Pelosi, Schumer, Sanders, Warner and DEMS Talk Prescription Prices:
https://youtu.be/KEnKeGLwzCE
Bernie speaks at the 18 minute mark, or you can watch his segment of the event here.
Tag Archives: Healthcare
4/13 News Roundup – Sanders To Progressives: “Ignore Consultants, Follow Your Gut’; Single Payer Continues To Surge & More
Bernie Sanders urges liberal candidates to ignore consultants, follow their guts
Speaking to a room packed with progressives running for state and local office, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., advised the first-time candidates to ignore the political establishment and trust their guts.
Crediting the movement catalyzed by his 2016 Democratic presidential campaign, Sanders said the policies of Medicare for all, free college tuition, a $15 dollar minimum wage, criminal justice reform, and legalizing marijuana are now “mainstream” among Democrats.
“What was once considered radical is now mainstream,” Sanders said Thursday to cheers at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington.
Sanders bashed the political establishment and the press repeatedly throughout his speech. The media, Sanders said, plays a “destructive” game by telling the “American people that politics is too complicated, you can’t get involved, you don’t know how to run for office.”
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The former presidential contender encouraged the candidates, who are in Washington for four days of training, to embrace a progressive agenda even if they’re running in red or purple states.
“Let me give you a warning here: Watch out for consultants,” he said to laughs. “Often their advice is conservative and wrong. Trust your own guts, trust your own instincts.”
The training, put on by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Sanders’ Our Revolution, includes four days of helping candidates craft their public persona, how to pitch reporters, building field operations, do-it-yourself opposition research, and budgeting.
More news/video/tweets/etc. in the comments.
3/22 News Roundup – Warren Introduces Bill To Curb Pain Of For Profit Healthcare System; Climate Science On Trial & More
Acknowledging that Medicare for All must be the end goal for an ultra-wealthy nation in which tens of thousands die each year due to lack of health insurance, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) introduced legislation on Wednesday aimed at making immediate fixes to the current system to protect consumers from the “nasty tricks” of the private insurance industry, lower prescription drug costs, and shield low-income families from premium hikes.
“So long as private health insurance exists, there is no reason to allow our health care to be held hostage by insurance companies that refuse to do better,” Warren said in a statement unveiled alongside her legislation, which is co-sponsored by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.). “Our bill will hold them accountable while significantly improving access to healthcare for millions of Americans.”
Warren is attempting to address problems in the short-term that are contributing to soaring healthcare costs and kicking Americans off their insurance entirely—from the Trump administration’s relentless sabotage efforts to the outlandish costs of prescription drugs.
Under Warren’s plan, for instance, insurance companies would “be barred from changing the kinds of drugs that they cover in the middle of the year, as well as how much of those drugs’ costs are born by consumers,” Marans notes. “Consumers would also be shielded from the effects of an insurer dropping a plan during their course of treatment.”
“Too many Americans have to battle with their insurance companies just to see their doctor or get a prescription filled,” Warren wrote on Twitter Wednesday. “We need a healthcare system that puts patients first—not insurance companies.”
Today I’m introducing the Consumer Health Insurance Protection Act with @SenSanders & our colleagues. We need #MedicareForAll – and until we get it, there's no reason private insurers can't provide coverage that lives up to the high standards of our public health care programs. pic.twitter.com/Ke7laLd164
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) March 21, 2018
More news/video/tweets/etc.
3/14 News Roundup – Pipeline Protestors Decry State Surveillance, Texas Dems Worry Bigger Rifts Ahead With National Party & More
Via DemocracyNow!: Critics of Bayou Bridge Pipeline in Louisiana Decry State & Company Surveillance of Protesters In Louisiana, newly disclosed documents reveal a state intelligence agency regularly spied on activists opposing construction of the Bayou Bridge pipeline, which would carry nearly a half-million barrels of oil per day across Louisiana’s wetlands. The documents show the Louisiana Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness regularly drafted intelligence memos on anti-pipeline activists, including a gathering of indigenous-led water protectors who’ve set up a protest encampment along the pipeline’s route. Other newly revealed documents show close coordination between Louisiana regulators and the … Continue reading →
2/7 News Roundup – Sanders: ‘Grassroots Activism Key to Defeating Authoritarianism’, Climate Hero Sentenced For Pipeline Shutdown & More
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) issued the following statement Tuesday after President Donald Trump accused members of Congress who did not clap during his State of the Union address of being un-American and treasonous
“The great political issue now facing our country is not Democrat vs. Republican or progressive vs. conservative. It’s much deeper then that. It’s about democracy vs. authoritarianism.
