We’re Spending Trillions on Weapons and War. Let’s Spend It on Health Care.

This is an excellent article that illuminates how vital it is that we completely reframe the narrative. It also one more time exposes yet again why it is that we need to rid ourselves of the corporate Democrats who are there to be loyal to their corporate donors rather than the will and the needs of the American people and the planet. It is immoral and inhumane and cruel to continue to not fund healthcare as a human right for all. Another world is possible! — Molly

The money needed to fund Medicare for All is there. It always has been.

Want to Fund Medicare for All? Stop Funding Weapons of War!! 

 By William Rivers Pitt

We can’t afford it!
This will mean higher taxes!
It’s anti-American!

This is but a taste of the nonsense you can expect to endure over the coming 16.5 months as the nation hurtles toward an electoral reckoning with the Trumpian monstrosity that was unleashed in 2016.

Of course, Republicans will spray this cheese into the wind at every opportunity, partially because the deliberately inaccurate vision of “socialism” they’re peddling will cost their wealthy benefactors a miniscule percentage of their fortunes, and partially because they still envy how much red-baiting TV time Sen. Joe McCarthy got back in the day.

Nowhere will this fraudulent bugaboo version of “socialism” be deployed more often than in the ongoing debate over reforming health care. The so-called “radical” Medicare for All plan championed by Sen. Bernie Sanders during and after his 2016 presidential campaign has become the go-to health care reform idea for most of the 2020 Democratic contenders, including several candidates at the front of the pack.

This has a number of individuals, specifically those who profit wildly from the current expensive mayhem system, breaking out in full-blown chicken-skin. Luckily for them but not so much for us, they have large media megaphones through which they can make their discontent heard.

“The for-profit health industry is aware that support for a national health system like Medicare for All has risen in recent years,” writesMichael Corcoran for Truthout, “along with unprecedented grassroots energy. Moreover, health care costs rank as the biggest concern among Americans. Resistance is almost entirely driven by the for-profit health industry, which works to portray the illusion of widespread opposition to — and fear of — a national health system. Corporate media outlets have helped them tremendously along the way.”

The pushback against Medicare for All is not solely relegated to the Republicans, the for-profit health care industry, and their allies in the media. According to reports, a top aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave private assurances to a clutch of insurance executives back in February that Medicare for All is doomed under her stewardship, despite the fact that it is supported by a huge majority of Democratic voters and more than half of Republican voters. Millennials love it to pieces, and could turn out in droves if they get a chance to vote for it in the general election.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the if-you-believe-the-polls frontrunner for the nomination and the clear establishment candidate, is dipping his toes very lightly into Medicare for All while attacking progressives for even considering the idea. Biden’s $750 billion health care plan is essentially Obamacare 2.0 and includes the “public option” that was memorably discarded when the Affordable Care Act was first assembled.

“I think one of the most significant things we’ve done in our administration is pass the Affordable Care Act,” said Biden at a recent event in New Hampshire. “I don’t know why we’d get rid of what in fact was working and move to something totally new.”       

Senator Sanders, who has not retreated one inch from his 2016 health care proposals, is having none of it. “We cannot continue to tinker around the edges while 80 million Americans lack health insurance or are underinsured with high premiums, copays and deductibles,” he said in response to Biden’s criticisms.

“We believe that health care is a human right,” said Sanders in Philadelphia on Monday, “and we are going to fight for a system that is based on human needs, not corporate profits.”

Please continue this article here: https://truthout.org/articles/were-spending-trillions-on-weapons-and-war-lets-spend-it-on-health-care/