Biden Says He’ll Pass a Public Option. His For-Profit Health Industry Donors Don’t Want Him To.
Joe Biden says he plans to deal with the US health care crisis by passing a public health insurance option. But his campaign is being funded by the same health companies that killed it when he was vice president. Something has to give — and it probably won't be the corporate donors.
Joe Biden puts on a mask after speaking during an event about affordable health care in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Joshua Roberts / Getty Images)
If you’ve spent sleepless nights tossing and turning, asking yourself, “Is the United States really an oligarchy?” — a Joe Biden presidency might help to settle it once and for all.
The basic finding of a 2014 Princeton study that reached that conclusion was this: If the country’s economic elites and organized interests support a policy, it has about a 45 percent chance of becoming law. If they oppose it, even if it is backed by the middle-class and poor (i.e. the vast majority of the country), those odds drop to 18 percent. This certainly suggests a political establishment dependent on corporate interests, with little hope of enacting any major reforms that challenge those interests. But a Biden presidency would perhaps be the final word on the subject.
From its beginning to now, Biden’s campaign more than any other has relied on the largesse of pharmaceuticals, health insurers, and other parts of the broken US for-profit health care industry. Even his campaign chairman is a former pharmaceutical lobbyist.
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