Jacob Hacker Rises Again to Stop Single Payer
By Margaret Flowers | Health Over Profit for Everyone | January 5, 2018
In the American Prospect article linked below, The Road to Medicare for Everyone, Jacob Hacker is once again working to dissuade single payer healthcare supporters from demanding National Improved Medicare for All and use our language to send us down a false path. Once again, he comes up with a scheme to convince people to ask for less and calls those who disagree “purists”. Hacker calls his “Medicare Part E” “daring and doable,” I call it dumb and dumber. Here’s why.
Hacker makes the same assertions we witnessed in August of 2017 when other progressives tried to dissuade single payer supporters.
He starts with “risk aversion,” although he doesn’t use the term in his article. Hacker asserts that those who have health insurance through their employers won’t want to give it up for the new system. Our responses to this are: there is already widespread dislike for the current healthcare system; people don’t like private insurance while there is widespread support across the political spectrum for Medicare and Medicaid; there is also widespread support for single payer; and those with health insurance can be reassured that they will be better off under a single payer system. It is also important to note that employers don’t want to be in the middle of health insurance. Healthcare costs are the biggest complaint by small and medium sized businesses and keep businesses that operate internationally less competitive.
Next, Hacker brings up the costs of the new system and complains that it will create new federal spending. He points to the failures to pass ‘single payer’ in Vermont and California. First, it must be recognized that the state bills were not true single payer bills, and second, states face barriers that the federal government does not, they must balance their budgets. Hacker ignores the numerous studies at the national level, some by the General Accounting Office and the Congressional Budget Office that demonstrate single payer is the best way to save money. Of course there would be an increase in federal spending, the system would be financed through taxes, but the taxes would replace premiums, co-pays and deductibles, which are rising as fast as health insurers can get away with. Hacker proposes a more complex system that will fail to provide the savings needed to cover everyone, the savings that can only exist under a true single payer system.
Hacker also confuses “Medicare for All” with simply expanding Medicare to everyone, including the wasteful private plans under Medicare Advantage. This is not what National Improved Medicare for All (NIMA) advocates support. NIMA would take the national infrastructure created by Medicare and use it for a new system that is comprehensive in coverage, including long term care, and doesn’t require co-pays or deductibles. The system would negotiate reasonable pharmaceutical prices and set prices for services. It would also provide operating budgets for hospitals and other health facilities and use separate capital budgets to make sure that health resources are available where they are needed. And the new system would create a mechanism for negotiation of payment to providers.
Finally, Hacker tries to convince his readers that the opposition to NIMA will be too strong, so we should demand less. We know that the opposition to our lesser demands will also be strong. That was the case in 2009 when people advocated for the ‘public option’ gimmick. If we are going to fight for something, if we are going to take on this opposition, we must fight for something worthwhile, something that will actually solve the healthcare crisis. That something is NIMA. We are well aware that the opposition will be strong, but we also know that when people organize and mobilize, they can win. Every fight for social transformation has been a difficult struggle. We know how to wage these struggles. We have decades of history of successful struggles to guide us.
One gaping hole in Hacker’s approach is that it prevents the social solidarity required to win the fight and to make the solution succeed. Hacker promotes a “Medicare Part E” that some people can buy into. Not only will this forego most of the savings of a single payer system, but it also leaves the public divided. Some people will be in the system and others will be out. This creates vulnerabilities for the opposition to exploit and further divide us. Any difficulties of the new system will be blown out of proportion and those in the system may worry that they are in the wrong place. When we are united in the same system, not only does that create a higher quality system (a lesson we’ve learned from other countries), but it also unites us in fighting to protect and improve that system.
Hacker succeeded in convincing people who support single payer to ask for something less in 2009 and we ended up with a law that is further enriching the health insurance, pharmaceutical and private healthcare institutions enormously while tens of millions of people go without care. Now, Hacker rises again to use the same scare tactics and accusations that he used then to undermine the struggle for NIMA. This is to be expected. The national cry for NIMA is growing and the power holders in both major political parties and their allies in the media and think tanks are afraid of going against the donor class. Social movements have always been told that what they are asking for is impossible, until the tide shifts and it becomes inevitable.
