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Politics
How Trump Could Line the Pockets of Medicare Advantage Giant
"UnitedHealth would be empowered by Trump's Project 2025 to harm more Americans than virtually any other private corporation, other than fossil fuel companies, that benefits from his plan."
Oct 16, 2024
Responding to UnitedHealth Group's third quarter results this week, People's Action highlighted how the insurance giant would benefit from Project 2025, the right-wing policy agenda that critics fear will be implemented if former Republican President Donald Trump returns to the White House.
"The underlying businesses, which generated more than $100 billion in revenue in the quarter, helped overcome $475 million in total cyberattack impacts in the quarter," Forbesnoted Tuesday, citing the company earnings report. "Net income was $6.06 billion."
In a series of social media posts about those figures, People's Action said: "What they didn't mention? Much of that is public money. Funds meant to care for seniors and people with disabilities are lining the pockets of their executives and Wall Street investors. Money that instead UnitedHealth Group executives use to build mansions or send to Wall Street."
"UnitedHealth would be one of the largest financial beneficiaries of Project 2025."
People's Action also linked to its new report laying out how the company and its subsidiary UnitedHealthcare would likely benefit from the Heritage Foundation-led Project 2025, an initiative that Trump has tried to disavow even though its policy agenda's authors include at least 140 people who served in his first administration.
Specifically, the Tuesday report focuses on Medicare Advantage, an alternative to the government-run healthcare program that is administered by private companies. As Common Dreams has detailed, Project 2025 proposes making the privatized plans the default option for enrollees.
"UnitedHealth would be one of the largest financial beneficiaries of Project 2025, since it is the largest private health insurance corporation in America, the fourth-largest company in the country, and the largest writer of privatized Medicare Advantage plans, with 7.8 million people insured through a UnitedHealthcare Medicare Advantage plan," People's Action said.
The group pointed out that "UnitedHealthcare's revenue from Medicare Advantage, an estimated $137 billion, could be expected to double to $274 billion annually as a result of Project 2025."
"Because of UnitedHealth's massive scale, the harm it causes through its denials of care is unprecedented—whether through prior authorization denials, claim denials, and inadequate networks that prevent beneficiaries from receiving care or increase the financial strain of receiving care," the report warns. "UnitedHealth would be empowered by Trump's Project 2025 to harm more Americans than virtually any other private corporation, other than fossil fuel companies, that benefits from his plan."
As People's Action explained:
UnitedHealthcare would be expected to cover 15.6 million people via its Medicare Advantage plans as the eventual result of Project 2025's passage with a Trump victory. The Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services found that Medicare Advantage organizations (of which UnitedHealthcare is the largest) improperly denied care (prior-authorization denial) 13% of the time and denied payment for care improperly 18% of the time. Because this is a denial rate per procedure, not per person, an estimated 33% of people covered by Medicare Advantage experience a denial by their privatized insurer annually. With Project 2025's implementation that would mean 5.2 million people would be denied care by UnitedHealthcare alone. This figure is well above traditional Medicare denial rates due to inappropriate denials and denials outside the scope of traditional Medicare rules.
On social media, People's Action shared stories of actual patients, emphasizing that denials impact "people like Jenn Coffey, who constantly battles UnitedHealthcare for prior authorizations for the infusions that keep her alive after multiple fights with breast cancer."
"Robin Ginkel, a teacher who needs back surgery to be able to work again, faces the same fight for care," the organization said.
"We can stop this. Fight back against the full privatization of Medicare by corporations like UnitedHealthcare and UnitedHealth Group," People's Action urged. "Join us to deep canvass and protect care for ALL."
Underscoring Medicare defenders' warnings about Trump—who is facing Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the November 5 election, for which early voting is already underway—Mother Jonesreported Wednesday that a pro-Trump super political action committee sent out an alarming mailer to older voters in Arizona saying that Medicare had been canceled.
According to David Corn, the magazine's Washington, D.C. bureau chief:
It had a big red stamp that proclaimed, "Medicare Cancellation Notice." Also emblazoned on its front was this: "Warning: Rates are going up and plans are being canceled. Details enclosed." Its return address was the "Department of Medicare Cancellation, Kamala Harris Administration."
That return address should have been a tip-off that this was not an official notification—along with a scrawled add-on in cursive: "I hope you can afford to lose your insurance! —Kamala Harris XOXO."
It's hard to know whether any recipient saw this and received a shock, fearing their Medicare was being cut off. But the group that sent out this official-looking piece of campaign literature, Make America Great Again, Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, was spreading false and misleading information about Medicare and about Harris.
Sharing the reporting on social media, Corn said that it was "rather odious for oligarchs to be scaring folks."
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Swing State Polls Show Harris 'Must Change Course' on Climate and Gaza, Says Sunrise
"The polls we're seeing unfortunately tell the same story we're hearing from the 900,000 young swing state voters we've contacted in the past two months," said one organizer.
