Living on Edge of Financial Disaster

I. Living on the Edge of Financial Disaster
On May 23, the Federal Reserve released its annual report on the nation's economic well being, which showed that despite a growing economy, millions of Americans still live on the edge of financial disaster.

39% -American adults who could not come up with $400 in an emergency.

17% - American adults who are unable to pay the current month's bills.

22% - Student-loan borrowers who attended for-profit college and are now behind on their payments, compared with 8 percent who attended public institutions.

24% - American adults who skipped medical treatment in 2018 because of its expense.

26% - American adults without any retirement savings. (Source: Edwin Aponte, "DC By the Numbers," The Nation, June 17/24, 2019).

II. Savings Under Single-Payer
In a letter to the June 3/10 issue of The Nation magazine, three physicians state the case for why single-payer would save doctors and hospitals vast amounts on billing, insurance paperwork, and other wasteful tasks.

"For instance, a recent Harvard Business School and Duke University study published in the "Journal of the American Medical Association" found that the average primary-care doctor at an efficient group practice sent $99,581 (and 243 hours) annually on billing. That's four times what Canadian doctors spend interacting with insurers."

"A similar calculus applies to hospitals. At a six-hospital system in Toronto, the equivalent of just 5.5 full-time employees handle all insurance billing and patient collections. A comparable hospital system in the US employs more than 200 people for those tasks."

"All told, single-payer could save doctors and hospitals about $225 billion annually on billing and bureaucratic costs (in addition to about $220 billion saved on insurance overhead and tens of billions more from streamlining the billing for nursing homes, home-care agencies, etc., and by lowering drug prices), offsetting the costs of providing first-dollar comprehensive coverage to everyone in the  nation."

III. Lord of the Lies
"Overall, the president has repeated 21 false claims 20 or more times, and more than 300 false claims at least 3 times." (Source: Eric Alterman, "Lord of the Lies," The Nation, June 3/10, 2019).

The Mueller report documents at least 77 times where Trump's campaign staff, administration officials, family members, Republican backers and his associates lied or made false assertions to the public.

A Washington "Post" Fact Checker poll taken late last year found that fewer than 3 in 10 believe Trump's most common lies, and barely 1 in 6 believe anything close to all of them. 65% of Americans don't think Trump is being honest with the country.

Trump has said that he was "never a fan" of the Vietnam War, and further said: "I'll be honest with you, I thought it was a terrible war." He actually was an early supporter of the war, and turned against it only when many Americans had begun to turn against it.