https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/17/bernie-sanders-new-health-package-00097300

Sen. Bernie Sanders is launching his latest push as one of the Senate’s most powerful committee chairs: to pour nearly $200 billion of new money into the health care system.

In an interview with POLITICO, Sanders (I-Vt.) described a plan that would, over five years, provide $130 billion for community health centers and $60 billion in funding to grow the workforce. Within the workforce funding, he would set aside $15 billion for graduate medical education programs, with an emphasis on boosting primary care access.

The new package is Sanders’ response to monthslong discussions on the Senate HELP Committee about how to address growing health workforce shortages and financial woes of community health centers in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The goal right now is to take bold action to increase our health care workforce, to make sure that everybody in this country has access to a doctor or a dentist or nursing,” Sanders said Tuesday. “If we agree that there is a crisis, if we agree that inaction will only make the crisis worse, do we have the political will to do what we have to do for the American people?”

For Sanders, it’s another example of the balancing act the progressive stalwart faces as leader of one of the top power centers in Congress, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. He’s still pushing “Medicare for All,” but in a narrowly divided Senate he’s separating his roles, at times at least, as an advocate and legislator.

His top priorities on the panel at the moment are lowering the cost of prescription drugs, raising the minimum wage and the massive new infusion of health care money.

But Senate Republicans, as well as those in control of the House, are unlikely to endorse his first legislative proposal’s huge increases, even as there is broad bipartisan agreement that something should be done to alleviate the workforce shortages and help the community health centers.

HELP ranking member Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) told POLITICO in a statement that his team has been in talks with Sanders’ staff to find “a reasonable solution” to address those issues — but implied that Sanders’ plan is unlikely to pass.

“This proposal to increase funding for health centers by 550% at a time when Congress is deadlocked trying to negotiate spending and a debt ceiling increase is not setting up a path for success for legislation that can pass the Senate with 60 votes, and make it through the House to be signed into law,” he said. “Let’s just be realistic.”

Republicans’ inclination to cut spending amid the debt ceiling debate threatens to further complicate the proposal.

Sanders acknowledged he doesn’t know whether he has the votes for the package and doesn’t have a clear path to pass it, whether as a standalone bill or part of another piece of legislation. But he said he will put it to a committee vote this Congress and seek to get it into law, possibly by attaching it to a must-pass bill on the Senate floor.

“Right now, we have focused on working with many Democrats, but we’re going to bring Republicans, and we all have a working group which is discussing this issue,” he said.

Sanders’ workforce plan could also go beyond funding alone to also consider scope of practice changes to increase patient access. He also said he wants to boost the number of Black doctors in addressing the workforce.

Success would likely require the backing of a united Democratic caucus in the Senate, the assent of at least nine Republican senators and the GOP-controlled House — an uphill climb.

The House is also looking to move legislation on community health centers and graduate medical education funding but is considering far smaller funding increases.

Senate HELP ranking member Sen. Bill Cassidy told POLITICO in a statement that his team has been in talks with Sen. Bernie Sanders’ staff. | Francis Chung/POLITICO
On Wednesday, the Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee will mark up a bill that would extend current community health center funding levels through 2028.

An amendment to that measure, expected Wednesday, would increase those programs’ funding for 2024 and 2025, a congressional staffer told POLITICO. But even that increase would be well below Sanders’ proposal.

The legislative movement comes as community health center advocates have descended on Washington with concerns over what they say are historic financial challenges.

Community health centers, which often serve low-income patients, are grappling with pandemic funding drying up, Medicaid payments shrinking amid redetermination and labor costs increasing across the health sector — a convergence advocates say is “a perfect storm.”

“I’m painting a very doom-and-gloom picture, which is not typically who I am,” Amanda Pears Kelly, CEO of Advocates for Community Health, said in an interview. “But I just will be honest and say: This is not something I’ve ever seen, at least the years that I’ve been working with community health centers. … Something’s got to give.”

Advocates for Community Health told POLITICO that meetings will be with lawmakers and their staffs across the aisle — including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.).

https://www.commondreams.org/news/medicare-for-all-town-hall

“The current healthcare system in the United States is totally broken, it is totally dysfunctional, and it is extremely cruel.”