Oct 16, 2024
The youth-led climate action group Sunrise Movement said Wednesday that the latest polling numbers in swing states—showing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump leading Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in all but one—demonstrate what they've been hearing in their massive voter mobilization push, and reiterated their demand that Harris course-correct on key issues.
"The polls we're seeing unfortunately tell the same story we're hearing from the 900,000 young swing state voters we've contacted in the past two months," said Stevie O'Hanlon, communications director for Sunrise. "VP Harris is losing ground with young people. To win this election, VP Harris must change course. The campaign urgently needs to work to energize and turn out millions of young voters."
The RealClearPolitics polling average on Wednesday showed Trump pulling ahead in every swing state except Wisconsin, where Harris has 48.3% support compared to Trump's 48%.
Trump is beating Harris by one percentage point in Michigan—the state with the largest share of Arab American voters, where campaigners have been warning for months that Harris' support for continued arms sales to Israel amid its assault on Gaza and Lebanon is a political liability. In Arizona, he is winning by 1.1 points, and in North Carolina by 1.2 points.
"We can look at the math. In every swing state, the number of young voters dwarfs the anticipated margins of victory," said O'Hanlon. "In my home state of Pennsylvania, [President] Joe Biden won the state by 80,000 votes in 2020. More than 80,000 people turn 18 in Pennsylvania and become newly eligible voters each year."
Sunrise has been contacting young voters in swing states since Harris was officially nominated to replace Biden as the Democratic candidate, and in mid-September, the group issued a warning about what they were hearing from voters.
"People are fired up and getting engaged with the election, but there is a sizable number of young people who don't want to get out the vote for Kamala Harris until she backs an arms embargo and puts forward a real climate plan," said Noah Foley-Beining, an organizer with the group, at the time.
A month later, said O'Hanlon, Harris appears to be "splitting hairs for a small fraction of the undecided middle-aged, white, conservative voter base" instead of "electrifying the Democratic base by talking about how she will take on big corporations, tackle the climate crisis, and end U.S. military support for Israel's assault on Gaza."
"VP Harris is losing ground with young people... The campaign urgently needs to work to energize and turn out millions of young voters."
Harris has won applause from progressives for speaking frankly and unequivocally about her support for abortion rights and for unveiling economic justice proposals like a federal ban on food industry price gouging and an expansion of Medicare to cover home healthcare, vision, and hearing care.
But as Israel has expanded its U.S.-backed military operations to Lebanon—killing more than 2,000 people—and cut off northern Gaza from humanitarian aid in what advocates warned appeared to be an ethnic cleansing campaign, the Harris campaign has refused to support an arms embargo on the Middle Eastern country.
Harris has also boasted about the Biden administration's expansion of oil production and her support for fracking.
In an op-ed at Common Dreams on Wednesday, Mitch Jones, managing director of policy and litigation for Food and Water Watch, wrote that the "conventional wisdom" among pundits that politicians must embrace fossil fuels is misinformed, as evidenced by polling in swing states including Pennsylvania.
"A recent survey from the Ohio River Valley Institute showed that 74% of Pennsylvanians support stricter regulations on fracking due to concern about health risks, while 90% or more want expanded setbacks from schools and hospitals, stronger air monitoring, and more rigorous regulation on transportation of fracking waste. Ignoring these concerns and instead framing fracking as a virtue makes little political sense in the Keystone State," wrote Jones.
"Further, in Pennsylvania and beyond, Harris needs a groundswell of support from young and progressive voters—people most likely to care deeply about climate change and preventing it," Jones added. "In a recent survey of young people in swing states from the Environmental Voter Project, 40% said that 'a candidate must prioritize "addressing climate change" or else it is a "deal breaker."' More significantly, 16% said they would definitely not support a candidate that talks about 'increasing U.S. use of fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal,' yet this is exactly what Harris has been bragging about. This election will be decided at the margins, and these are the type of hesitant voters we need to be motivated and engaged to put Harris over the line."
With just 20 days left until Election Day, said O'Hanlon, Sunrise Movement campaigners are "giving everything we've got to contact millions of people and turn out young voters to elect Harris."
"What we're asking," O'Hanlon said, "is that the Harris campaign help us do that."
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'That's Oligarchy,' Says Sanders as Billionaires Pump Cash Into Trump Campaign
"We must overturn the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision and move to public funding of elections," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Oct 16, 2024
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday demanded action to curb billionaires' outsized influence on U.S. elections after new federal filings revealed that Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other ultra-rich Americans have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into Republican nominee Donald Trump's presidential campaign in recent months.
"In three months, three billionaires donated $220 million to Donald Trump," Sanders wrote on social media, referring to Musk, Miriam Adelson, and Richard Uihlein. "Democracy is not billionaires buying elections. That's oligarchy. We must overturn the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision and move to public funding of elections."
