Fact check: Joe Biden misleads with claim that Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All plan would

[Uncle Joe]

cause a 'hiatus'

(snip)

Biden's campaign says one of the Biden comments Sanders is objecting to, about Sanders' plan supposedly causing "hiatuses" that would hurt sick people, has been misinterpreted. Regardless of what Biden intended to say, though, his "hiatuses" remark allowed Americans to come away with the inaccurate impression that Sanders' plan would cause people to temporarily lose insurance coverage.

Facts First: A single-payer Medicare for All plan would not result in people having a "hiatus," or gap, in their insurance coverage, experts say.

Speaking at a forum hosted by AARP in Iowa on Monday, Biden criticized Sanders' proposal to abolish most private insurance and have every American moved, in a multi-stage process over four years, onto a generous insurance plan provided by the government through an expanded version of Medicare. Calling such single-payer plans "a little risky," Biden raised the subject of people dying of diseases like cancer, then warned of "hiatuses."

(snip)

After Biden's campaign offered its explanation about his AARP remarks, we re-contacted the experts we had previously spoken to and told them what the campaign was arguing. Kominski said he still thought Biden's comment had been misleading. Oberlander said he thought the campaign's explanation could be plausible, but still believed Biden's comment was, "at the very least, a confusing use of the term 'hiatus' in a way that could mislead listeners."

(snip)

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/18/politics/biden-sanders-medicare-for-all-fact-check/index.html

[qazplm135]

1. so is this better or worse than Sirota saying

Biden's plan would kill more people than 9/11 twice over?

[guillaumeb]

5. Both are incorrect, and misleading. eom

[qazplm135]

7. equally so?

that's your final answer?

[guillaumeb]

9. Both are incorrect, and misleading.

Both seem to be intended to frighten voters.

[qazplm135]

18. usually refusal to answer a question

suggests an answer, but you often refuse to answer questions...here's the answer...no, they are not equally so.

One is much, much worse than the other and conflating the two as "both incorrect and misleading" is silly.

[HerbChestnut]

10. Hyperbole for sure.

But we need to be clear about two things in regards to what Sirota "said".

1. He was quoting from a study that looked into the effects of Biden's proposed ACA expansion. This doesn't let Sirota off the hook, but it should be known that those weren't originally his words.

2. Many studies show that Biden's plan won't cover everybody in the country, which means inevitably people will die because they don't have health insurance. That is a sad reality. The whole twice as many deaths as 9/11 thing, while hyperbolic bull****, only means that's how many people would die as a result of not having health insurance, which is likely accurate.

Sirota chose an awful way to relay this message, but the numbers are accurate.

[qazplm135]

19. a plan that is aspirational and can't cover anyone because

it won't pass isn't a realistic comparison.

So the REALITY is that any plan that can pass is going to fall short of covering every last American.

[Uncle Joe]

11. You can calculate the projections and compare it to any mortal event in history

but the people are just as dead.

(snip)

More generally, Biden’s plan has the same problem as any other plan that does not create a national health insurance system: it causes enormous amounts of insurance churn and instability, further immiserating people when they face hardships like loss of job, loss of spouse, loss of Medicaid due to income increase, and every other negative life event.

The most remarkable thing about Biden’s plan is that it does not even aim to provide universal insurance coverage. The more moderate wing of the Democratic party has mostly been putting out plans that purport to achieve universal coverage (e.g. through auto-enrollment mechanisms) without national health insurance. But Biden is literally doubling down on “preserving Obamacare” by preserving a class of uninsured people.

His campaign claims that the plan will leave around 3 percent of Americans uninsured. These sorts of estimates should be taken with a grain of salt as it is very uncertain how people will respond to the reforms. For instance, the CBO initially estimated that 22 million Americans would sign up for insurance on the Obamacare exchanges, but only half that many actually did.