That was how Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) kicked off his speech Tuesday night at a town hall in Washington, D.C., convened hours before the planned reintroduction of Medicare for All legislation in the House and Senate on Wednesday.

Sanders, who is leading the updated bill alongside Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), said that the U.S. can “no longer tolerate” a profit-driven healthcare system under which the country spends twice as much per person as other major countries with disastrous results.

The Vermont senator, a longtime single-payer proponent, rattled off the alarming statistics: More than 80 million people in the U.S. are uninsured or underinsured, a quarter of Americans struggle to afford prescription medicines, and tens of thousands die every year in the richest country on the planet due to lack of insurance.

“What an outrage,” Sanders said Tuesday to an audience of nurses, doctors, other healthcare workers, and patients.

While the text of the latest Medicare for All bill has not yet been released, it will likely bear a close resemblance to previous versions that called for a dramatic transformation of the U.S. healthcare system over a period of several years, virtually eliminating private insurance and incrementally expanding and improving Medicare until it provides every person in the country with comprehensive care—for free at the point of service.

The bill stands no chance of passing in the current Congress given Republican control of the House and still-insufficient Democratic support, as well as massive industry opposition.

“What we’re looking at is an industry that has spent billions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions. Right now, as we speak—this moment, right here on Capitol Hill—the pharmaceutical industry has over 1,800 well-paid lobbyists,” Sanders said. “They’ve got three lobbyists for every member of Congress. Former leaders of the Republican Party, the Democratic Party—they are swarming all over this place.”

But given how deadly the status quo has become—with its intractable flaws amplified by the coronavirus pandemic—Sanders said the fight for a just healthcare system is more urgent than ever and must continue despite the significant political obstacles.

“Where we are today is not complicated,” the senator said. “The American people understand this system is failing, the American people understand that healthcare is a human right.”

“And our job,” he added, “is to finally end a disastrous system and make it clear that every man, woman, and child in this country is entitled to healthcare because they are a human being.”

Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, stressed during her remarks Tuesday night that support for Medicare for All has been growing across the country in recent years even as congressional backing for the legislation remains inadequate.

More than 100 localities across the U.S. have passed resolutions supporting Medicare for All, according to a Public Citizen tally.

Jayapal pointed specifically to Dunn County, Wisconsin voters’ approval of a ballot measure endorsing a national health insurance program in 2022. The county leans heavily Republican, indicating the widespread appeal of a system like the one Medicare for All would usher in.

“The momentum is on our side in this movement,” said Jayapal, who also cited growing support in the House Democratic caucus and recent congressional hearings on Medicare for All.

“It can sometimes feel like we’re pushing boulders up mountains, but know this: We have made incredible progress,” Jayapal added. “And we will continue to do that work across the country.”

The town hall also featured remarks from healthcare professionals who have experienced firsthand the horrors of the privatized U.S. system, which has left millions of people one medical emergency away from financial ruin.

“Even during a public health crisis, healthcare corporations prioritized their own profits instead of trying to save lives,” said Nancy Hagans, RN, president of the New York State Nurses Association.

According to peer-reviewed research published last year, more than 338,000 Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. could have been prevented if the country had a single-payer healthcare system. Meanwhile, insurance and pharmaceutical giants have seen their revenues continue to skyrocket.

“As a critical care physician, I have seen the results of this,” said Dr. Adam Gaffney of the Cambridge Health Alliance, noting the large number of U.S. adults who are likely to experience lapses in insurance coverage over a two-year period. “I have seen patients with life-threatening illnesses due to chronic conditions that were treatable but were not treated because those patients lacked access to care.”

“We need Medicare for All in this country for one reason,” Gaffney argued. “It is the solution to the inequities and injustices of our healthcare system, and no other reform is.”

The good news

https://www.post-gazette.com/news/politics-local/2023/05/16/2023-allegheny-county-executive-race-results/stories/202305160102

State Rep. Sara Innamorato led a progressive clean sweep Tuesday in Democratic primary elections for Allegheny County offices, winning the party’s nomination for county executive to extend a series of victories over establishment-friendly Democrats in Western Pennsylvania.

