Robert Reich: The Washington Post is lying to you about Bernie Sanders

[UglyGreed]

A new editorial claims Sanders' proposal would reduce the quality of American healthcare. The notion is ludicrous

This originally appeared on Robert Reich's blog.
Yesterday the editorial board of the Washington Post charged that Bernie Sanders’s health-care plan rests on “unbelievable assumptions” about how much it would slash health-care costs without affecting the care ordinary Americans receive.

The Post claimed that countries with the kind of single-payer plans Sanders likes “ration care in ways that federal health programs in the United States … do not.”

We can debate specific numbers, but the Post’s unstated assumption – that the quality of health care received by Americans is superior to the quality received by, say, Canadians, from their single-payer, mostly publicly-funded system – is not borne out by evidence.

http://www.salon.com/2016/02/01/robert_reich_the_washington_post_has_bernies_healthcare_plan_partner/

[SamKnause]

1. We know.

FEEL THE BERN

[Skwmom]

2. Considering the Warehouse Sweatshop King (Bezo, Amazon founder) owns the WP, hardly surprising. n/t

[erlewyne]

16. I did not know that!

And I spend time and money on Amazon.

This is not good for me.

[navarth]

20. but

it is better to know, I'm sure you agree

[erlewyne]

22. Yes

I am disappointed, I was going to promote
Amazon. Now I will search for another site
for needs and wants .... mostly rare books.

[jillan]

3. Has the Hillary camp thrown Robert Reich under the bus yet?

Lol - I couldn't resist.

I hope that Robert Reich has a cabinet position in a Sanders administration.

[Fuddnik]

12. I think they would try to run him over with it.

He has a lot of credibility.

[lumberjack_jeff]

5. We already ration care, by ability to pay. n/t

[UglyGreed]

6. Don't I know it

but unless you have been a victim of this practice it is easy to dismiss.

[SammyWinstonJack]

10. That's true.

[restorefreedom]

11. bam! nt

[Dustlawyer]

17. and the "Death Panels" are the insurance companies!

[Doctor_J]

7. Taken directly from Hate Radio transcripts. I know the WaPo is right wing, but they should

at least cite Limpballs when they use his stuff.

Clue: Our healthcare system is not only the most expensive. It's also the worst. And the only one that's not universal.

[Baitball Blogger]

8. The meme is sticking among the pro-Hillary factions.

Last edited Thu Feb 4, 2016, 04:02 PM - Edit history (1)

Oh noes! How are we going to pay for Bernie's healthcare!

Here's a thought. We rein in the banks and all that tax money we give them for bailouts can be diverted into Bernie's healthcare plans. Problem solved.

[Lordquinton]

19. Mirrors right wing points

We have trillions to fund wars without end, but suggest a program to help the people, and that will see massive returns, and people loose their minds that we'll actually have to fund it.

[Baitball Blogger]

23. Yeah. But my sister is repeating it.

Hardcore Democrat. That's the meme that Bernie needs to tear down.

[Lordquinton]

25. That shows how thourghly the meme has invaded the left

I don't blame Hillary supporters for repeating it, because for decades right win radio has been hammering it into the collective unconscious.

I do think that anyone who wants to be seen as a progressive should examine their views if they insist on repeating the lines.

[Lorien]

28. Most of the Hillary supporters I know personally are very wealthy

And don't have a chronic illness. They've never gone into debt paying for denied claims. Hell, I knew one woman who was a multi-millionaire who got cancer. Even with her "gold level" insurance policy she ended up losing all of her retirement and savings paying for treatments that her insurance company refused. The current system only works for the insurance companies, big pharma, and the well heeled who have never been seriously ill or injured. Everyone that I know from Nations with Universal healthcare thinks that we're nuts!

[ErisDiscordia]

9. health care is rationed in the US by $$$$ and location

Not enough $$$$, not enough healthcare, and certainly not the best or the most appropriate. Live in the wrong place, no hospital, or one that should be decertified and sold for scrap.

Get sick on a weekend, risk your life with untrained and unsupervised residents.

Pull the other leg, I like to have them the same length.

[Fuddnik]

13. I remember when I was still working on the railroad.

I would go to the pharmacy to fill a prescription, and everything I got was a $5 co-pay. I'd never paid more for a prescription in my life. I would hear somebody at the drive thru picking theirs up, and being charged $350, and handed a small bag with one bottle in it, and wondered "what the hell are they taking?" Now I know. And this was 15 years ago. Things have gotten worse and more expensive.