Today we have a president who is undermining the first amendment by consistently referring to media criticism as ‘fake news.’ He has questioned the authority of an independent judiciary. He has tried to make it harder for people to vote by wildly exaggerating the extent of voter fraud. He has viciously attacked those in law enforcement who have investigated him. And yesterday he suggested that members of Congress who don’t mindlessly stand and applaud his every word are guilty of ‘treason.’
Our job now is to remind Trump and his allies what democracy is all about. By our grassroots activism we will defend President Lincoln’s words at Gettysburg when he stated ‘that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.’ Stand up. Fight back. Get involved.”
The great political issue now facing our country is not Democrat vs. Republican or progressive vs. conservative. It's much deeper than that. It's about democracy vs. authoritarianism. pic.twitter.com/Ovj4ljAvHK
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) February 6, 2018
More news/video/tweets/etc. in the comments.
2/6 News Roundup – #PoorPeoplesCampaign Kicks Off 40 Days of ‘Moral Action’, Sanders: ‘Treat Big Pharma Like Big Tobacco’ & More
Decrying ‘Dog-Eat-Dog System,’ #PoorPeoplesCampaign Kicks Off 40 Days of ‘Moral Action’
In Washington, D.C. and more than two dozen states across the country on Monday, supporters of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival gathered to kick off 40 days of “moral action” to highlight “the human impact of policies which promote systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, and environmental devastation.”
Led by co-chairs Rev. Dr. William J. Barber and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis—and inspired by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s original Poor People’s Campaign in the late 1960s—the campaign, which was announced last year, livestreamed a press conference from D.C. and delivered to lawmakers a letter outlining their demands for policy changes.
Barber, in a series of tweets, denounced rampant voter supression, systemic poverty, a lack of living wages, ecological devastation, and “Christian nationalism,” emphasizing an urgent need for sweeping changes in public policy on a national scale.
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“This is about fighting injustice anywhere so that we don’t let ourselves lose the vision of what America can be,” noted Diana Martinez of the pro-immigrant Kansas/Missouri Dream Alliance. “Because when racism and nativism become the rule of law it hurts all of us.”
Participants from events across the U.S. shared on social media messages, photos, and videos depicting the goals of the #PoorPeoplesCampaign
We need a new moral agenda where the poor and middle-class are lifted up, not left behind. pic.twitter.com/vRonnvOzpP
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) February 5, 2018
More news/video/tweets/etc. in the comments.
Indian government announces free health-insurance to cover 500 million people.
India announced Thursday a program to give half a billion citizens free health insurance, a potentially transformative upgrade of the country’s dilapidated public health-care services and a key element of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government’s last budget before national elections next year. […] Under the plan, the government will cover health-care costs of up to $7,800 for 100 million poor families and spend some $188 million to create “health and wellness” centers, Jaitley announced to loud table-thumping in India’s lower house. Spending on nutrition for tuberculosis patients, cleanliness drives and education will also result in significant improvements in public … Continue reading →
1/24 News Roundup – Sanders Speaks To A Million+ About Medicare-For-All, NYC Sues Big Pharma For Fueling Opioid Epidemic & More
Bernie Sanders talks universal Medicare, and 1.1 million people click to watch him
With more than one million people watching at home, and hundreds watching from the studio audience, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) leaned across his desk with a crucial health-care question.
“What’s the quality of the Norwegian system?” Sanders asked Meetali Kakadi, an Oslo-based health researcher. “Is it good?”
In her view, it was: “Far better than Canada.”
Sanders’s “town hall on Medicare for All,” an event he’d organized after becoming convinced that it would never be produced by the mainstream media, never got more combative than that. Over 100 minutes, Sanders and nine guests — three at a time, taking turns — discussed the need to bring about single-payer health care, its benefits to business, and its implementation around the world. (Kakadi’s Canada joke was aimed at Danyaal Raza, there to defend his country’s system.)
“It’s a discussion you’re not likely to see on the mainstream news,” Sanders said at the outset. “This event will not be interrupted be commercials for the drug companies.”
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On Tuesday night, it was Sanders asking the questions, and getting answers he liked. In the room — the Congressional Auditorium, where in 2010 President Obama revved up House Democrats ahead of their Affordable Care Act vote — Sanders’s audience alternated between rapt attention and grateful applause as experts explained how higher tax rates could replace America’s health-care system with universal Medicare. A mention of Tommy Douglas, the father of Canada’s health-care system who remains somewhat obscure in the United States, inspired loud applause.