Our task is to shift the tide. We must not be fooled by people like Jacob Hacker. We know that single payer systems work. We have the money to pay for it. We have the framework for a national system and we have the institutions to provide care. Just as we did in 1965 when Medicare and Medicaid were created from scratch, and without the benefit of the Internet, we can create National Improved Medicare for All, a universal system, all at once. Everybody in and nobody out.
We know that we are close to winning when the opposition starts using our language to take us off track. “Medicare Part E” is not National Improved Medicare for All, it is a gimmick to protect the status quo and convince us that we are not powerful. We aren’t falling for it. This is the time to fight harder for NIMA. We will prevail.
Read Jacob Hacker’s article in the American Prospect here.
China to Build Second Foreign Naval Base, This Time in Pakistan
Sputnik – 05.01.2018
China is planning to build its second foreign naval base in Pakistan following the ribbon cutting ceremony for its first overseas base in Djibouti last July.
Sources close to the People’s Liberation Army have confirmed to the South China Morning Post that a Chinese naval port is being built at a strategic location on Pakistan’s southern coast.
“China needs to set up another base in Gwadar for its warships because Gwadar is now a civilian port,” Zhou Chenming, a Chinese military analyst, told the South China Morning Post on Friday. “Gwadar port can’t provide specific services for warships,” Zhou said; hence the need for a new base.
Gwadar is less than 50 miles east of the Pakistan-Iran border and sits in Balochistan Province, where fiercely independent Baloch nationalists have waged guerrilla wars against both the Pakistani and Iranian governments. “Public order there is a mess,” Zhou said.
“China and Pakistan have found common ground in terms of maritime interest in the region,” Pakistani analyst Sheikh Fahad says. “Gwadar port can be used for joint naval patrols in the Indian Ocean, further increasing the naval outreach of China and Pakistan in the region. Gwadar port will increase the countries’ naval movements and further expand defense cooperation, especially in the naval field,” Fahad noted.
In mid-December, Lawrence Sellin, a retired US Army Reserve colonel, reported for the Daily Caller that high-ranking Chinese and Pakistani officials had met in Beijing to discuss future projects.
Last June, a Pakistani diplomat said China’s help was needed as an “equalizer,” pointing to the naval base as all-but-inevitable. “Previously it was the US and Saudi Arabia… Now it’s China,” the diplomat told NBC. A Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman later dismissed the report as “pure guesswork,” but now it seems the port will, in fact, be built.
Experts have noted that India is keeping a close eye on the development of China-Pakistan relations. “China finds it very useful to use Pakistan against India and ignore India’s concerns, particularly on terrorism issues. That has created a lot of stress in the relationship between Beijing and Delhi,” Rajeev Ranan Chaturvedy, a researcher at the National University of Singapore, told SCMP.
But “Indian naval capabilities and experience in the Indian Ocean region are fairly good — much better than Pakistan and China,” Chaturvedy said.
Daesh declares war on Palestine’s Hamas resistance movement
Press TV – January 5, 2018
The Egyptian wing of Daesh Takfiri terrorists has released a new execution video, declaring war on the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement based in Gaza.
The video, released Wednesday, purports to show the execution of a man who Daesh claims cooperated with Hamas’ armed wing.
“Never surrender to them. Use explosives, silenced pistols and sticky bombs. Bomb their courts and their security locations, for these are the pillars of tyranny that prop up its throne,” said one of the militants in the video.
The Egyptian wing of Daesh, known as the Sinai Province, is notorious for its brutal massacres, including the Sinai 2015 plane crash which killed 224 passengers and mass killing of over 300 people at a Sufi mosque in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, the deadliest attack in modern Egyptian history.
