May, 12 2022, 12:49pm EDT
Chairman Sanders Opening Statement at Hearing on Medicare for All
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Thursday delivered an opening statement at the committee's hearing titled "Medicare for All: Protecting Health, Saving Lives, Saving Money."
The hearing is livestreamed on the Budget Committee's website and Sanders' social media pages.
Sanders' remarks, as prepared for delivery, are below:
Let me thank the committee members and panelists and everyone else who is here for attending the very first U.S. Senate hearing on Medicare for All.
WASHINGTON
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Thursday delivered an opening statement at the committee's hearing titled "Medicare for All: Protecting Health, Saving Lives, Saving Money."
The hearing is livestreamed on the Budget Committee's website and Sanders' social media pages.
Sanders' remarks, as prepared for delivery, are below:
Let me thank the committee members and panelists and everyone else who is here for attending the very first U.S. Senate hearing on Medicare for All.
Let me also thank the dozens of organizations throughout America who support Medicare for All and the tens of thousands of doctors, nurses and other health professionals who support this legislation.
Let me thank the 15 Senate co-sponsors that we have on this legislation and the 122 Members of the House who support similar legislation. And mostly, let me thank the American people who by the millions understand, as I do, that our current healthcare system is dysfunctional, extraordinarily wasteful and expensive, and cruel.
The American people understand, as I do, that health care is a human right, not a privilege and that we must end the international embarrassment of the United States being the only major country on earth that does not guarantee health care to all of its citizens.
It is not acceptable to me, nor to the American people, that over 70 million people today are either uninsured or underinsured. As we speak, there are millions of people who would like to go to a doctor but cannot afford to do so. This is an outrage. This is un-American. In the wealthiest country on earth, your health and your longevity should not be dependent on the amount of money that you have.
Healthcare is a human right that all Americans, regardless of income, are entitled to and all Americans deserve the best healthcare that our country can provide.
As Chairman of the Budget Committee, it is not acceptable to me that we end up spending over twice as much as virtually any other major country on health care, while our life expectancy and other healthcare outcomes lag behind most other countries.
Unbelievably, according to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), we are now spending $12,530 per capita on healthcare. This is an outrageous and unsustainable sum of money.
In comparison, the United Kingdom spends just $5,268 per capita on healthcare while Canada spends $5,370, France spends $5,564 and Germany spends $6,731 while providing universal care to everyone. The question that we should be asking is how does it happen that we spend so much money for healthcare, but get so little in return?
Frankly, I am tired of talking to doctors who tell me about the patients who died because they were uninsured or underinsured, and walked into the doctor's office when it was too late. And we are talking about over 60,000 Americans who die every year because they are uninsured or under-insured. This is America. This is truly beyond comprehension.
I am tired of seeing working class families and small businesses pay far more for healthcare than they can afford which forces more than 500,000 Americans to declare bankruptcy each year because of medically related expenses. Families should not be driven into financial ruin because someone became seriously ill. How insane is that?
I am tired of hearing from Americans who lost loved ones because they could not afford the unbelievably high cost of prescription drugs, or hearing from constituents who are forced to cut their pills in half due to the cost. Today, almost 1 out of 4 patients cannot afford the prescription drugs their doctors prescribe.
You want to hear about crazy? Crazy is that people get sick. They go to the doctor. They get diagnosed and medicine is prescribed. But they can't afford to buy the medicine. So they end up in an emergency room or a hospital at great expense to the system. That is crazy.
I am tired of talking with people who are struggling with mental illness but cannot afford the mental health counseling they desperately need. Last year, a record-breaking 100,000 people died of drug overdoses and I will tell you that in my office and I suspect in all of your offices we get desperate calls from family members looking for affordable mental health counseling and, far too often, that help is not there.
It's not there because in this system, geared toward the profits of the insurance companies rather than to the needs of the American people we don't have enough psychologists and counselors. We don't have enough doctors. We don't have enough nurses. We don't have enough dentists. We don't have enough medical providers in general. We do have enough people to bill us. We just don't have enough people to provide healthcare to us.
I am tired of talking to people who have teeth that are rotting in their mouths, but cannot afford the high cost of dental care.
And on and on it goes.
And let's be clear about something. The current debate over Medicare for All really has nothing to do with healthcare. Frankly, it is hard to defend this dysfunctional system.
This debate has everything to do with the unquenchable greed of the healthcare industry and their desire to maintain a system which fails the average American, but which makes the industry huge profits every single year.
