Bernie Sanders is definitely being an apologist for the Democrats as he touts the reactionary and regressive Obamacare as he is shilling for the American Medical Association; as all of his schemes leave the doctors setting the prices for the private, for-profit health care services they deliver.
Doctors setting the prices they charge for Medicare and Medicaid is one of the things destroying these two programs and causing higher co-pays... bankrupting the systems just like the co-pays are bankrupting so many working class families.
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Medicare into law way back in 1965... he envisioned Medicare as being one of the foundation cornerstones of The Great Society with it being extended to everyone--- a single-payer Medicare for All system--- without any co-pays and strict government control over all health care costs from the fees charged by the doctors to how much the pharmaceutical companies charge for medications and he envisioned "Medicare for All" becoming a National Public Health Care System--- socialized health care as advocated by Frances Perkins, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor.
Almost since Johnson first signed Medicare into law, reactionary politicians began chopping it to pieces rather than extending its coverage until it covered everyone until, today, often the co-pays cause tens of thousands of working class families to have to seek medical bankruptcies every year--- anyone who doesn't believe this just has to sit in a Bankruptcy Court for a day.
We have to ask why Bernie Sanders keeps talking about this vague "Medicare for All" without clearly stating what LBJ intended it to be and his vision of what it should have become.
In fact, Bernie Sanders does not share the vision that "Medicare for All" means a National Public Health Care System based of the model of public education: publicly funded, publicly administer and publicly delivered--- which, as a matter of fact, LBJ who had been a committed public school teacher always explained his idea of health care as being comparable to.I find it interesting how the Democrats are content to let Bernie Sanders who is not a Democrat speak for them when it comes to health care.
I guess these Democrats don't want to be asked why they have failed to deliver on their promises of real health care reform--- instead choosing to stick with the same system of health care the Republicans are for: private, for-profit health care where the profits of the pharmaceutical companies, the hospitals and doctors are more important than keeping us healthy and getting us well when sick.
It is very convenient for the Democrats to have a self-proclaimed "independent loyal Democratic Socialist" shilling for them so as to leave them untouched and unscathed for the next election in which they will continue to say they, and they alone, are for health care reform without having to declare what they mean by "health care reform."
Bernie Sanders, and not a Democrat, defended the reactionary and regressive Obamacare that most people are fed up with just like they are fed up with wars.
Bernie Sanders, and not a Democrat, defended the reactionary and regressive Obamacare that most people are fed up with just like they are fed up with wars.