Not many candidates have the guts to run election campaigns that target the Medicare Advantage scam, which many older Americans still think is part of Medicare (which it isn’t). But San Fernando Valley progressive, Angélica Dueñas, isn’t anything like a run of the mill congressional candidate. Last week, she told Valley residents that a year ago she had written an email to her supporters about how 54 Congressional Democrats had written an open letter calling on the Department of Health and Human Services to discontinue its Medicare Direct Contracting Program, a Trump administration program which contracted Medicare plans out to private equity.” Her corporate-funded opponent, Tony Cardenas, was “not only absent from that letter; he was named a champion of the Medicare Advantage program that set the stage for this to happen.” Please read Angélica’s take on this below and consider contributing what you can to her campaign here.
Medicare Advantage has been in the news over the past couple weeks as the program was revealed to have defrauded the government of billions of dollars. These private plans overdiagnosed patients with more complex and rare disorders than public plans, allowing them to take more money from traditional Medicare— this overbilling has become so widespread that it exceeded the total budgets of the FBI, EPA, and Federal Prison System.
Thankfully, it looks like support for Medicare Advantage is waning in Congress. In 2022 over 80% of the chamber signed a letter supporting the program; this year, so many legislators would have been absent from a similar letter that the insurance industry didn’t even try to circulate one.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal said her colleagues signed 2022’s letter because they weren’t aware of the program’s pitfalls. They just saw how many of their constituents were a part of the program, and thought they should be opposed to cuts.
This sort of blind allegiance to the status quo is the reason I’m running for Congress. Just because a lot of people are forced to sign onto a certain insurance plan— likely through billions of dollars of advertising, lobbying, and decades of weakening government programs— doesn’t mean it should be “preserved.” In this case, “preserving” Medicare Advantage weakens our public health system.
We deserve representatives who don’t let lobbyists do their thinking; who don’t take accolades and “awards” for turning away from our broken systems.
I’ll confront the holes in our government, and plug them up. My community and my country deserve a system that will work for us.
But we’ll only do that by coming together.
2022 was a tough year for progressive insurgents challenging moderate incumbents. But I still managed to get 41.5% of the vote, while being outraised more than 10x. As you may know, my opponent, Tony Cardenas, was accused of sexually assaulting a teenage girl in 2018. The documentary on his accomplice, longtime booster, and sadistic pornography producer Mark Handel is set to come out early next year, and will surely change the dynamics of this race.
It’s not easy to run for Congress again, but I know my community needs truly progressive leadership, not whatever other corporate ghoul tries to swoop in when Tony falls from grace. Every precinct in this district voted for Bernie Sanders in 2020; I’m asking for your help in getting our message out there and encouraging them to vote for Angelica Dueñas in 2024.
The last few years have given me optimism. People aren’t settling for our broken systems, and they aren’t settling for compromised representation. Next year I have faith that people will turn out and vote to put people before profits.