While ordinary Americans struggled to pay for healthcare during the pandemic, the six largest health insurance companies in America last year made over $60 billion in profits, led by the UnitedHealth Group, which made $24 billion in 2021.
The CEOs of 178 major health care companies collectively made $3.2 billion in total compensation in 2020 - up 31% from 2019 - all in the midst of the pandemic.
According to Axios, in 2020, the CEO of Cigna, David Cordani, took home $79 million; the CEO of Centene, Michael Neidorff, made $59 million; and the CEO of UnitedHealth Group, Dave Wichmann, received $42 million in total compensation.
In terms of the pharmaceutical industry, last year Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and AbbVie - three giant pharmaceutical companies - increased their profits by over 90 percent to $54 billion and the CEOs of just 8 prescription drug companies made $350 million in total compensation in 2020.
Let us make no mistake about it. The struggle that we are now undertaking, to guarantee health care to all Americans as a right and to substantially lower the cost of prescription drugs, is opposed by some of the most powerful forces in America - entities that have unlimited amounts of money. We're talking about the insurance companies, the drug companies, private hospitals, medical equipment suppliers, Wall Street and other powerful entities.
In order to defeat the Medicare for All movement, these special interests have spent millions on 30 second television ads, full page magazine ads, and corporate-sponsored "studies" to frighten the American people about Medicare for All - which is exactly what happened before the passage of Medicare in the 1960s which was often attacked as moving our country towards "socialism." Meanwhile, today, Medicare is the most popular healthcare program in the country.
Let me give you a few examples of the kind of money and power we are talking about.
Since 1998, the private health care sector has spent more than $10.6 billion on lobbying and over the last 30 years it has spent more than $1.7 billion on campaign contributions to get Congress to do its bidding.
The pharmaceutical industry alone has hired over 1,500 lobbyists - including the former leadership of both political parties to make sure we don't lower the cost of prescription drugs.
That's how business is done in Washington. Well, I have a radical idea. Why don't we pay attention to the needs of ordinary Americans rather than the big money interests who control the healthcare industry?
Instead of a system that guarantees huge profits to the insurance companies and the drug companies, why don't we have a system which guarantees healthcare to every man, woman and child in America in a cost effective way?
And that is exactly what Medicare for All does.
This legislation would provide comprehensive health care coverage to all without out-of-pocket expenses and, unlike the current system, it would provide full freedom of choice regarding health care providers.
No more insurance premiums, deductibles or co-payments.
And comprehensive means the coverage of dental care, vision, hearing aids, prescription drugs and home and community based care.
The transition to the Medicare for All program would take place over four years. In the first year, benefits to older people would be expanded to include dental care, vision coverage and hearing aids, and the eligibility age for Medicare would be lowered to 55. All children under the age of 18 would also be covered.
In the second year, the eligibility age would be lowered to 45 and in the third year to 35.
By the fourth year, every man, woman and child in the country would be covered by Medicare for All.
Further, unlike the current dysfunctional system, Medicare for All allows people the freedom to choose any doctor, clinic, and hospital without worrying about whether their provider is in-network or not. People will be able to make the health care choices that are best for themselves and their families without some insurance bureaucrat telling them which providers they can or cannot see.
Would a Medicare-for-all health care system be expensive? Yes. But, while providing comprehensive health care for all, it would be significantly LESS expensive than our current dysfunctional system because it would eliminate an enormous amount of the bureaucracy, profiteering, administrative costs and misplaced priorities inherent in our current for-profit system.
Under Medicare for All there would no longer be armies of people billing us, telling us what is covered and what is not covered and hounding us to pay our hospital bills. This not only saves substantial sums of money but will make life a lot easier for the American people who would never again have to fight their way through the nightmare of insurance company bureaucracy.
In fact, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that Medicare for All would save Americans $650 billion a year.
Now, trust me. I know the 30-second ads coming from the insurance and drug companies will tell you that if Medicare for All becomes law, your taxes will go up. And they are correct. But what they won't tell you is that under Medicare for All, you will no longer be paying premiums, deductibles and co-payments to private health insurance companies.
And what they certainly won't tell you is that Medicare for All will save the average family thousands of dollars a year. In fact, a study by RAND found that moving to a Medicare-for-all system would save a family with an income of less than $185,000 about $3,000 a year, on average.
