What a day this has been! And what a day for Brad & Desi to take off. But I've got it covered. It's NICOLE SANDLER, back to guest host today's edition of the BradCast. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

Things got interesting last night, when CNN finally called Arizona for Biden, and the snowball started rolling. By mid-day Friday, CNN also called Georgia for Biden and North Carolina for Trump, dispensing with the last two races still to be settled. Their final tally: Biden 306 electoral college votes to Trump's 232. The other news organizations quickly followed, and Trump now appears to be toast.

But Georgia is still doing an audit/recount, as Brad explained in detail earlier this week. Apparently, this was going to happen regardless of the outcome. I learned that when I spoke with JASON CARTER, Chair of the Board of Trustees of The Carter Center, which is observing the audit. This is the first time the Carter Center has jumped into US elections, as our practice of employing different voting systems in each state does not meet the Center's criteria for their election observer program.

This afternoon, Donald Trump spoke publicly for the first time since Nov. 4 at 2:30am when, in a very strange moment, he declared himself the winner of the race. Today, the White House announced he was going to talk about progress toward a coronavirus vaccine. Of course, all the networks took the feed live because surely he'd mention the election he lost. He did not. Just like COVID-19, he must figure that if he just ignores it, it'll go away.

But in the middle of this global pandemic, Trump was still trying to take our health care away. The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday heard the Trump Administration's third challenge to the Affordable Care Act. I invited WENDELL POTTER, the only whistleblower from the health insurance industry to step up, to tell us how it went. These days he heads an organization called The Center for Health and Democracy...

Download MP3 or listen online below...

Greetings from the coronavirus zone, aka planet earth. It's NICOLE SANDLER back today to guest host the BradCast.

We're in the middle of a universally shared experience unlike anything in our lifetimes. People all over the world are dealing with the same crisis-- this new, very contagious and quite deadly disease for which there is no vaccine, no cure, and no prescribed treatment. All over the world, we're practicing social distancing and trying to stay safe.

Worldwide, we're coping in various ways; many are harnessing their creativity and the power of music and the internet and creating some fun and very funny music parody videos. Today, with the belief (which apparently even AP agrees with) that laughter is the best medicine, we'll share some that I've discovered over the past week or so with you. As an added bonus, I'll post the videos of the songs featured on the show today at the bottom of this article.

Now for the serious stuff. Last weekend marked the 10th anniversary of the passage of the Affordable Care Act. I was on the air at Air America while that legislation was being written, rewritten, and debated ad nauseum. It was during that time that we first met WENDELL POTTER, still the only former health insurance industry executive with the integrity to come forward to admit what he had done and try to fix the very flawed system.

Today, Wendell Potter is president of both Medicare for All Now and Business For Medicare For All, and he joins me to talk about the lack of progress in the past 10 years, and how the coronavirus crisis proves how necessary Medicare for All is for our survival, telling me: "People are going to avoid getting the care they need because they just simply don't have the money to pay for treatment even if they have insurance because of the high deductibles that most of us are in now. And it’s important to note that we're alone in the developed world in having a system like this. ... Yes, other countries are dealing with this crisis too, but we have this particular problem of having almost 30 million people in this country who don't have insurance, another 60 million who are underinsured, who don't have enough money in the bank to cover the out-of-pocket expenses even with insurance to get the care that they need."

Here's the link to audio of today's show! The video versions of the parody songs we played today are embedded below it...

Download MP3 or listen online below...

The video versions of the parody songs I shared on today's BradCast are embedded below, since laughter --- especially now! --- really is the best medicine...

As Americans are being hoodwinked by a slick health insurance industry PR campaign, the time has come to carefully examine Medicare For All by separating myth from reality.

While morally repugnant, the privately-owned health insurance industry's deceptions are economically understandable. By the time Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced the Medicare for All Act of 2019 in the U.S. Senate --- two months after Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), co-chair of the Progressive Caucus, introduced H.R. 1384 - Medicare for All Act of 2019 in the House --- the industry realized that it faced an existential threat.

Medicare for All would create an entirely new single-payer healthcare system that, with limited exceptions (cosmetic surgery, home care nursing), would eliminate the need for anyone to purchase health insurance.

While the parasitic health insurance industry has faced-off against them in the past, single-payer advocates are better positioned to prevail in 2020 than at any time in the past 75 years. Sanders' single-payer healthcare legislation, S. 1129, was co-sponsored by 14 Senate Democrats. Those co-sponsors included several Presidential candidates --- Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Kamela Harris (D-CA). More than one-half of all Democrats in the House (112), co-sponsored Jayapal's version of the bill. Medicare for All is also supported by 63 national organizations. More importantly, a poll taken in 2018 --- prior to a barrage of pro-insurance industry propaganda --- found that Medicare for All was immensely popular. It was supported by a whopping 70% of all Americans, including 84% of Democrats and a mind-boggling 52% of Republicans.

With their very survival at stake, the health insurance profiteers, along with large hospitals and the pharmaceutical industry, created a new PR front-group, Partnership for America's Healthcare Future (PAHF), to wage their defensive. According to Wendell Potter, a former CIGNA executive and author of Deadly Spin: How PR is Killing Healthcare and Deceiving Americans (2011), PAHF is the industry's newest propaganda arm.

In addition to carefully-timed commercial advertising, PAHF acts in concert with industry-funded politicians and mainstream media pundits. Their goal is to erect an industry-friendly frame that serves to mask the blatant deficiencies of our inordinately expensive, yet woefully inefficient, subsidized "free market" healthcare system. This, as Julie Hollar of the media watchdog FAIR observed, has succeeded in turning some of the recent Democratic Presidential Debates into "over the top, industry-friendly spectacle[s]."

Potter, the recovering healthcare industry veteran, told Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzek: "Health insurers have been successful at two things: making money and getting the American public to believe they're essential." But, "the truth", argues Hiltzik, "is that private health insurers have contributed nothing to the American healthcare system."

Most Americans, he charges, "blindly tolerate" our inordinately expensive, yet dysfunctional private insurance system "because the vast majority...don't have a complex interaction with the healthcare system within a given year...[One percent] of patients account for more than one-fifth of all medical spending, and 10% account for two-thirds." Far too many Americans fail to appreciate the "inadequacies of our private insurance system" until those inadequacies are thrust upon them by an unexpected serious illness or injury, according to the Pulitzer Prize winning business columnist.

Hence, the need to separate healthcare insurance myth from fact-based reality...