Robust support in Pittsburgh helped lift Ms. Innamorato, 37, a progressive from Lawrenceville, over City Controller Michael Lamb and County Treasurer John Weinstein. With almost all the votes counted Tuesday night, Ms. Innamorato had almost 38%, compared to about 30% for Mr. Weinstein and about 20% for Mr. Lamb.

She will face former PNC executive Joe Rockey in the general election, after Mr. Rockey was the only Republican candidate to run in the primary. If she wins in November, she would be the first woman to hold the executive position since voters created the job — part of a county government overhaul approved in 1998. One Republican and two Democrats have been the county executive since the new government structure took effect in 2000.

“We must stick to a positive vision of how we can create a county that works for us all,” Ms. Innamorato told supporters late Tuesday in Bloomfield. “In this historical moment, we have this opportunity for immense change.”

In Democratic-leaning Allegheny County, the primary win makes Ms. Innamorato the early front-runner to succeed Rich Fitzgerald, the term-limited Democrat who has been county executive since 2012. Progressive candidates for county-wide offices appeared to run the table Tuesday, with challenger Matt Dugan, incumbent Bethany Hallam and newcomer Erica Rocchi Brusselars leading Democratic primaries for district attorney, an at-large County Council seat, and county treasurer, respectively.

Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, the results underscored a leftward shift among Democrats in Pennsylvania’s second-biggest county and a rising progressive movement, led in part by Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey and U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, D-Swissvale.

Still, Republicans like their odds against Ms. Innamorato. County GOP chairman Sam DeMarco has called her a “target-rich environment” in the November general election for liberal policy positions, special-interest and outside support, and relative inexperience as a third-term lawmaker with a thin legislative record.

In her remarks Tuesday, Ms. Innamorato said she plans to improve mass transit, end what she called human-rights abuses at the Allegheny County Jail and focus on environmental issues, among other priorities.

“The people powered our campaign,” Ms. Innamorato said. “We brought together people from all walks of life; we engaged people where they’re at.”

The returns Tuesday suggest Ms. Innamorato built on some late momentum, after a spring survey put her support at 32% of likely Democratic voters. While she lost the county Democratic Party’s endorsement to Mr. Weinstein, he and Mr. Lamb seemed to lose an early edge as Ms. Innamorato and trial lawyer Dave Fawcett gained.

Her campaign echoed the progressive policies and political strategies that have helped elect Mr. Gainey, Ms. Lee and political newcomers across Western Pennsylvania and the state — emphasizing affordable housing, worker protections and environmental concerns as central priorities.

Ms. Innamorato also benefited from a significant voter-turnout effort and support from organized labor groups including the Service Employees International Union, one of her biggest contributors. The SEIU is also closely allied with Mr. Gainey, raising the prospect that the group could soon enjoy considerable sway in both city and county government.

And following Mr. Gainey’s elevation from the state House, a general election victory for Ms. Innamorato would have two former state representatives running city and county government.

Mr. Weinstein and Mr. Lamb both targeted Ms. Innamorato in closing attack ads over the final week of the campaign, with one casting her as “Socialist Sara” and the other arguing she couldn’t deliver on her promises.

Supporters cheered as Mr. Weinstein approached a podium with his two young children Tuesday night at Acrisure Stadium. Ms. Innamorato’s “being a female helped her in this race immensely,” he said, adding that “the older white men chopped up the vote.”

“We had hoped that this thing was going to tighten up a little bit, but unfortunately it wasn’t in the cards,” Mr. Weinstein said. “There were too many people in the vote, too many white men running in this race.

While he pledged to back Ms. Innamorato over Mr. Rockey, Mr. Weinstein voiced concern that she “never voted with the building trades once in Harrisburg.”

The Pittsburgh Regional Building Trades Council endorsed Mr. Weinstein in the primary. He suggested Ms. Innamorato “build bridges” with the other candidates and with labor unions that supported him.

The Allegheny-Fayette Central Labor Council did not endorse Ms. Innamorato, either, but is committed to “finding a way to move forward together,” council President Darrin Kelly said in a statement.

Mr. Lamb said it was worth celebrating “the historic nature” of Ms. Innamorato’s victory. He called the primary “a wild ride from start to finish.”