“No billboards, no high salaries,” said the former Medicare and Medicaid administrator Donald Berwick. “The complexity of the system just isn’t there. What we’ve got here is insane!”
“Is that a clinical term?” asked Sanders, jokingly.
https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/956012242671230977?s=03
More news/video/tweets/etc. in the comments, including:
*Live-streamed event with Bill McKibben and Bernie Sanders
*Disaster Capitalism in Action as Puerto Rico Governor Announces Plan to Privatize Power Utility
*With a Shutdown Surrender, Democrats Left Millions of People Behind
*Why Democrats Need to Stand With Working Americans vs. Big Banks
*Montana Just Showed Every Other State How to Protect the Open Internet
*Pipeline news, Water Protector updates & More
1/12 News Roundup – Sanders: “Trump’s ‘Shithole’ Comment Appalling”, Bernie To Host Medicare-For-All Town Hall & More
Trump’s ‘shithole’ comment is his new rock bottom
On Thursday, in a meeting with a senators and House members on immigration, the President of the United States, asked this: “Why do we want all these people from ‘shithole countries’ coming here?”
Yes, he said “shithole countries” — apparently in reference to the fact that immigrants from places like El Salvador, Haiti and Africa were being protected in a potential bipartisan deal to preserve the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and secure funding for border security.
What’s even more appalling is that the White House didn’t even try to deny that Trump used that slur, which was first reported in The Washington Post. In fact, in a lengthy statement from White House spokesman Raj Shah, the administration seemed to even defend the sentiment. “Certain Washington politicians choose to fight for foreign countries, but President Trump will always fight for the American people,” said Shah.
But it gets even worse. Asked about the “shithole” comments, a White House official told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins this:
“The President’s ‘shithole’ remark is being received much differently inside of the White House than it is outside of it. Though this might enrage Washington, staffers predict the comment will resonate with his base, much like his attacks on NFL players who kneel during the National Anthem did not alienate it.”
Stop. Read that again. Here’s what it means: The President’s voicing of a racist remark about the sorts of people whom we are letting into the country is actually a good thing because people who like Trump will agree with him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA2Yt5VA_54
More news/video/tweets/etc. in the comments, including:
*Walmart is abruptly closing 63 Sam’s Club stores and laying off thousands of workers
*Meet the Coal Miner’s Daughter Taking on Joe Manchin for Senate in West Virginia
*Donald Trump cancels London visit amid protest fears
*House Dems Join With GOP to ‘Violate the Privacy Rights of Everyone in United States’
*Arrest of Prominent Immigration Rights Activist Sparks Uproar, Protests in New York City
*In a Surprising Move, the Anti-Pipeline Movement Is Taking a Page from Hobby Lobby & More
The progressive quest for better healthcare & education gets ally from an unexpected place – the AEI, sort of
Former Military Leaders Want to Expand and Improve Child Care — to Increase Future Recruitment The American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C., organized an event this week with the provocative title, “Military readiness and early childhood: What is the link?” (“right-leaning”, lol, the AEI is very much hard-right. ‘During the George W. Bush administration, AEI was regarded “as the intellectual command post of the neoconservative campaign for regime change in Iraq,” Vanity Fair noted.’) It turns out that it’s hard to keep a huge military going when: the Department of Defense estimates that 71 percent of … Continue reading →
11/16 Give Us #MeToo (much) Dirty Laundry
The past 10 days have been a #MeToo bonanza for the corporate media. We have heard the constant drum beat by the media, exacerbated by GOS and a few other select blogs about Senate candidate Roy Moore’s predatory behavior toward under aged teenage girls while he was a DA. Seems a lot of women have stepped up to make similar claims. And defense attorney Gloria Alred is at the forefront to represent those who chose to talk to the media. Doesn’t take more than a stone’s throw to remind anyone of someone’s pussygate revealed 13 months ago. Women marched the … Continue reading →
11/16 News Roundup – Bernie Blasts GOP Tax Plan As A ‘Terrible Proposal’, Kaine Sides With Sanders On Superdelegates & More
Bernie Sanders Rips GOP Tax Plan: ‘Terrible Proposal’
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday ripped the Republican tax-reform plan as a “terrible proposal” being “paid for by the billionaire class who control the political process.”