The video comes as Hamas has been cooperating with Egyptian security forces to restore stability to Sinai, which borders Gaza.
In October, the Palestinian resistance movement arrested four senior Daesh terrorists in Sinai.
In July 2015, Daesh released a video saying that it would overthrow Hamas “tyrants” for their perceived lack of religious rulings in Gaza.
Takfiri groups such as Daesh have never attacked Israel despite operating close to Syria’s borders with the occupied Palestinian territories. Israel is widely believed to be supporting terrorists in Syria by launching airstrikes against various targets there from time to time.
Meanwhile, the US and its allies, which have been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be Daesh targets inside Syria, have repeatedly been accused of providing logistic support and air cover for Daesh terrorists.
Daesh, however, lost all the territory under its control in Syria and Iraq late last year.
Western Arrogant Doublethink on Iran
Strategic Culture Foundation | 05.01.2018
If the shoe were on the other foot, one can imagine the absolute outcry in the Western media. If social protests were to break out in the United States or Europe, and Iranian leaders issued interfering calls in support of those protests, there would be mouth-foaming denunciations of Tehran for “mischievous meddling” in others’ sovereignty.
Yet over the past week, this is exactly what Western governments and news media have been doing in regard to public protests in Iran.
The US government has taken the lead with President Trump labelling the Iranian authorities a “brutal and corrupt regime”.
European governments have been a little more circumspect in their statements, urging the Iranian authorities to be “restrained” and to “allow peaceful protests”.
Nevertheless, European leaders are subtly shoring up the American narrative that the street demonstrations across Iran are a righteous democratic cause against an oppressive regime. That was the implication in statements made by Britain’s foreign minister Boris Johnson and French president Emmanuel Macron. This week, the French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian cancelled an official trip to Tehran. Such moves represent an unacceptable attempt to undermine the Iranian authorities.
Images carried by American media, in particular CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post, of protesters holding up clenched fists have sought to simplify the events in Iran as a “good-citizens-versus-bad-regime” scenario. Notwithstanding that the protests have been relatively small and the grievances are mainly about economic concerns – not a rebellion against state institutions.
By contrast, Russia called on foreign states to back off making prejudiced comments on the Iranian disturbances. Moscow said the events in Iran were an internal political matter for Iranians to resolve without foreign countries interfering.
The irony of Western doublethink is rich. Over the past year, there has been a recurring theme among Western governments and media of “foreign interference” allegedly in their political affairs. Russia has been the focus of these allegations, even though there is no evidence to support such claims. The ever-so pious Western governments and media have no such reservations about “foreign meddling” when it comes to their brazen rush to pile into Iran’s internal politics as shown this week. Or in the forthcoming Russian presidential elections.
Western interference is not just limited to pejorative statements on Iran’s protests. The US State Department has openly admitted that it is communicating via social media with anti-government protesters. This active involvement by Washington is a repeat of similar outside agitation during the so-called Green Movement disturbances in Iran back in 2009. As mentioned above, one can imagine the hue and cry in Western capitals if Iran, or Russia, or some other foreign state, was agitating anti-austerity demonstrations in Washington, London and Paris.
Iranian authorities have sound reason to suspect that Western interference may be even more sinister. The protests – while largely peaceful – have included what appears to be an organized violent element. At least one police officer was reportedly shot dead and police stations have come under armed attack. The rapid escalation of violence and burning of public property suggest a subversive agenda. Comparisons have been made to the way protests in Syria in 2011 were exploited by Western powers for an agenda of regime change which led to all-out war in that country.
For now, the demonstrations in over a dozen cities across Iran appear to have subsided. They have been replaced by much larger public rallies in support of the government and President Hassan Rouhani, as well as the country’s spiritual leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
The economic grievances that sparked the initial protests last week are real enough. Iranians are reportedly enduring hard economic times with soaring inflation of basic living costs and high unemployment among the youth population. But this is a political challenge for the Iranian government to overcome in response to their nation’s grievances.
