America’s past gunboat diplomacy and doesn’t want Germany to make the same mistakes.  This is another misguided rationalization, here borne of Germany’s guilt complex over a four generations removed war.

Still, if Germany truly is worried about our unilateral action (of which there has been very little related to the current crisis), Germany should work with the OAS and with individual South American nations—particularly Brazil and Colombia, who are bearing the brunt of the flow of Venezuelan refugees—to assemble a South American military coalition to enter Venezuela, force Maduro out, and allow the Guaidó government to function.

Dithering serves only to prop up the thug to the continued abuse of the Venezuelan people.