Sunday 8th of September 2024
Home » Blogs » Gus Leonisky's blog

but no magic pill for joe biden.....

Pharma-Funded Republican Comes Out Swinging Against Medical Debt Cancellation
Sen. Bernie Sanders, by contrast, argued that "we must cancel all medical debt" and "move to Medicare for All."

A Republican senator heavily bankrolled by the pharmaceutical industry spoke out Thursday against calls to cancel medical debt, arguing that wiping out a financial burden saddling 100 million Americans "is not a solution."

 

BY Jake Johnson/COMMON DREAMS

 

"One-time cancellation of medical debt... is a Band-Aid approach to a one-time problem that's gonna come back," Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing on the nation's medical debt crisis.

After dismissing medical debt cancellation on the grounds that it would not address the "root causes" of the crisis, Cassidy—the ranking member of the Senate panel—proceeded to make clear that he opposes the kinds of transformational healthcare reforms that advocates say are necessaryto eliminate the problem of medical debt for good.

"We may hear today about Medicare for All," Cassidy accuratelypredicted. "But I also say that a healthcare system in which you think it's free because the taxpayer is footing the bill—you've never seen how expensive something can be until you perceive that it is free."

Cassidy is a major recipient of campaign cash from the pharmaceutical industry, whose stranglehold on prescription drug prices has been a significant driver of medical debt in the U.S.

Over the course of his career, the Louisiana Republican has raked in over $1 million in donations from the pharmaceutical and health product industries, according to OpenSecrets.

STAT Newsreported last year that Cassidy reaped "a slew of campaign donations" from Big Pharma executives shortly after he officially became the top Republican on the Senate HELP Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—a leading supporter of canceling medical debt and enacting Medicare for All.

In May, Sanders and several Democratic allies introduced legislation that would eliminate all of the roughly $220 billion in outstanding U.S. medical debt.

Contrary to Cassidy's suggestion that the bill would do nothing to prevent the future accrual of medical debt, Sanders' legislation would "amend the Public Health Service Act, updating billing and debt collection requirements to limit the potential for future debt to be incurred," the senator's office noted in a summary.

Neale Mahoney, a medical debt expert at Stanford University, said in a statement after the bill was unveiled that the measure "cuts off medical debt at the source by requiring hospitals to uphold their obligation to provide charity care to eligible patients who cannot afford to pay and supports hospitals so they can forgive debt before it gets sold to debt collectors."

During his opening remarks at Thursday's hearing, Sanders called medical debt "one of the most outrageous and cruelest" aspects of the nation's "dysfunctional" healthcare system.

"Pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies charge the American people for the 'crime' of getting sick," said Sanders. "Let's be clear: The medical debt crisis our nation is experiencing is a uniquely American phenomenon—does not exist in other countries around the world."

"We are the only major country on Earth," the senator added, "where an emergency visit to a hospital can cause patients to lose their homes and their life savings."

Recent polling found that a majority of Americans believe it is "extremely or very important" that the federal government act to provide relief for those with medical debt. The health policy organization KFF estimatesthat around 3 million U.S. adults have more than $10,000 in medical debt and 14 million owe more than $1,000.

Abdul El-Sayed, director of Wayne County, Michigan's Department of Health, Human, and Veteran Services and an outspoken Medicare for All supporter, said in his testimony at Thursday's hearing that a single-payer healthcare system would "address the porous nature of health insurance" and help prevent the accumulation of medical debt "by guaranteeing universal health insurance coverage from birth."

"One of the main drivers of costs in our current system is administrative overhead, higher in our country than in any other country in the world," said El-Sayed. "Much of that overhead is imposed by the complexity of billing multiple health insurers. With only one insurer that bears no profit motive, we could eliminate some of that cost burden—ultimately reducing the costs born on Americans that show up as medical debt."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/medical-debt-cancellation

 

mischiefed toon....