“We set out to build a better Allegheny County. Tonight we came up short,” Mr. Lamb told supporters in Mount Washington. “But that doesn’t say anything about the work that was done.”

Mr. Fawcett, former Pittsburgh school board member Theresa Sciulli Colaizzi and mobile app developer Will Parker placed fourth, fifth and sixth, respectively, in Tuesday’s preliminary returns. A former two-term member of County Council, Mr. Fawcett put up almost $1 million for advertising — second only to Mr. Weinstein’s $1.2 million, according to AdImpact, which tracks political advertising.

To “everyone who voted today, thank you for taking part in this civic duty,” Mr. Fawcett wrote on Twitter before the results became clear. “We should never take democracy for granted.”

The Innamorato campaign spent about $545,000 airing TV spots but also saw a significant outside boost — worth more than $490,000 — in ads from the liberal Working Families Party.

Speaking in Hampton, Mr. Rockey pitched himself as a middle-of-the-road Republican and cast Ms. Innamorato as part of the far-left.

“I am a believer that the vast majority of Allegheny County is in the middle,” he said Tuesday night. Foreshadowing his general election campaign, Mr. Rockey argued that Ms. Innamorato’s opposition to fracking would kill economic development opportunities after thousands of job losses in recent years.

“I’m inviting moderate Democrats, independents and Republicans to come together on an agenda that celebrates job creation and believes in economic growth,” Mr. Rockey said in a statement. “Together we can bring jobs and prosperity to Allegheny County.”

The winner in November will assume what’s arguably the most powerful elected position in Pennsylvania west of Harrisburg. The county executive sits atop a sprawling local government with a $3 billion annual budget. The job pays about $146,500 annually.

Voters decided a slew of local primary races Tuesday, with about 30% of registered voters casting ballots. The turnout — more than 230,000 voters in all — matched a forecast by David Voye, the county Elections Division manager.

Mr. Fitzgerald, a term-limited Democrat first elected executive in 2011, supported Mr. Lamb with an endorsement, campaign contributions and even aired his own pro-Lamb ads.

While half of likely Democratic viewed the longtime city controller favorably, the proportion who saw him unfavorably roughly doubled from winter to spring, according to polls from Pittsburgh Works. Mr. Weinstein’s favorability rating also dipped while Ms. Innamorato’s climbed in the same period, the surveys found.

Their defeats mean Mr. Lamb and Mr. Weinstein will be out of elected office for the first time in years come January. Mr. Weinstein has been county treasurer since 1999, and Mr. Lamb has been city controller since 2008.

Democratic strategists warned that the men’s negative commercials would risk turning off voters in the final days before polls opened. (Ads from the Working Families Party began attacking Mr. Lamb and Mr. Weinstein in late April. But Ms. Innamorato’s campaign didn’t run negative spots of its own, giving her some distance from the offensive.)

To consolidate center-left opposition to Ms. Innamorato, one of her top rivals — Mr. Lamb, Mr. Weinstein or Mr. Fawcett — would have needed to drop out of the race early, one Democratic strategist said.

“None of them have had the intestinal fortitude to do it, to concede that they can’t win,” this strategist said before the election, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid alienating the campaigns. “So the end result may be that they all lose.”

The not so good news. Hopefully, Parker who supports stop and frisk, doesn’t turn out to be another Mayor Adams.

Cherelle Parker, a Democrat with a long political history in Pennsylvania, won Philadelphia’s mayoral primary on Tuesday, likely setting her up as the city’s 100th mayor and the first woman to serve in the role.

Parker, 50, who served for 10 years as a state representative for northwest Philadelphia before her election to the city council in 2015, asserted herself as a leader whose government experience would allow her to address gaping problems with public safety and quality of life in the nation’s sixth-largest city. She will go up against Republican David Oh in the Nov. 7 general election.

Parker defeated a crowded field of candidates vying to replace Democrat Jim Kenney. The candidates included Rebecca Rhynhart, Helen Gym, Allan Domb, Jeff Brown, Amen Brown, James Deleon, Delscia Gray and Warren Bloom.

