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Koch-Backed Think Tank Finds That “Medicare for All” Would Cut Health Care Spending and Raise Wages. Whoops.

A new study from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University is making headlines
for projecting that Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’s “Medicare
for All” bill is estimated to cost $32.6 trillion — a number that’s
entirely in line with 2016 projections, and is literally old news.
But what the Associated Press headline fails to announce is a much more
sanguine update: The report, by Senior Research Strategist Charles
Blahous, found that under Sanders’s plan, overall health costs would go
down, and wages would go up.

Arkansas’s Medicaid experiment has proved disastrous

This summer, Arkansas became the first state to require poor people to prove they’re employed to receive Medicaid. Critics say the state is trying to save money on the backs of the poor. That’s nonsense, Arkansas officials reply. They want to help  the poor. Backed by the Trump administration, they are inspiring slackers and moochers to climb the economic ladder.

Trump just gave a huge gift to an alleged billion dollar Medicare fraudster

The Trump administration informed a federal appeals court on Monday night that it would no longer defend the Affordable Care Act
after a judge in Texas declared that the entire law must be struck
down. The judge, Reed O’Connor, is a former Republican Senate staffer
with a history of striking down policies opposed by conservatives. O’Connor’s opinion is widely viewed as ridiculous, even by conservative legal scholars and health policy experts.

Citing Fears of Americans Getting 'Screwed,' Progressive Democrats Call Out Pelosi for Crafting Pharma-Friendly Drug Pricing Bill in Secret

Amid concerns
that the House Democratic leadership is crafting a drug pricing bill
that is far too friendly to the pharmaceutical industry, progressives in
Congress this week publicly called out House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for
writing the legislation in secret and ignoring those who favor a more
aggressive approach to lowering out-of-control prescription drug costs.

UVA Medical Center has sued former patients for over $106 million in medical debts

Heather Waldron and John Hawley are losing their
four-bedroom house in the hills above Blacksburg, Va. A teenage
daughter, one of their five children, sold her clothes for spending
money. They worried about paying the electric bill. Financial disaster,
they say, contributed to their divorce, finalized in April. Their
money problems began when the University of Virginia Health System
pursued the couple with a lawsuit and a lien on their home to recoup
$164,000 in charges for Waldron’s emergency surgery in 2017

A stunning indictment of the U.S. health-care system, in one chart

One quarter of American adults say they or a family member has put off
treatment for a serious medical condition because of cost, according to data released this week by Gallup. That number is the highest it’s been in nearly three decades of Gallup polling. The report also shows a growing income gap in cost-related delays.

Under Trump, the number of uninsured Americans has gone up by 7 million

The number of Americans without health insurance has increased by 7 million since President Donald Trump took office, new Gallup data released Wednesday shows.
The country’s uninsured rate has steadily ticked upward
since 2016, rising from a low of 10.9 percent in late 2016 to 13.7
percent — a four-year high.

Governors and mayors in growing uproar over Trump's lagging coronavirus response

President Trump’s response to the coronavirus
pandemic sparked uproar and alarm among governors and mayors on Sunday
as Trump and his administration’s top advisers continued to make
confusing statements about the federal government’s scramble to confront
the crisis, including whether he will force private industry to mass
produce needed medical items.