By Savanah Hernandez
Kounalakis says any Democrat will do a better job than President Trump and hopes that someone like Kamala Harris will bring some California style policies to the national stage.
Speaking to CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Wednesday night, the socialist stalwart made the case for bringing a European-style healthcare system to the US.
“I suspect that a lot of people in the country would be delighted to pay more in taxes if they had comprehensive health care as a human right,” Sanders told Cooper.
“Your kids in many countries around the world can go to the public colleges and universities tuition-free, wages in many cases are higher,” Sanders continued. “So, there is a tradeoff, but at the end of the day, I think… most Americans will understand that is a good deal.”
Though Sanders cited Germany as an example of an ideal healthcare system, there are some key differences between the German model and the ‘Medicare for All’ plan advocated by Sanders. The German system is a multi-payer system funded by private and public sources. ‘Medicare for All,’ at least in its current iteration, is a single-payer system that would bar employers from providing competing private alternatives and could eliminate America’s $600 billion private insurance industry.
Medicare for All is a generous package that comes with a hefty price tag. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget – a supposedly non-partisan think tank – puts the price at $28 trillion, or nearly ten percent of the US’ GDP. Sanders’ own estimate turns out a cost of $13 trillion over ten years, still a roughly 30 percent increase in federal spending and an outlay more than 18 times larger than even the US military’s astronomical annual budget.
Americans largely support the idea of Medicare for All, with 70 percent in favor of a single-payer system, according to a Reuters poll taken last August. However, support for such a system drops off to 37 percent once they learn it would necessitate a massive tax hike to implement.
Bernie Sanders blasts Trump as ‘socialist for rich & powerful’
The sheer cost to the taxpayer of overhauling the US healthcare system has been trumpeted by conservatives to dismiss Sanders’ proposal. To date, Sanders has not managed to clarify exactly how this money would be raised. A paperreleased by his office in April suggested foisting some of the tax burden on employers, applying a premium to middle class households, increasing taxes on the wealthy, and imposing levies on financial institutions and offshore accounts.
Sanders maintains that these tax hikes would cut the country’s overall healthcare expenditure and leave the average American family “in a better financial position than they are under the current system.”
By Penny Starr
Like many of her Democrat colleagues running for the 2020 presidential nomination, Warren is reacting to Alabama banning abortion and several other states poised to follow suit, most recently Missouri.
“These extremist Republican lawmakers know what the law is — but they don’t care,” Warren wrote in a commentary posted on the Medium website on Friday. “They want to turn back the clock, outlaw abortion, and deny women access to reproductive health care. And they are hoping the Supreme Court will back their radical play.”
And she blames Trump for the nation’s increasingly pro-life stance, including that he “stole” a seat on the United States Supreme Court.
“I’ll be blunt: It just might work,” Warren wrote. “President Trump has packed the courts with extreme, anti-choice judges. Senate Republicans stole a Supreme Court seat and rammed through the confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh last year in order to cement an anti-choice majority on the Supreme Court.”
Warren claims, falsely, the abortion and “reproductive rights” are guaranteed in the Constitution. The court applied the Fourth Amendment’s right for citizens’ privacy to make legal abortion on demand the law of the land.
And because Warren and other pro-abortion politicians and activists know that the Roe V. Wade decision comes under renewed scrutiny by the high court, the law could be undone.
Her answer: federal government intervention that would stifle states’ right to make abortion laws, including lifting the ban on federal funding of abortions.
“Congress should pass new federal laws that protect access to reproductive care from right-wing ideologues in the states,” Warren wrote. “Federal laws that ensure real access to birth control and abortion care for all women. Federal laws that will stand no matter what the Supreme Court does.”
Government intervention would include:
In her commentary, Warren inadvertently revealed how pro-life the nation is becoming, including 55 laws restricting abortion have been passed by state legislatures and 18 states have laws in place to kick in if the Roe decision. And 90 percent of counties in the country do not have an abortion clinic, according to data from 2014.
“This is a dark moment,” Warren wrote. “People are scared and angry. And they are right to be. But this isn’t a moment to back down – it’s time to fight back.”
By Hank Berrien
Colin Rogers, 55, suffered a basilar artery occlusion on April 14, which he could have survived if he had undergone a thrombectomy, which removes a blood clot from the brain.
Instead, Rogers was taken to Prince Charles Hospital in Merthyr Tydfil. The University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff could have performed the procedure, but enough specialists staff were reportedly not available. Rogers died on April 18.