Guaranteeing health care as a right is important to the American people not just from a moral and financial perspective; it also happens to be what the majority of the American people want. In 2020, 69 percent of the American people supported providing Medicare to every American.
Now is the time for Congress to stand with the American people and take on the powerful special interests that dominate health care in the United States. Now is the time to improve and extend Medicare to everyone.
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"They are continuing to do similar things today to try to fool people and pull the wool over people's eyes just in the name of greed," the former vice president said.
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In reflecting on nearly 50 years of climate advocacy, former Vice President Al Gore said that he had "underestimated" the greed of the fossil fuel industry.
The remarks came in an interview published in USA Today on Sunday. When asked if he had any regrets, Gore responded that he had "put every ounce of energy" he had into climate advocacy, but added:
"I was pretty slow to recognize how important the massive funding of anti-climate messaging was going on. I underestimated the power of greed in the fossil fuel industry, the shamelessness in putting out the lies."
"They are continuing to do similar things today to try to fool people and pull the wool over people's eyes just in the name of greed," Gore continued.
"What's at stake is so incredible."
Gore, who tried to raise awareness about the climate crisis in the U.S. House of Representatives as early as 1981 and brought the issue to national attention in 2006's documentary An Inconvenient Truth, has taken a harsher tone against oil, gas, and coal companies in recent months. In August 2023, he said that the "climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis," and in September, he implored the industry to "get out of the way." In December, he lamented that the industry had "captured the COP process," referring to the appointment of the United Arab Emirates national oil company CEO Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber to preside over the United Nations' COP28 climate conference in that country.
In the USA Today interview, Gore also named the fossil fuel industry when asked about his greatest frustration.
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However, Gore told USA Today that he tried not to focus on his anger, but instead on continuing to raise awareness about the crisis and what can be done about it. And he remained hopeful that his grandchildren would live in a world in which people had come together and acted in time.
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Climate activists in six North Sea countries came together on Saturday to carry out acts of civil disobedience in protest of their governments' continued fossil fuel development.
Demonstrators in the United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands blockaded roads, ports, and refineries; dropped banners; and held solidarity concerts as part of the North Sea Fossil Free campaign to demand that their governments align their plans for the shared body of water with the Paris agreement goal of limiting global heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.
"For too long, the U.K., Norway, and other North Sea countries have avoided scrutiny for their oil drilling plans as the emissions are not included in their national inventories," a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion U.K. told Common Dreams. "Going full steam ahead with new North Sea oil and gas is a sure fire route to the worst climate scenarios."
"The only serious response we can make is for citizens to unite, but we need to see many many more people doing this work."
The day of action, which was organized by Extinction Rebellion (XR), came days after a new report from Oil Change International revealed that none of five North Sea countries—Norway, the U.K., the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark—have plans consistent either with limiting warming to 1.5°C or with the agreement to transition away from fossil fuels reached at last year's United Nations COP28 climate conference. If the five countries were counted as one, they would be the seventh biggest producer of oil and gas in the world.
In particular, these governments continue to issue permits to explore for and develop oil and gas fields, despite the fact that the International Energy Agency has said that no new fossil fuel development is compatible with limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C. In one high-profile example, the U.K. approved the undeveloped Rosebank oil field in September 2023. Taken together, these permits could lead to more than 10 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions.
The worst offenders were Norway and the U.K., which could be among the top 20 developers of oil and gas fields through mid-century if they do not change course.
"The five major North Sea countries are at a crossroads: One path leads toward global leadership in climate action and green industries, where they take bold action to phase out oil and gas production that creates sustainable jobs and communities. The other path leads to catastrophic climate change, economic crisis, and the loss of status as climate leaders globally, as they cling to outdated practices while the world moves forward," Silje Ask Lundberg, North Sea campaign manager at Oil Change International, said when the report was released.
Extinction Rebellion co-founder Clare Farrell said that the North Sea governments' policies were a betrayal of their citizens and the world following the hottest year on record.
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Saturday's protests, Farrell continued, were a way for the people in these countries to make their voices heard.
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The demands of Saturday's protests were threefold: An end to new oil and gas infrastructure in the North Sea, for governments to tell the truth about the realities of the climate crisis, and for the countries to pursue a just transition to renewable energy. In addition, many activists made additional demands specific to their nations' policies.