The win was a disappointment to progressives who rallied around Helen Gym, who was backed by Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Philadelphia mayoral candidate Cherelle Parker takes part in a Democratic primary debate at the WPVI-TV studio in Philadelphia, April 25, 2023.
AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File

The Philadelphia race serves as the latest barometer of how residents of some of the nation’s largest cities hope to emerge from the pandemic, which heightened concerns about crime, poverty and inequality. The results have sometimes been tumultuous in other parts of the country, leading to the defeat of the incumbent mayor of Chicago in February and the ouster of San Francisco’s district attorney last year.

Parker pledged to “stop the sense of lawlessness that is plaguing our city” by putting hundreds more officers on the street to engage in community policing. Parker pushed for officers to use every legal tool, including stopping someone when they have “just cause and reasonable suspicion.”

She received support from members of the Philadelphia delegation in the House, as well as members of Congress. She was also backed by labor unions and a number of wards in the city, and Kenney said he had cast his ballot for her.

Other even worse news

“Temporary” but soon to be permanent the way world politics are going

https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/17/global-heating-climate-crisis-record-temperatures-wmo-research

The world is almost certain to experience new record temperatures in the next five years, and temperatures are likely to rise by more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, scientists have warned.

The breaching of the crucial 1.5C threshold, which scientists have warned could have dire consequences, should be only temporary, according to research from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).

However, it would represent a marked acceleration of human impacts on the global climate system, and send the world into “uncharted territory”, the UN agency warned.

Countries have pledged, under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, to try to hold global temperatures to no higher than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, after scientific advice that heating beyond that level would unleash a cascade of increasingly catastrophic and potentially irreversible impacts.

Prof Petteri Taalas, the secretary general of the WMO, said: “This report does not mean that we will permanently exceed the 1.5C specified in the Paris agreement, which refers to long-term warming over many years. However, WMO is sounding the alarm that we will breach the 1.5C level on a temporary basis with increasing frequency.”

Global average surface temperatures have never before breached the 1.5C threshold. The highest average in previous years was 1.28C above pre-industrial levels.

The report, published on Wednesday, found there was a 66% likelihood of exceeding the 1.5C threshold in at least one year between 2023 and 2027.

New record temperatures have been set in many areas around the world in the heatwaves of the past year, but those highs may only be the beginning, according to the report, as climate breakdown and the impact of a developing El Niño weather system combine to create heatwaves across the globe.

El Niño is part of an oscillating weather system that develops in the Pacific. For the past three years, the world has been in the opposing phase, known as La Niña, which has had a dampening effect on temperature increases around the world.

As La Niña ends and a new El Niño develops, there is a 98% likelihood that at least one of the next five years will be the hottest on record, the scientists found.

Taalas warned of the effects. “A warming El Niño is expected to develop in the coming months and this will combine with human-induced climate change to push global temperatures into uncharted territory. This will have far-reaching repercussions for health, food security, water management and the environment,” he said. “We need to be prepared.”

The Arctic is heating much faster than the rest of the world, and this appears to be having an impact on global weather systems, including the jet stream, which has disrupted weather across the northern hemisphere in recent years.

There is likely to be less rainfall this year in the Amazon, Central America, Australia and Indonesia, the report found. This is particularly bad news for the Amazon, where scientists have grown increasingly concerned that a vicious cycle of heating and deforestation could tip the region from rainforest into savannah-like conditions.
UN warns heat records could be broken as chance of El Niño rises

That could have calamitous consequences for the planet, which relies on rainforests as massive carbon sinks.

Over the next five years, there is likely to be above-average rainfall in northern Europe, Alaska and northern Siberia, and the Sahel, according to the report.

For each year from 2023 to 2027, the global near-surface temperature is predicted to be between 1.1C and 1.8C above the pre-industrial average, taken from the years 1850 to 1900.

The world has warmed considerably in recent years. In 2015, when the Paris agreement was signed, requiring countries to hold global temperature increases to no more than 2C above pre-industrial levels while “pursuing efforts” to hold them to 1.5C, it was forecast that the chance of temporarily exceeding the 1.5C threshold within the following five years was zero.

This November, governments will meet for the Cop28 UN climate summit, where they will assess progress towards meeting the goals of the Paris agreement. Known as the “global stocktake”, this assessment is likely to show that the world is far off track to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the 43% this decade that is required to have a good chance of limiting temperature rises to 1.5C.