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Friday, August 14, 2026

Mainstream Democrats Quietly Push for Single Payer

by Chris Jacobs

Conventional wisdom in Washington holds that so-called moderate Democrats who haven’t endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders’s single-payer healthcare plan support many coverage options.

But a white paper on healthcare reform from Oregon’s Ron Wyden, ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, shows that this is false. The report, released July 30, mentions the word “profit” or derivations thereof 185 times in an 86-page document, echoing New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s rhetoric demonizing wealth. The outlined policies also resemble those of Mr. Mamdani and Mr. Sanders—proposals that Democrats previously rejected as too costly and disruptive, and that would move the country toward a fully government-run system….

The Wyden document avoids specific parameters, which makes precise cost estimates difficult. But its mantra of “reversing Republican cuts” from last year’s budget reconciliation bill—which among other things would expand health coverage for illegal immigrants—would cost more than $1 trillion over a decade, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates. The CBO has estimated that extending enhanced ObamaCare subsidies would cost $350 billion over the same period. In 2020, I calculated that repealing the firewall [between employer plans and subsidized Exchange coverage] would lead to $2.2 trillion in higher subsidy spending over a decade for the estimated 24 million people who would switch from employer coverage to the exchanges. Enacting such proposals would cost trillions without factoring in the new cost-sharing assistance Mr. Wyden outlines.

Recall that congressional Democrats balked at enacting Mr. Biden’s Build Back Better Act after CBO revealed its long-term net cost would total $3 trillion if its major policies were extended over a decade. Mr. Wyden’s healthcare proposals could easily exceed that number without even touching other costly items on the left’s policy wish list like education and student loans, housing, child care and universal basic income.

Whether the legislative proposals Mr. Wyden drafts explicitly endorse a single-payer healthcare system is immaterial. Policies that centralize control of employer plans under government auspices—undermining employer coverage in the process—would lead to fully socialized medicine soon enough.

https://juniperresearchgroup.substack.com/p/mainstream-democrats-quietly-push

Charting a Course to Improve Care Across America

For more than a decade, the National Alzheimer’s Project Act (NAPA) has served as our nation’s roadmap for confronting Alzheimer’s disease. Last week, as Chair of the NAPA Advisory Council, I had the privilege of helping finalize the recommendations that will shape the next chapter of that effort.

These recommendations come at a pivotal moment in Alzheimer’s care, as unprecedented advances in diagnosis, treatment, and prevention are reshaping what is possible for patients and families. Blood-based biomarker tests can detect Alzheimer’s pathology with a simple blood draw. Research continues to strengthen the evidence that lifestyle interventions can help reduce risk and slow cognitive decline. Disease-modifying therapies can now slow progression for some patients in the earliest stages of disease.

Our challenge is ensuring that public policy keeps pace with scientific progress so patients and families can benefit from these breakthroughs.

Rather than simply identifying problems, our recommendations provide an actionable roadmap for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Congress to modernize Alzheimer’s prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and care.

Our recommendations call on policymakers to:

Make early detection the national standard.

Alzheimer’s should no longer be diagnosed only after families reach a crisis point. We recommend that HHS direct CMS to standardize validated cognitive assessments during the Welcome to Medicare Visit and Medicare Annual Wellness Visit, giving every older American the same evidence-based opportunity for early detection and earlier intervention. As I outlined in my recent Washington Examiner op-ed, standardized cognitive assessment should become a routine part of preventive healthcare.

We also recommend that Congress pass the bipartisan Alzheimer’s Screening and Prevention (ASAP) Act and Concentrating on High-Value Alzheimer’s Needs to Get to an End (CHANGE) Act so Medicare can keep pace with scientific advances by expanding access to emerging blood-based screening technologies and evidence-based cognitive assessment tools.

Help Americans protect their brain health before symptoms begin.

Alzheimer’s disease begins years or even decades before memory loss becomes obvious. Our recommendations call for a coordinated national brain health campaign that educates Americans about risk reduction, healthy lifestyle interventions, baseline cognitive assessments, and why early diagnosis matters now that meaningful treatments, support services, and clinical trials are available.