The Netherlands
In the Netherlands, activists with Extinction Rebellion and Scientist Rebellion blocked all roads and railways leading to the largest oil refinery in Europe: Shell's Pernis refinery. They targeted Shell because the oil major has received new permits to drill in the Victory Gas Field and has also restarted its drilling in the Pierce Field. What's more, the company has refused to clean up its aging equipment in the North Sea, leaving old pipelines and drilling platforms to rust and pollute the sea with mercury, polonium, and radioactive lead. While there are 75 aging Shell oil and gas platforms in the Dutch North Sea that should be removed by 2035, current efforts are not on track to meet this deadline.
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Germany
Activists with Ende Gelände blocked off access to a floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in the port of Brunsbüttel, Germany, beginning at 9:00 am local time. The activists are calling for an end to LNG imports, as new science reveals the so-called "bridge" fuel may in fact be at least as damaging to the climate as coal due to previously unaccounted for methane leaks.
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Norway
Activists with XR Norway targeted Rafnes Petroleum Refinery, with some blockading access on land while another group entered the security area by boat.
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Denmark
Performance collective Becoming Species and Extinction Rebellion Denmark worked together to stage a creative protest targeting the oil company Total Energies, which is the leading oil and gas producer in the Danish North Sea and currently has plans to reopen "Tyra Feltet," Denmark's largest gas field. Four members of the band Octopussy Riot climbed a Total-owned container and staged a punk concert in Denmark's Esbjerg Harbor.
"We octopuses have formed the band Octopussy Riot and have arrived here to play our song, a demand for you two-legs to stop oil and gas extraction," performer Linh Le, said. "The sea is dying, our climate collapsing. We will not accept that the most rich and powerful destroy our home. We do not want to go extinct."
Sweden
Members of XR Sweden blocked the road to Gothenburg's Oil Harbor, where the group has been protesting since May of 2022. The activists called on Sweden to stop investing in the harbor and on city officials to develop a plan to dismantle the harbor and refineries.
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Scotland
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The UNICEF data came from screenings it conducted with its partners in February. While the rates of malnutrition are higher in the north, no part of Gaza remains untouched. As a whole, the agency concluded that "malnutrition among children is spreading fast and reaching devastating and unprecedented levels in the Gaza Strip due to the wide-reaching impacts of the war and ongoing restrictions on aid delivery."
A full 28% of children in Khan Younis in central Gaza have acute malnutrition, while in Rafah, around 10% suffered from acute malnutrition by the end of February. That was also double the 5% who suffered from acute malnutrition in January in the southern city. In the north, as many as 25% of children under five also suffer from acute malnutrition, up from 13%. The new figures come as humanitarian groups and U.N. agencies have been warning about potential famine in the Gaza Strip for months.
UNICEF also found in February that 4.5% of children in shelters and health centers in northern Gaza suffer from severe wasting, the most serious and potentially fatal form of malnutrition, for which the necessary treatment is not on hand. In Khan Younis, more than 10% of the malnourished children have severe wasting. Even in Rafah, the number of children under two with severe wasting more than quadrupled from 1% to over 4% between January and the end of February.
In total, at least 23 children have died from starvation or dehydration in northern Gaza in the last few weeks alone, UNICEF said. Israel's bombardment and invasion of Gaza has been particularly devastating for children as a whole, killing around 13,450 out of a total death toll of more than 31,000, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
"We've been sounding the alarm that children will die due to malnutrition and disease since the beginning of the war," Save the Children UK said on social media on Saturday. "Our worst fears have now come true. These man-made conditions continue to deteriorate toward famine and will continue to take innocent children's lives."
Lucia Elmi, UNICEF's special representative in the Palestinian territories, toldThe New York Times that children were declining at such alarming rates because the available water, bread, and flour was not enough to provide the nutrition they need.
"They need protein, they need vitamins, they need fresh products, and they need micronutrients, and all of this has been completely missing," Elmi said last week. "That's why the deterioration has been so fast, so rapid, and at this scale."
Dominic Allen, the United Nations Population Fund representative for Palestine, told reporters on Friday that everyone he spoke to Gaza was "gaunt, emaciated, hungry."
"The situation is beyond catastrophic," he said.
Russell said that UNICEF had not been able to acquire the supplies it needed to properly treat malnourished children. Humanitarian groups have criticized Israel for making aid deliveries more difficult by searching every truck that enters the strip and rejecting whole shipments because they contained items like children's scissors or wooden instead of cardboard boxes for toys. In multiple instances, the Israeli military has fired on on aid convoys and on people gathering to receive aid, killing scores.
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