His son Callum, 26, stated, “Although we don’t know what the outcome would have been, this potentially could have saved his life. My dad was denied the chance of survival as Wales does not have access to this treatment and doesn’t have any units. We were also told [by a stroke consultant] that if he fell ill on a weekday they would have had a chance to transfer him to a specialist unit in England. Because this was a Sunday it was impossible. To find this out is just gut-wrenching.”
Colin Rogers’ family issued a statement saying, “Up to 500 people a year in Wales may die or be left profoundly disabled because of a lack of availability of endovascular thrombectomy. This has to be done within 24 hours or it is too late. Colin is not the only person to have died because of this postcode lottery and this is not a new problem. We want to change this. We want to raise awareness and campaign for equal access for patients such as Colin, who will die or live a profoundly disabled life without treatment. We want to make a difference so that people are not failed by the system as Colin was.”
A spokeswoman from the Welsh Health Specialised Services Committee (WHSSC) stated:
Whilst we do not comment on individual cases the general position in Wales is that WHSSC took on the commissioning of mechanical thrombectomy from April 2019. Prior to this individual health boards commissioned the service directly from providers. In south Wales, WHSSC accesses treatment from provider hospitals in Cardiff and Bristol on a case-by-case basis dependent on the capacity available at the hospitals when required. The capacity depends on the availability of specialist staff able to carry out the procedure which has varied over time.
The University Hospital Wales, Cardiff, has recently recruited a second consultant who is due to start in autumn 2019, allowing the service to be developed further. Treatment for patients from mid Wales and north Wales is usually commissioned from hospitals in the Midlands or Liverpool, again dependent on the availability of specialist staff. To the extent that specialist staff are available, this is a seven day a week service.
A basilar artery occlusion (BAO) starts with variable and stuttering symptoms which can cause a delay in diagnosis; the attack has high morbidity and mortality. BAOs represent 1% to 4% of all ischemic strokes.
A fundraising page has been created to push for 24-7 access for clot-removal treatment.
By ASHE SCHOW
But this rationing leads to consequences. Hundreds of elderly citizens go blind each year while waiting for eye surgeries. The latest report on the issue comes from the Times of London. The outlet reports that the latest survey from the Royal College of Ophthalmologists (RCO) found rationing of cataract surgery continues even after guidance was issued suggesting patients not have the surgery delayed.
“The [National Health Service] has ignored instructions to end cataract treatment rationing in defiance of official guidance two years ago, a survey by the Royal College of Ophthalmologists has found,” the Times reported.
The outlet reported that removing cataracts was one of the most common NHS procedures. More than 400,000 such surgeries are conducted each year. Two years ago, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) stated that patients requiring cataract surgery should not have to wait until they are almost blind to receive treatment, yet that appears to still be the case in 2019.
“Nothing has changed,” Mike Burdon, president of the RCO, told the Times. “We can’t have a situation where Nice is set up to make these decisions and [local health groups] simply say ‘we don’t like the answer’ and deprive the elderly population of the chance of a better quality of life. I’m bitterly disappointed.”
He called cataract surgery “probably the most life-transforming procedure the NHS does.”
Helen Lee, the policy manager for the Royal National Institute of Blind People, stressed the importance of cataract surgery in a statement to the Times:
NHS, naturally, pushed back on concerns. Julie Wood, chief executive of NHS Clinical Commissioners, told the Times that “Nice guidance is not mandatory and clinical commissioners must have the freedom to make clinically led decisions that are in the best interests of both individual patients and their wider local populations.” She added that “The NHS does not have unlimited resources.”
This is just the latest report on the lack of access to important eye surgeries. Last June, the Telegraph reported that patients were going blind while waiting for treatment for glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration. A survey at that time found that up to 22 patients were going blind or partially blind each month waiting for treatment.
The problem was also reported in 2013. At that time, more than four in ten NHS ophthalmologists said they had patients who had gone blind waiting for treatment.
This is what will happen in America if Democrats get their way on “Medicare for all.”
By Chris Menahan
From KTSM:
Cruz rallied in San Angleo on Tuesday, discussing issues such as immigration. During his speech, he specifically made his feelings clear to his supporters that the caravan of Central American migrants were not welcomed, but, if they made it they should turn to O’Rourke’s supporters for help.
“When you get here, we have identified homes, that are willing to take you in to give you free housing, free food, free health care,” Cruz said. “And every one of these homes is self identified with a little black and white sign that says Beto. Don’t bother knocking, just kick the door and they don’t believe in walls, so just let yourself in, and make yourself at home.”
This should be the standard response anytime a lib says we need to let these people in. Tucker used it against Jorge Ramos last week to hilarious effect:
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