Equip clinicians to diagnose and care for patients earlier.

Earlier diagnosis only improves lives if healthcare providers have the knowledge, training, and tools to act. We recommend that CMS educate clinicians on existing Medicare billing codes for cognitive assessment and dementia care, strengthen care pathways from screening through treatment, and expand workforce training so providers can diagnose patients with confidence and connect them to timely care and support.

Accelerate innovation and expand access.

Scientific breakthroughs should not spend years waiting to reach patients. We recommend that HHS coordinate efforts across the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and other federal agencies to accelerate promising diagnostics and therapies while strengthening care navigation, expanding access to clinical trials, and ensuring patients can benefit from every scientific advance as quickly and equitably as possible.

Every generation hopes to leave the next one better off. These recommendations support a healthcare system that ensures patients, families, and caregivers have pathways to detect Alzheimer’s earlier and treat it more effectively to stay healthy and independent longer.

The future of Alzheimer’s care is being written today; these recommendations ensure patients and families are at the center of every chapter.

Michelle Branham is secretary of the Florida Department of Elder Affairs, former vice president of public policy in Florida for the Alzheimer’s Association, and current chairwoman of the Advisory Council on Alzheimer’s Research, Care, and Services for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

https://solvingalzheimers.substack.com/p/charting-a-course-to-improve-care-across-america

How Vertical Integration—and AARP—Are Driving Up Your Drug Costs

Every year, millions of patients pay their health insurance premiums, trusting their insurer will be there to support them if something happens. What they don't know is that the same company they’re depending on is pocketing their premiums and taking a cut of their prescription payments. For the tens of millions of Americans enrolled in UnitedHealthcare plans, their prescriptions are being routed through UnitedHealth’s own pharmacy benefit manager (PBM), OptumRx, generating billions in financial windfall.

Unfortunately, UnitedHealth is not an outlier but the blueprint for major health insurers. Across the country, the same vertical integration model, where an insurer operates through its own PBM—which also owns a pharmacy—has quietly become the routine structure of American healthcare and the reason patients continue to be charged outrageous prices at the pharmacy counter. This model lets one company set the price, choose the drug, and pocket the difference, with no market check on any of it. As this consolidation has grown, competition has shrunk, driving up costs, reducing competition, and eroding transparency.

Healthcare affordability depends on transparency and choice. Competitive markets provide consumers with greater options, reward investment in innovation, and hold companies accountable, leading to lower prices over time. But vertically integrated mega-insurers offer none of the above. Instead, they grant patients little visibility into the decision-making process while single-handedly setting premiums, controlling drug coverage and cost, and dictating which pharmacy a patient can use.

The result is a system where decisions that directly impact patients are made behind closed doors, leaving patients to navigate costs and coverage rules they didn’t choose. When the same corporation is present at every stage of the transaction, it becomes increasingly difficult for patients to know whether decisions are being made in their best interest or in the interest of maximizing corporate revenue.

Fixing rising healthcare costs means accountability shouldn’t stop with only insurers. It must also extend to organizations that have profited from a business model that reduces competition, obscures costs, and leaves patients with fewer choices.

This is where AARP enters the picture. By leveraging its trusted brand with UnitedHealth, AARP has collected an estimated $10.8 billion in tax-free revenue from the mega-insurer since 2007 and become not a bystander, but an influential player in a system working against patients.

For decades, AARP has cultivated a reputation as one of the nation's most trusted advocates for seniors. Yet in 2024 alone, UnitedHealth paid AARP an additional $9 billion for the right to market insurance products under its trusted name. That fee structure gave AARP a direct financial stake in the volume and cost of coverage sold to its own members. The more seniors pay in premiums, the more AARP collects, creating an incentive to protect the partnership, not challenge the practices driving up costs. Even AARP’s own members are skeptical of the partnership. A 2023 survey found that 85.2% of members were concerned about the financial relationship between AARP and UnitedHealth, and more than 75% agreed that the “royalty fee” arrangement creates a potential conflict of interest—and their intuition is right.