Even if you suppose that Biden’s estimate is right and the uninsurance rate does go to 3 percent, that still implies an enormous amount of unnecessary death caused by a lack of insurance. One commonly-used (e.g. by CAP) estimate states that 1 unnecessary death occurs annually for every 830 uninsured people. This means that during the first 10 years of Bidencare, over 125,000 unnecessary deaths will occur from uninsurance.

(snip)


https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2019/07/15/bidencare-system-will-kill-125000-through-uninsurance/

To my way of thinking this is worse because we are doing it to ourselves.

[HerbChestnut]

16. Thank you, this is an excellent way of presenting this information

Better than what Sirota did for sure and gets the same point across.

[NYMinute]

29. People policy project

an ultra left outfit

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

33. Booooooom... nailed it again Uncle Joe!!

Bernie & Elizabeth 2020!!!
Welcome to the revolution!!!

[Thekaspervote]

34. Oh the drama!!

[HerbChestnut]

2. Prepare for the onslaught, Uncle Joe.

[SouthernProgressive]

6. Why would there be an onslaught?

He is only promoting a guy who compares democratic policy positions to terrorist attacks and can't tell the difference between a life long democrat and Trump. What's not to love?

[HerbChestnut]

13. If you want to talk about Sirota, there are threads dedicated to him.

This thread is about Biden's own words. By the way, did you know Elizabeth Warren, the candidate you support, wants M4A?

[SouthernProgressive]

17. This is a totality of your post.

"Prepare for the onslaught, Uncle Joe."

I was as on topic as you were.

Seems to be a trend. Sanders wants to tell people how to campaign as he is running his into the ground and you want to tell me how to post while ignoring your own suggestions.

Again, the totality of your post.

"Prepare for the onslaught, Uncle Joe."

I would say I was more on point. I at least discussed an individual being discussed in the article.

[guillaumeb]

3. Recommended.

From the article:

We contacted four experts in health policy. All four said that the transition to single-payer would not result in people facing such breaks in

their coverage -- though they also made clear they could not be certain about what Biden meant.
Jonathan Oberlander, a health policy professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said that while there are many legitimate criticisms of Medicare for All, Biden's claim is not one of them. "There is a transition period, but that is not the same as a hiatus, which implies people would temporarily lose insurance protections," Oberlander said.

Biden may have misspoke, but this certainly gives an incorrect impression of what would actually happen.

[SouthernProgressive]

4. Poor Sanders. My heart goes out to him.

I have no use for a guy who campaigns by comparing other democrats to terrorist organizations and claims they sound the same as Trump.

Warren is the real deal. Jump on the train with her and leave the guy insinuating Democrat proposals are like terrorist attacks. A guy who is so ignorant and blind that he thinks the parties are the same.

[wiley]

21. Good Point

Once again it looks like Sanders is taking the very low road to finf addled people to support his vanity run.

[Peacetrain]

8. Your problem is, we have a real Democrat, who joined the party, whose ideas Sen Sanders

runs on.. just a fact, the second Sen Warren hit the campaign trail, was the death knoll for Sen Sanders.. She joined the party and stayed with it.. Sen Sanders has been in it to take it apart, or use it for a temporary benefit and then he goes indy again.. and nope, not going to happen a second time....

[HerbChestnut]

12. Bernie has held most of his political beliefs for 40+ years.

He's running on his own ideas.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

35. Bingo!! Biden should at least be accurate about what those ideas entail.

Bernie & Elizabeth 2020!!!
Welcome to the revolution!!!

[Autumn]

14. Poor Biden, he misspeaks a lot.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/apr/25/joe-biden-2020-public-gaffes-mistakes-history

As troubling as some of his misstatements might be, and as serious some of the concerns people have about Biden’s retrograde positioning among a new crop of progressive candidates, a sizable percentage of the US electorate finds the often goofy Biden charming.

It didn’t hurt matters that Obama often reacted to them with bemusement. “I don’t remember exactly what Joe was referring to, not surprisingly,” Obama quipped after a typically confusing statement from Biden about the passage of a stimulus package in 2010.

