Remember during Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, when she promised “to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business”?
She seemed surprisingly surprised that coal miners were so displeased.
Have no fear, however — quickly she highlighted her $30 billion plan to provide sustenance and re-training to these soon-to-be displaced miners.
Leading in the latest Iowa poll, Sen. Bernie Sanders (Ind.-Vt.) opines his own deep commitment to enacting “Medicare for All” and, by the magic of Washington statecraft, summarily executing private health insurance in these United States.
“The private health insurance business employs at least a half a million people, covers about 250 million Americans, and generates roughly a trillion dollars in revenues,” reports The New York Times. “Its companies’ stocks are a staple of the mutual funds that make up millions of Americans’ retirement savings.”
In last night’s debate, CNN’s Abby Phillip read the Vermont senator a question from an Iowa Democratic voter: “Des Moines is an insurance town. What happens to all . . . the health insurance industry here if there is ‘Medicare for All’? What happens to all the jobs and the livelihoods of the people that live in insurance towns like Des Moines?”
“We build in to our ‘Medicare for All’ program a transition fund of many, many billions of dollars,” Sanders explained, “that will provide for up to five years income and health care and job training for those people.”
Come on, don’t get uptight about whether your job — or your whole industry — is terminated. Uncle Bernie will set you up with a new gig, and some cash to hold you over.
Trust Washington to take good care of you.
Or use Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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2 replies on “Disemploying Des Moines”
I’d be surprised if as many as a thousand people are employed in actual health insurance, because for all intents and purposes that industry hasn’t existed since the early 1970s. What those huge numbers of people are employed in is the pre-paid health care industry, created by the HMO Act, which killed off most real “insurance.”
Which is not a problem any form of “single payer” would fix.
Uncle Bernie will set you up with a new gig, and some cash to hold you over.
What gig? Learn to code? We were told that over forty years ago. Now AT&T is doing its second round of insourcing. First they got rid of programmers in the early 2000’s and forced them to train their replacements.. Now they are getting rid of the people they hired in the wake of that mass layoff and instituting a second round of forced knowledge transfer. Advice to young people: get a government job. You’ll never be laid off and you’ll collect a fat pension at the end..