I present how Liz Warren, a divisive crony capitalist, lost my vote before her campaign started: a thread.
Like Bernard himself, back in 2015 I felt inspired by Warren’s castration of Wall St. We wanted her to run for president. Badly. Created CFPB, critical of Obama at a crucial time for Dodd-Frank, and unapologetic about it all in a vulnerable era for the US.
She refused to run though. It was “Hillary’s moment.” Liz was not at all willing to piss off the DNC even if a Warren admin was what we needed to rebuild post-recession. Unwritten oligarchical rules dictated that Hillary deserved another (failed) run.
We needed Warren’s agenda more than we knew. 17 dems went against their better judgment pro-#BankLobbyistAct, angling for campaign funds, and many faced midterm retribution. But we still got stuck with their Dodd-Frank-gutting mistake.
As some background on Warren, her stump speech suggests her political career popped off in 1971 when fired unfairly for being pregnant. A claim since debunked by multiple accounts – she actually resigned. She was a speech pathologist.
In 2017 she flipped this background into authority on hearing aids. Speech and hearing students get symbiotic foundations in how communication disorders affect their caseloads. Budding audiologists likely studied alongside her at U of Houston.
A convenient move for Boston area Bose was deregulating the hearing aid label medically with the FDA and letting headphone companies market cheap earpieces to the same consumers that go deaf because of them. Liz’s ears should be ringing, I’m talking about her.
Championed as a bipartisan move with Sen Grassley (R-IA) whose corn-for-brains state coincidentally keeps trying to remove healthcare profession license rules. Mine included. Proof from that same year: dmreg.co/2mxdDdx (they’re trying again in 2020)
Imagine just anyone being allowed to claim they’re a social worker. Or a dietitian. Taking away these license laws is a public health hazard. This is what Grassley liked about the over-the-counter hearing aids act too. A capitalist’s dream.
Bygone are the days when a hearing TEST could rule out legitimate medical problems. A growing brain tumor? Ear cysts that can eat away your middle ear bones? Slap a new Bose® amplifier on that and call it a day! Best part, a portion of your purchase will go to elect Liz.
You may ask, as an informed consumer or sympathetic grandchild, what else could we do to rein in the obscene markup on hearing aids, truthfully an extension of FDA’s other runaway costs like prescription drug monopolies? To you I say: Bernie has a plan for that.
His #M4A plan accounts for dental plans, eyeglasses, prescription drugs, and (of course) hearing aids. It doesn’t help consumers to gut the FDA and let Big Tech prey on the elderly w/o regulatory oversight. We keep doctors in the equation because there are consequences.
Left untreated (or under-treated), hearing loss is linked to dementia. Big Tech has NO PROOF that an open hearing aid market – without selection/training by professionals – would leave these patients any better off. They get frustrated with tech and put it away in a drawer.
Working in healthcare is a daily reminder about admin spending bloat and how insurance co. middlemen decide who lives and who dies. Patients are afraid to go get medical help. They fear ambulances and hospitals. Admins are suing sick poor people to get paid.
Two years ago next week I was one of those ambulance-afraid patients. Before I could lose consciousness I drove myself to the hospital. A deadly blood infection almost killed me. A freak accident that can happen to tons of people: a lodged kidney stone.
I got saddled with nearly $10,000 in bills for 1wk hospitalization that year despite having an employer-subsidized specialty “affiliated physicians” healthcare plan (not as an MD but I digress). $10k in patient responsibility AFTER insurance.
Half of Americans have even more medical debt than this. People like you and I don’t usually have $10k lying around. My best-case scenario WITH insurance. Likely the best one would have access to in my situation. Still saddled with medical debt.
My employer had to switch plans the next year because rates went up (oops my bad). Starting over with new specialists that took that insurance. Speaking as someone both with and within healthcare, this system is broken. Forget Pete, Liz, or Joe, NONE will solve it but Bernie.
“Not even Liz? She likes Bernie’s plan!” you may be shouting at your screen. Reminder: Warren has shifted her M4A plan into first an optional one until 3 years’ delayed rollout, deep into the term. This contrasts with Sanders implementing his in the first week of a presidency.
At best, a slow-mo kickoff of healthcare reform sets us back to the days of Obamacare vulnerable to a GOP dismantle. At worst, it kinda looks like a capitalist who is procrastinating and placating while setting up an M4A plan that is truly destined to fail.
“OK, but who pays for M4A?” Folks, I present bernietax.com which is a tool designed by a savvy redditor to estimate how your life will improve with #M4A. Input salary, the year’s health premiums + deductible (face it, everyone has one nowadays), and BAM.
It estimated #BernieSaves me $3k every year on healthcare. Not to mention the bygone era of out-of-network anesthesiologists, unlucky ambulance bills, or random fraudulent denials just because my health insurance co. doesn’t feel like paying up.
The best part about more affordable healthcare for ALL of us? We stop being afraid to get medical help. We become healthier people and start preventing illness and disease by not procrastinating until payday, until getting that tax return, or until… never.
“Why didn’t you tell us sooner?!” We tried! The media is bankrolled by Big Healthcare. They construct convoluted poll questions and takedown pieces at the bidding of their corporate sponsors. Even NPR’s include Aetna, BCBS, Cigna, need I say more?
Let me finish this thread by urging you to familiarize yourself with how #BernieSaves you and those you care about. Because this candidate’s policies aim to improve the lives of ALLLLL Americans. If you are just joining the movement, welcome home.