“It’s a bad idea,” Sanders, the Vermont Independent and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, told Anderson Cooper on CNN.
It’s going to throw 13 million Americans off the health insurance they currently have, including about six million people on Medicaid.
“It’s going to raise premiums by about 10 percent for ordinary Americans.”
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Sanders attributed both plans to GOP’s effort to “give huge tax breaks to corporations and make them permanent.
“What this whole business is about is the power that big money has in American politics, as a result of our corrupt campaign-finance system.
“Billionaires and millionaires have brought hundreds of millions of dollars into the political process, supporting Republican candidates — and today is payback time for them.
“Huge tax breaks for the rich, huge tax breaks for multinational corporations,” Sanders said. “Meanwhile, at the end of 10 years, tens of millions of American families in the middle class are going to be paying for more taxes.”
https://youtu.be/ZIZLM9juK0M
More news/video/tweets/etc. in the comments, including:
*Pruitt’s EPA Abandoning Duty to Protect Kids From Dangerous Pesticides
*Indigenous groups win greater climate recognition at Bonn summit
*The Trump Administration Has Yet to Approve a Single Student Debt Relief Claim
*‘Ready to Resist’: Progressives Rally Ahead of Crucial GOP Tax Scam Vote
*House Dems Introduce ‘Groundbreaking and Much Overdue’ Bill on Palestinian Rights
*Pipeline Updates, Water Protector News & More
11/15 News Roundup: John Fetterman Announces Campaign For PA Lieutenant Governor, GOP Plan To Scrap ACA Mandate & More
John Fetterman runs again, this time for lieut. governor
John Fetterman, the charismatic and tattooed mayor of this Pittsburgh suburb who ran a fiery but unsuccessful campaign for U.S. Senate last year, announced his campaign for lieutenant governor Tuesday morning.
“I’m going to be going out all across Pennsylvania, campaigning town to town [in] many of these forgotten places — second-chance cities, whatever you want to call them — that have become my professional passion,” he told about 100 supporters in a Braddock theater space.
He pledged to fight for progressive issues including a higher minimum wage, better police-community relations, and marijuana legalization.
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His campaign was endorsed by Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto. Peduto said that although much of contemporary politics foments division between communities, “There’s no one talking about the similarities” between the challenges faced by inner-city communities and more rural areas. “What is needed … is somebody who can not only speak for all, but who has proven through their leadership in a community that has been knocked down to its knees,” he said.
Fetterman grew up in York, and earned a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University. He moved to Braddock after participating in an Americorps program that helped people earn high-school equivalency degrees, and ran for mayor in 2005, winning by a single vote.
More news/video/tweets/etc. in the comments, including:
*GOP Tax Bill Would Trigger $25 Billion in Cuts to Medicare, Warns CBO
*62 Natural Wonders of the World at Risk From Climate Change
*Study: Black People Are 75 Percent More Likely to Live Near Toxic Oil and Gas Facilities
*Congress, Trump Exploit Fire Tragedy to Promote Logging Agenda
*Dem wins Albuquerque mayoral race after eight years of GOP control
*Water Protector news, Pipeline updates & more
A tale of two cancers: One sister in Canada, the other in the USA.
At the age of 56, Catherine Gordon found out she had breast cancer. A long deferred mammogram revealed two tumors, 6 centimeters long together. She underwent chemotherapy and surgery to remove the tumors.
A year later, her sister Karen who lives in the USA was also diagnosed with breast cancer. Karen’s tumors were smaller, but she also had surgery to remove them.
And here’s where it gets insane. Catherine lives in Canada, and did not have to worry about cost. In her words, she “could focus on getting better”.
Continue reading →10/31 News Roundup – Sanders Talks Healthcare With Seth Meyers, Bernie’s De Blasio Endorsement & More
Happy Halloween Birdies! Here’s Bernie on ‘Late Night with Seth Meyers’ discussing the topics of the day and the push for Healthcare For All.
https://youtu.be/o7OJ0OLkaGU
More news/video/tweets/etc. in the comments, including:
*To Address Historic Failures, Autopsy Urges ‘Progressive Reboot’ for Democrats
*Tulsi Gabbard Calls for Real Reform to the Democratic Party
*‘Alarm Bells Ringing’: Global CO2 Levels at Highest in 3 Million Years
*#FreeRosa: Supporters Demand Release of 10-Year-Old Detained by Trump’s ICE
*A basic income for everyone? Yes, Finland shows it really can work
*Pipeline News, Water Protector Updates & More
