Click to see preamble.

   

 
DECEMBER 19, 2021

WE THE PEOPLE RADIO

 

Hour 1

"Beat the Swamp with Real Policy"
 

Mark Pukita, Ohio Senate Candidate    

WE THE PEOPLE RADIO

Hour 2

"Bernie Sanders' Deceptive Infrastructure Bill and Your Healthcare"

 

Dr. Kathleen Brown     

WE THE PEOPLE RADIO

About Mark Pukita, Ohio Senate Candidate

Mark is a successful entrepreneur who has embodied hard work done right his entire life. In 1996, he started a company, Fast Switch, with only $1,000. That small investment created thousands of good paying jobs.

Mark earned his success and will again. His life is a testimony to the value of focus and accomplishment. He is the American Dream and is mad as hell that a rudderless government and a chaotic culture are now blocking honest citizens from living their American Dream.

Mark grew up on the east coast and moved to Ohio in 1976. He has a degree with honors from The Ohio State University. Mark lives in Dublin, is a proud grandparent to two grandsons, and wants Ohio families to be proud to raise their children and grandchildren here.

Check out Mark's website -- Mark4Ohio.com

Hour 2

- Reject Senator Sanders Deceptive Infrastructure Plan -

By Dr. Kathleen Brown
September 16, 2021

Dr. Kathleen Brown practiced dermatology for 21 years in Oregon and founded Oregon Coast Dermatology in 2011 as an alternative to a broken healthcare system. She and her husband currently live in Montana and now run Montana Dermatology.


Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and his allies call their $3.5 trillion budget bill an "infrastructure" plan. But look high and low, and you won't find mention of a single road or bridge. What you will find is the biggest expansion of government interference in health care in decades – one that, advances the government takeover of healthcare.

As a physician, I can say without hesitation that this is the wrong direction for American health care. 

The plan allocates some $1.3 trillion towards government-run healthcare schemes, a whopping 1.5 times more expensive than Obamacare. And remember, Obamacare cost taxpayers and enrollees far more than what we were initially told. The Sanders plan will be no different – you can expect that $1.3 trillion price-tag to be the floor.

Sen. Sanders is following a well-worn Washington playbook – gradually get more people off (excessively regulated) private insurance plans and into government programs to build government dependency and create constituencies for more and bigger government. This is a vicious cycle that, in this case, inevitably leads to government-run health care, and less choice for individuals.

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WE THE PEOPLE RADIO

To start, the bill would spend $370 billion to expand Medicare benefits for hearing, vision, and dental – benefits that Medicare beneficiaries already have access to at no additional cost to taxpayers through Medicare Advantage plans. In fact, Medicare Advantage plans already attract more than 40 percent of Medicare beneficiaries.

But, Medicare Advantage plans are private insurance products that compete with each other to deliver benefits to willing seniors under Medicare’s oversight. To Sen. Sanders and his allies, that looks too much like a free market, and they don’t like it. They believe adding new benefits will move people from this more competitive, efficient, and consumer-friendly option into traditional, government-centered Medicare – even though it would mean higher premiums for beneficiaries, higher costs for taxpayers, or both.

The plan would also expand Obamacare in two flawed ways. 

First, it would offer Medicaid directly to individuals in states that chose not to participate in the Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. Because Medicaid pays doctors far less than even what Medicare does, they are far less likely to accept Medicaid patients compared to patients with private health insurance. This drastically limits who Medicaid recipients can see and their access to care.

Medicaid is also terribly wasteful.  In just two years it reported $143 billion in improper payments. Even more concerning is that Medicaid often provides substandard care, with a major study concluding that the program "generated no significant improvement in measured physical health outcomes."

Americans already spend more than $600 billion a year on this wasteful and ineffective program. Yet Sen. Sanders thinks we should expand it. That is not the way to improve it.

Second, the plan would make permanent the increased Obamacare subsidies that were part of Covid relief, with much of that aid going to those who do not need it. A recent study conducted by health care expert Brian Blase, PhD, found that under this proposal "a family of four with a 60-year-old head of household and income of 600 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL), or $159,000 a year, would qualify for an annual [Obamacare subsidy] of $16,845."

Furthermore, the Congressional Budget Office says the vast majority of this new spending would go to those who already have insurance, providing a huge incentive for some private companies to push employees off their company-sponsored private plans and onto the Obamacare exchanges.[7] The result would once again be more Americans on government-run health care and a shift in cost from the private sector to taxpayers. 

There is a pattern here.

And of course, what wasteful Washington budget would be complete without a special-interest giveaway?  In this case, a gift to the unions in the form of $400 billion to expand adult in-home and day care through Medicaid. In many states, these workers are designated "public employees" because Medicaid pays them, so they must join a union. This is special interest pork-barreling at its worst and it decreases choices for these workers.

One way Sen. Sanders proposes to pay for all this is to allow the government to fix the prices of prescription drugs. It sounds like a simple solution. But one only has to look to European nations with similar policies to see that allowing the government to set price controls inevitably leads to drug shortages and fewer new cures and therapies, effectively inserting the government directly into your medicine cabinet.

If the Covid pandemic taught us anything, it is that the way to get Americans quicker access to more life-saving drugs and treatments is to remove governmental obstacles and empower innovators. But price fixing does the opposite by deterring investment into research and development. As a result, vulnerable patients, including those waiting on cures for rare and complex diseases, will suffer most.

Congress needs to reject this government health care takeover masquerading as an infrastructure plan. We have serious health care issues in this country, and they can be addressed through personal options for health care that give people more choice and control over their own care. But, surreptitious efforts to move Americans off the private health plans they like onto government systems will only make matters worse.  

In spite of the enormous intervention of government into healthcare and the governmental protectionism afforded to the giant health insurance companies, hospitals, unions, and pharmaceutical companies, new entrepreneurial solutions are developing. The last thing that we need to do is shut them down or crowd them out by further protecting the giant market incumbents and enlarging the role of government in healthcare. More choice, more freedom, is an American value.

Dr. Kathleen Brown practiced dermatology for 21 years in Oregon and founded Oregon Coast Dermatology in 2011 as an alternative to a broken healthcare system. She and her husband currently live in Montana and now run Montana Dermatology.

Dr. Kathleen Brown

https://www.realclearhealth.com/articles/2021/09/16/reject_senator_sanders_deceptive_infrastructure_plan_111242.html