While AARP insists its policy positions are developed independently of its financial relationships, there has been an increased reliance on its corporate partnership revenue with UnitedHealth. In 2024, membership dues fell to 14.9% of AARP’s operating income from 28.9%, while marketing income grew from 35.6% to 62%. An organization that has grown deeply dependent on UnitedHealth revenue would surely find it difficult to advocate for transparency and competition reforms that would benefit seniors and threaten its partner's bottom line.

The policy stakes for this business model are real. Meaningful reform, whether through PBM transparency requirements, cracking down on vertical integration, or enforcing stronger antitrust standards, would directly disrupt the enormously profitable arrangement for UnitedHealth and AARP. Every year reform is delayed is another year patients overpay, another year competition fails to be incentivized, and another year the organizations best positioned to demand change continue to turn a blind eye for profit.

Americans would like to believe that somewhere in the healthcare system, someone is looking out for them. The truth is that the biggest players have built billion-dollar enterprises on the back of our healthcare system. Real advocates don't profit from the problem they promise to fix. Until the ties between big insurers and their financial partners are exposed, patients will keep paying the price of our healthcare oligopoly.

Andrew Langer is the Executive Director of the Coalition Against Socialized Medicine (CASM).

https://www.realclearhealth.com/articles/2026/08/13/how_vertical_integrationand_aarpare_driving_up_your_drug_costs_1200223.html

Krystal started at Outperform by RBC

Target $400

https://finviz.com/stock?t=KRYS&p=d

Accused Palisades Fire starter hit with new indictment as feds shift tactics after mistrial

Federal prosecutors are taking another crack at the man accused of sparking the devastating Palisades Fire — but this time, they’re narrowing the case.

Prosecutors filed a revised indictment Thursday against Jonathan Rinderknecht, 30, dropping one of the three felony counts he previously faced and reshaping the remaining charges around two separate fires.

The first count accuses Rinderknecht of igniting the Lachman Fire on New Year’s Day 2025. The second alleges that he caused the destruction that followed when the blaze was reignited days later as the catastrophic Palisades Fire.

The move comes less than two months after Rinderknecht’s first trial ended in a stunning mistrial, with jurors deadlocked 10-2 in favor of acquittal.

Jurors were unable to reach a verdict despite being sent back to deliberate, with the foreman ultimately telling the judge there was nothing the court could do to help them reach an agreement.

Rinderknecht is due back in court next week for a status conference, with his retrial scheduled for September.

Federal prosecutors allege Rinderknecht intentionally started the Lachman Fire around midnight on New Year’s Day along a hiking trail in the Pacific Palisades Highlands because he was frustrated with his place in society and angry at wealthy people.

The government’s case at trial centered on cellphone records, surveillance footage and Rinderknecht’s behavior after the fire. Prosecutors said he had visited the trail “hundreds of times” and allegedly used a green Bic lighter later found in his car.

Rinderknecht repeatedly called 911 after the blaze erupted.

“There’s a fire, there’s a fire,” Rinderknecht could be heard saying in the 911 call. “There’s a fire a top of Pacific Palisades Highland.”

While speaking to the dispatcher, he also screen-recorded himself asking ChatGPT, “Are you at fault if a fire is lit because of your cigarettes.”

But his defense team argued prosecutors never proved he started the initial blaze — or that the Lachman Fire caused the inferno that tore through Pacific Palisades a week later.

“There is no evidence that he started the fire. This is all circumstantial,” attorney Steve Haney said.

Haney also argued there was no conclusive evidence that embers from the first fire survived underground and later reignited amid powerful winds.

The Palisades Fire ultimately destroyed about 7,000 homes and businesses, caused an estimated $150 billion in damage and killed 12 people.

Rinderknecht’s first trial also exposed juror skepticism about the government’s case. One juror, Syrena of Lompoc, told The California Post prosecutors failed to make a convincing case.

“It’s disappointing because of how much money and time they put into the same thing. I don’t know … but like, yeah, bullsh–t,” she said.

The revised indictment now puts the two fires at the heart of Rinderknecht’s upcoming retrial.

https://nypost.com/2026/08/13/us-news/palisades-fire-arson-suspect-to-face-new-charges-after-mistrial/

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