[jalan48]

20. It will be a big problem for him if he is the nominee. Nowhere to hide.

[Autumn]

22. Yes it will be a big problem for us if he's the and he won't have Obama to hide behind either.

Trump has his campaign against Biden all planned out

from the article

“I think I’d match up great,” he said. “I’m a job producer. I’ve had a great record, I haven’t been involved in plagiarism.”

We may yet get to see how that works on the 2020 campaign trail. Trump is not exactly gaffe-free, to put it mildly.

“I hope it’s Biden,” Trump said again last month. “When I say something that you might think is a gaffe, it’s on purpose. It’s not a gaffe. When Biden says something dumb, it’s because he’s dumb.”

“I am a gaffe machine,” Biden admitted in December when asked about potential liabilities of his campaign. “But my God what a wonderful thing compared to a guy who can’t tell the truth,” he said.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/apr/25/joe-biden-2020-public-gaffes-mistakes-history

[George II]

24. Hm, this is a discussion about a possible 2020 healthcare program and you're digging back....

....to present things Biden said years ago, and using an article from more than a year ago.

I guess Biden's okay if it takes that to bash him.

[Autumn]

28. Yes? And you have been known to go back over 45 years. Biden misspoke, according to his

campaign spokesman who clarified his hiatus remark. His misspeak was about his comments on healthcare.
As for my excerpt on his many misspeaks being from an article that's a year old? Wrong. It was written in April 2019, you might be in 2020 George but the rest of us aren't there yet. You don't like what I post? Ignore me, or buy the site then make your rules.

[George II]

30. Yes, I "have been known to go back over 45 years" (47 to be exact) in response to others...

....going back 42 years.

This is entirely different, but whatever. I erred on the year. I give you credit for at least you departing from the Sanders campaign (BS himself and Nina Turner) and resisted calling me a "liar", as they did of Biden.

[Autumn]

32. Not a damn bit of difference except you proudly go back 47 years and complain about

me posting one 3 months old with a Biden gaffe from last year.
Sorry, I don't want or need your credit.

[George II]

15. There will be "hiatuses". BS is proposing to do away with private insurance companies, but....

....he doesn't say how he will replace them in the administration of a big % of the current Medicare system.

Without the private insurance companies the Medicare system will collapse.

[Autumn]

23. You sure? Bates says that Biden wasn't claiming there would be "hiatuses"

What Biden was saying, Bates said, was that Sanders' plan for a sweeping overhaul of the health care system would take much longer than Biden's own plan to be approved by Congress -- so, under Sanders, there would be a hiatus between the status quo and the possible future arrival of an improved system.

Finally, it's worth noting that Biden would also be likely to face major hurdles in getting his own health plan through Congress. (He is proposing a new "public option" to allow people to buy into a Medicare-like government plan if they want, plus a significant increase in Obamacare subsidies.) So if the "hiatus" is a gap between the current situation and the day an improved system comes into place, Biden's plan has a hiatus problem, too.

[bluewater]

26. Bazinga!

[Hortensis]

25. Since the Republicans would bring dozens of court cases to stop

the transition, and if in power also use government to damage its functioning as they have been, I'm pretty sure hiatuses while they're upheld, partially upheld, held, appealed, etc., would be very possible.

Repeal over time of the ACA while implementing a whole new system over time would create many chinks and new opportunities, real or just claimed, for the Republicans to toss grenades into to damage and obstruct both programs separately and together.

We shouldn't fool ourselves that trashing the ACA would somehow magically make the ruthless anti-tax billionaires determined to destroy all federal programs go away. We will stop them only when we make them "go away."

"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Nancy Pelosi addressing the nation on the opening of the 116th congress.

[stonecutter357]

27. #fakenews !

[NYMinute]

31. Biden's biggest fault in some supporters' eyes

is that he is polling wayyyy higher than Bernie.

If this makes Bernie supporters dislike Biden, more power to them.