Daily Poster founder David Sirota on Friday said that a health care group run by a former top Hillary Clinton aide is working on “demonizing Medicare for All” and public health insurance before President-elect Joe Biden takes office next month.
In an interview on Hill.TV’s “Rising,” Sirota cited his reporting this week that the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future (PAHCF) is gearing up to fight against a public health care option, which Biden has supported.
“The Partnership for America’s Health Care Future sounds very nice, innocuous, friendly group, almost a charity. You might be forgiven for thinking that,” said Sirota, who served as a senior adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) 2020 presidential campaign. “But of course, it is a health care industry front group that has been demonizing Medicare for All.”
“It aired ads against Medicare for All during the 2020 Democratic primary. And the group, let’s be clear, it is made up of the pharmaceutical industry, its lobbying group, it’s made up of AHIP [America’s Health Insurance Plans], the insurance industry lobbying group, the hospitals, so it is a corporate front group,” he added.
“And it doesn’t just oppose Medicare for All, it is also demonizing a public option, a public health insurance option,” Sirota continued. “It is really trying to preserve the current status quo in all of its horrible glory, a status quo of millions of people losing their health care while insurance industry profits skyrocket during a pandemic.”
While Biden has voiced support for a public option but not Medicare for All, his planned nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, Xavier Becerra, is known to be a proponent of the latter option.
Watch part of Sirota’s interview above.
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