Ironically, however, it illustrates another aspect of Western doublethink. Western media have reported – with upside-down logic – that President Rouhani “has failed to deliver on economic improvements”. But that “failure” is largely due to the US and Europe not fully implementing the nuclear accord signed with Iran in July 2015, which was also signed by Russia and China and who are abiding by the treaty. That internationally binding accord obliges the end to decades of Western-imposed economic sanctions on Iran.
While the Europeans have begun normalizing economic relations with Iran, not so the Trump administration. Washington has in fact increased the financial blockade under the tendentious pretext of Iran’s alleged “support for terrorism”. Trump has repeatedly threatened to rip up the 2015 nuclear accord. Washington has also intimidated European states, companies and banks from engaging fully with Iran.
The European Union needs to show more backbone towards the US and tell Washington that the nuclear accord is a legal mandate to lift economic sanctions off Iran. Iran’s economic problems are directly related to the bad faith that Western states are showing with regard to the UN-approved nuclear deal. Washington’s policy towards Iran is a continuation of decades of US-led aggression towards the Islamic Republic ever since its 1979 revolution against the American-backed stooge regime of Shah Pahlavi.
The readiness shown by the US and Europe to interfere in Iran’s internal problems is nothing but arrogant doublethink. Get over it.
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Israeli commander threatens to ‘disable all youth in the camp’
Palestinian youth after being treated for gunshot injuries by Israeli forces (Photo: BADIL)
Ma’an – August 26, 2016
BETHLEHEM – Two Palestinian youths were injured with live fire during clashes with Israeli soldiers in al-Duheisha refugee camp in southern Bethlehem early Friday morning, as reports emerged of an Israeli army commander making repeated threats in recent weeks to make “all youth in the camp disabled.”
Local sources said that two youths were shot and injured in the legs during clashes that erupted after Israeli forces raided the camp in Friday’s predawn hours.
Sources added that Israeli soldiers raided and searched the house of the incarcerated Palestinian Muhammad al-Seifi, detaining his mother and sister by locking them inside their home to pressure Muhammad’s younger brother Naba to turn himself into Israeli authorities.
Israeli forces also blew off the door of the Ibdaa Cultural Center near the entrance to the camp and occupied the rooftop of the building, from where Israeli snipers fired live ammunition and tear-gas canisters at local youth.
Violent clashes in al-Duheisha are common and break out nearly every time Israeli army forces enter the camp, which is located in Area A and should be under full Palestinian Authority control according to the Oslo agreements.
In a response to a request for comment, an Israeli army spokesperson told Ma’an that the Israeli army was not involved, and claimed Israeli border police were behind it, despite the area being located outside of police jurisdiction in Area A of the occupied West Bank. … continue
Book Review
CIA scientist who was privy to the agency’s darkest Cold War secrets was ‘murdered by agents when he got cold feet’, says family in new book
By Jennifer Smith | Daily Mail | February 17, 2020
The family of a CIA scientist who was privy to some of the agency’s darkest secrets during the Cold War believes he did not kill himself, as they have been told for decades, and was instead murdered because he posed a risk to them.
Frank Olson died in the early hours of the morning on Nov. 28, 1953 outside The Statler Hotel in New York City, after having apparently fallen from his room on the 13th floor.
His family were not allowed to see his body, instead being told he had suffered significant facial injuries in the fall, and that he had killed himself by jumping.
But the man’s nephew Paul Vidich is now claiming in his new book, The Coldest Warrior, that Olson was in fact killed by the CIA.
He says that after the family had Olson’s body exhumed, they were told that he died as the result of blunt force trauma in the hotel room and that he was thrown to the street below. … continue
Aletho News Original Content
Three Mile Island, Global Warming and the CIA
By Aletho News | January 9, 2012
This article will examine some of the connections between the US and UK National Security apparatus and the appearance of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory beginning after the accident at Three Mile Island. … continue
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