[LibDemAlways]

14. The closest hospital to me sucks. Positively horrible. A nightmare.

It is, of course, corporate owned, and the first thing the suits did when they moved into the area was buy the only other local hospital and then promptly shut it down. Get sick enough around here to require hospitalization and expect to be pushing up daisies before long. Wise people in search of decent care must drive long distances to find it.

[AzDar]

15. K & R

[abelenkpe]

18. One month wait time to see my doctor in LA

On average. Sometimes longer. We make good money, work for big media, supposedly have good but recently far more expensive health insurance. Single payer doesn't sound worse.

[SoapBox]

21. Go Robert! Expose these ridiculous lies.

The Elites are just in a panic...they don't want anyone rocking their luxury boat...so they are just gonna blatantly lie and try the BOO! tactics.

[Jefferson23]

24. See OP on media and Sanders:

NYT Endorsement of Hillary Not Surprising Since It Buried Bernie's Presidential Bid

Bio

Jeff Cohen is a media critic and lecturer, founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, where he is an associate professor of journalism. Cohen founded the media watch group FAIR in 1986.


Transcript

SHARMINI PERIES, EXEC. PRODUCER, TRNN: Welcome back to the Real News Network. I'm Sharmini Peries coming to you from Baltimore. And I'm speaking with Jeff Cohen. Jeff is a director for the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, and he was the founder of the media watchdog FAIR. He's also the co-founder of RootsAction.org. And in segment one I was speaking with Jeff about the Iowa primaries, the results, and what the various candidates, actually the two Democratic candidates, had to say last night. And we were unpacking that. So if you didn't see that, go watch that.

And on this segment we're going to deal with the media, how media covered the Iowa primaries, as well as the endorsements that media is--many of them are giving to Hillary Clinton, like the New York Times. So Jeff, welcome back.

JEFF COHEN: Nice to be with you.

PERIES: So Jeff, let's dig right into this. The New York Times came out on Sunday endorsing Hillary Clinton, that is the editorial board of the New York Times. What do you make of that?

COHEN: Totally expected. What we've had at the New York Times, and most of the corporate mainstream media, is the traditional Gandhi quote, attributed to Gandhi. It's also been said by early feminists and labor leaders. First, they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. Then they attack you. Then you win.

And you know, at first it was ridicule--at first it was ignoring. And you might remember that when Bernie Sanders announced he was running for president, the announcement in the New York Times was on a back page, very small, page A-21. And when a lot of these Republicans one after another was announcing for president, they got big, front-page coverage in the New York Times. In Iowa, Bernie's 50-50. And he was on the back page of the times. These Republicans who walked away with one, two percent of the vote in Iowa, they got front-page treatment.

So I think what's happened is it started as ignoring, it went to ridicule, and now the New York Times is going to come out for Hillary editorially. The Washington Post ran two editorials in two days attacking Bernie. And the first editorial was an utter doozy, basically defending Wall Street status, and saying that the big banks are now safely regulated, suggesting that Bernie is a demagogue when he talks about Wall Street. So we're definitely moving into this state where you can expect the corporate mainstream media to be on the attack.

The important thing for activists, and the kinds of people that get their news from the Real News, to understand is that this problem plaguing Bernie, the bias against Bernie, well, it's long-standing that in mainstream media you've had a narrow spectrum of views, political views, among the punditocracy. It goes from the center to the right, from corporate centrist Democrats to the far right. It's a spectrum no broader than from General Electric to General Motors. A corporate spectrum.

So in all of these discussions in the week leading up to Iowa, we're going to see it in the week leading up to New Hampshire. You have a lot of these people on the panels that are big supporters of Hillary Clinton, like who's associated with one of Hillary Clinton's superPACs. But they have panel after panel on CNN, on MSNBC, on the Sunday politics shows, where there are supporters of the right wing, supporters of Hillary Clinton and corporate centrism, but there's no one who's an unabashed supporter of Bernie Sanders. And if I were an activist seeing that, I would immediately go and protest to these media outlets, now that it's a 50-50 campaign in the Democratic party, you can't have defenders of Hillary and no defenders of Bernie. But that's what mainstream TV news has been doing.

in full: http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=15577

Reminder from 2015: Television News Network Lobbyists Are Fundraising for Hillary Clinton
Another example of money in politics and its influence.

in full: https://theintercept.com/2015/10/29/media-fundraisers-presidential/

[Depaysement]

26. Let's tell the truth

Proles like me would get better health care and not be reduced to penury. The 1% hates that.

[valerief]

27. I believe you, Robert, not the Post! nt