IN TODAY'S SYDNEY MORNING HERALD THERE IS A CARTOON BY MOIR THE EXCELLENT CARTOONIST... BUT AS USUAL, IT IS LACKING... SO GUS HAD TO MISCHIEF IT... AS AN OBSERVER OF JOE BIDEN FOR YEARS — INCLUDING HIS BOAST ABOUT TRICKING THE PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE INTO SACKING A PROSECUTOR WHO WAS GETTING TOO CLOSE TO HIS CORRUPT SON'S DIRECTORSHIP OF BURISMA, AND HIS BOAST ABOUT HAVING WRITTEN THE GHASTLY "PATRIOT ACT" AND NASTILY ARGUING WITH SCOTT RITTER ABOUT SADDAM'S "WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION"... AND OTHER DECEIT — ONE CAN SAY THAT JOE BIDEN LIES, PORKIES, AND THINKS HE'S "THE SUPREME LEADER OF THE WORLD"... COMPARED TO THIS, TRUMP'S BOASTS ARE MINUSCULE... SO THERE ARE GUS'S REINTERPRETATION AND THE ORIGINAL TOON:

 

MISCHIEFED TOO BY GUS:

 

THE INCOMPLETE TOON BY MOIR...

 

Kremlin responds to Biden’s latest Putin insult
The US president called the Russian leader a “murderous madman” at the NATO summit in Washington

 

US President Joe Biden’s latest insult of Russian President Vladimir Putin is “unacceptable,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Friday.  

During a press conference following this week’s NATO summit in Washington, Biden stated that “some of the oldest and deepest fears” in Europe had “roared back to life because once again a murderous madman was on the march,” referring to the Russian president. Biden suggested that the Ukraine conflict has been “a rude awakening” for those “who thought NATO’s time had passed.”  

Commenting on the NATO summit and Biden’s remark, Peskov stressed that the Kremlin sees the US president’s behavior as “absolutely unacceptable, impermissible for a head of state.” 

The spokesman added that such statements “do not paint the American leader in a good light,”and noted that Moscow continues to “pay direct attention” to such outbursts.  

Peskov was also asked to comment on the numerous gaffes that plagued Biden’s speech during the summit, including mixing up Russia and Ukraine, announcing Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky as “President Putin” and referring to former President Donald Trump as the US vice president instead of Kamala Harris.  

The spokesman stated that “we have paid attention to the fact that the whole world has paid attention to this,” but stated that Moscow can offer no other comments on this matter, other than stating that “it is clear that these are slips of the tongue.”  

He noted that the resonance caused by Biden’s continued gaffes are all in the context of US domestic political discussions, and that “this is none of our business, this is an internal matter for the United States.” 

Biden’s repeated gaffes have recently led to a number of high-ranking Democrats and major donors to call for the aging president to withdraw from the race and give way to another candidate.   

Concerns over the 81-year-old’s mental and physical prowess deepened following his debate with Republican frontrunner Donald Trump last month. During the debate, Biden appeared to struggle finishing his sentences, repeatedly mixed up words, and lost his train of thought on several occasions. 

Nevertheless, Biden has dismissed concerns over his age and mental decline and has vowed to stay in the race and serve out a full second term if reelected, arguing that he is the best person to defeat Trump in November.

https://www.rt.com/news/600943-kremlin-biden-putin-insult/

 

 

READ FROM TOP.

elderly imbecile....

According to recent polling, 65% of Americans do not believe US President Joe Biden has the mental and cognitive health to serve as President. Meanwhile, more than half of Americans, including 75% of Democrats, describe Israel’s campaign in Gaza as a “genocide.”

US President Joe Biden has a lot of problems. The two largest are that a majority of voters doubt his mental acuity and that most of his base believes that he is funding a genocide.

But the first may give him an out on the second. In February, special counsel Robert Hur declined to press charges against Biden for his handling of classified documents because he felt Biden would present to the jury as an “elderly man with a poor memory” noting that he could not remember which years he was vice president or when his son Beau died.

Hur was attacked by Democrats and left-leaning media for that report, but even the Washington Post had to admit Hur was vindicated after Biden bombed on the debate stage, appearing exactly as Hur described him.

There has been increasing speculation that Biden is not really running the country, but no one can agree who is pulling the strings. Maybe if Biden leans into fears that he is not the one running the country, he can avoid the scorn of anti-genocide protesters by claiming to not remember it.

It’s as plausible as any other excuse his handlers may come up with.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240712/an-elderly-genocider-with-a-poor-memory-1119355829.html