Bernie Sanders Is Tapping Into a Vein of Anger Over Health Care

[marmar]

from truthdig:


Bernie Sanders Is Tapping Into a Vein of Anger Over Health Care

Posted on Jan 13, 2016
By Bill Boyarsky


Obamacare is leaving millions in serious financial pain, pointing up the need for universal health care—Medicare for all. That’s Sen. Bernie Sanders’ position, and it is a crucial difference between him and Hillary Clinton, his chief rival for the Democratic nomination for the presidency.

Reiterating one of his major themes Saturday, Sanders told a Putting Families First forum in Des Moines, Iowa, “What this campaign is about is ending the disgrace of the United States being the only major country not to provide health care to all people as a right.”

Clinton, who did not join Sanders and fellow candidate Martin O’Malley at the forum, has offered a considerably more limited plan. She would fix the Affordable Care Act rather than replace it with Medicare for all. She would limit what patients pay for doctor visits and prescription drugs and repeal the law’s planned tax on high-cost, employer-sponsored insurance. And she would try to stop excessive insurance rate increases and limit drug price increases.

These would just be fixes to a system scathingly described this way by Robert Pear of The New York Times: “For many families, the Affordable Care Act has not made health care affordable.”

A recent study by The New York Times and the Kaiser Family Foundation shows how Obamacare falls short of rescuing Americans from the nagging medical insecurity the act was supposed to have ended. .............(more)

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/bernie_sanders_is_digging_into_a_vein_of_anger_over_health_care_20160113

[zazen]

1. do you know ANYONE who hasn't been on phone for hours over past two months?

At best, most people are majorly inconvenienced by bad interfaces, two hour phone holds, major mistakes and misfilings that leave people temporarily uninsured with no human to call to fix it, loss of doctors due to severe network restrictions, yada yada.

Then we get into affordability.

I thank Obama for forcing the discussion in the first place and I realize that the Republicans have done everything they can to create the mess we're in. But it's a mess.

There are people who cannot get married because they'll lose affordable health insurance. Too poor and you're in the Medicaid gap. A dollar over what's considered too much and you pay out the nose for negligible coverage.

It's that bad. The timing of the turn of the year and all of the forced insurance changes from 2015 to 2016 is definitely channeling the frustration of people.

[Jharr827]

2. My mom

Just found out her medicine for diabetes is going to be $1300! We need single payer.

[sonofspy777]

3. When ACA was passed I said

Good! It's failings will make Medicare for all inevitable.

My arthritis med is $3200/mo

Health Care is a Human Right!