Both Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris have received financial support from members of the United States' increasingly wealthy and powerful billionaire class. According to a Forbes tally, at least 27 billionaires—including Musk—have spent more than a million dollars boosting the Trump campaign, while at least 28 have spent that amount in support of Harris.
The Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision spurred the creation of super PACs that can spend unlimited sums in support or opposition to federal candidates, as long as they don't coordinate directly with campaigns—a restriction that is often flouted in practice. Polling has shown that strong cross-partisan majorities in the U.S. support imposing limits on money in politics.
"Citizens United is among the worst decisions in history," former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote Wednesday, pointing to the new campaign finance filings. "It corrupts our system every day."
In addition to Sanders, Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) called for the overturning of the 2010 decision as the 2024 election shapes up to be the most expensive in U.S. history, fueled by massive spending by big donor-funded super PACs.
According to the watchdogs OpenSecrets and RepresentUS, "the top 1% of donors accounted for 99.1% of all the money raised by super PACs and hybrid PACs" in the 2024 election cycle through September 22.
Last year, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) led more than two dozen House Democrats in introducing the We the People Amendment, a proposed change to the U.S. Constitution that would specify "that the rights provided by the Constitution are for people—not corporations—and that artificial entities have no constitutional rights."
"Corporations are not people and money is not speech," Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said after introducing the amendment. "In every election cycle since the disastrous Citizens United decision, we have seen more and more special interest dark money poured into campaigns across the country."
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) introduced a similar amendment in the U.S. Senate in September 2023.
Neither proposal, in either chamber of Congress, has received a vote.
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Georgia Judge Blocks 'Chaotic' Rule Mandating Hand Count of Votes
Such rules are "typically based on baseless conspiracies about voting machines" and "are intended to disrupt the voting process," said one critic.
Oct 16, 2024
For the second time in 24 hours, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney struck down a Georgia election rule proposed by allies of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, with pro-democracy advocates applauding the decision for blocking the "administrative chaos" that, as one critic said, was "exactly the point" of the rule.
The judge temporarily blocked a rule passed by the Georgia Election Board late last month that would have required poll workers to conduct a hand count of all votes to ensure the tally matched that of electronic voting machines.
McBurney said the hand-count rule was "too much, too late" to add to the 2024 election process but said he would still weigh the merits of the proposal for future elections.
"The election season is fraught; memories of January 6 have not faded away," said McBurney, referring to the riot at the U.S. Capitol that Trump urged his supporters to take part in to stop the certification of the 2020 election, after the then-president spent weeks baselessly claiming he was the legitimate winner of the contest.
"Anything that adds uncertainty and disorder to the electoral process disserves the public," added the judge on Tuesday.
The hand-count rule was set to go into effect on October 22, a week after early voting had already started in Georgia. County election boards were joined by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Attorney General Chris Carr—both Republicans—in opposing the rule, with Carr's office warning the Election Board had overstepped its authority by introducing the change weeks before the election.
"A rule that introduces a new and substantive role on the eve of election for more than 7,500 poll workers who will not have received any formal, cohesive, or consistent training and that allows for our paper ballots—the only tangible proof of who voted for whom—to be handled multiple times by multiple people following an exhausting Election Day all before they are securely transported to the official tabulation center does not contribute to lessening the tension or boosting the confidence of the public for this election," said McBurney.
At NOTUS, an online news outlet affiliated with the Allbritton Journalism Institute, Ben T.N. Mause wrote last week that the onerous hand-count requirement was already making it harder for election officials to ensure there would be enough poll workers on Election Day.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, applauded McBurney's ruling on Tuesday, saying the hand-count rule "was an effort to delay election results to sow doubt in the outcome.
"Our democracy is stronger thanks to this decision to block it," said the Harris campaign. "We will continue fighting to ensure that voters can cast their ballot knowing it will count."
Amanda Carpenter of nonprofit advocacy group Protect Democracy said demands for hand counts—like the ones that came from Trump and his allies after the 2020 election, which found no evidence of so-called "voter fraud" that would have swung the election—are "typically based on baseless conspiracies about voting machines, are intended to disrupt the voting process."
"Administrative chaos is exactly the point," said Carpenter. "Good ruling."
Georgia state Sen. Nabilah Islam Parkes (D-7) called the rule "chaotic" and denounced Republican Gov. Brian Kemp for failing to investigate the MAGA-aligned Election Board members who pushed for the ordinance.
The ruling was handed down hours after McBurney ruled that local election officials must certify election results regardless of their beliefs that "voter fraud" has taken place—a defeat for Fulton County Board of Elections member Julie Adams, who refused to certify two primary elections earlier this year and has ties to groups that have denied Trump lost the 2020 election.
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