Tracy Mitrano is a Democrat running on a “Medicare for all” platform in the hope of unseating the seemingly (and kind of obviously) corrupt Republican Rep. Tom Reed (NY-23). Reed is running a platform of “Let’s call Tracy Mitrano a communist and hope nobody makes me discuss actual issues.” The Intercept has done quite an investigation into the numerous consumer complaints against the shady medical-debt collection agency founded by Reed, who seems to continue to benefit financially from it through the new ownership stake of Jean Reed—his wife.
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Highlighting one of Reed’s own constituents, the Intercept explains how Reed’s firm continued to harass him, holding up his ability to provide a credit score for a mortgage, over a medical debt that he had long ago resolved. This was one of well over a dozen complaints about the company sent to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) over the years—the same CFPB that Reed has, along with other Republicans, tried to defang since he was elected in 2010.
During this election cycle, Reed’s insistence on trying to repeal the ACA has been brought forward as an incredible conflict of interest. His household, through his wife, brings in a six-figure salary from the business of litigating frequently uninsured medical debt. At a town hall this past summer, a woman identifying herself as a local lawyer brought up Reed’s medical-debt profits.
Reed did not directly respond to the allegation that his household benefits from medical debt. “Even if we went to single-payer health care, who do you think is going to pay for that?” Reed retorted.
Actually, the idea is that if we went to single-payer, Medicare-for-all health insurance, your business of harassing people with medical debt would completely disappear, as we would have eliminated the foul source that parasites like Tom Reed feed upon. The Intercept asked the Reed campaign to comment on the transparent conflict of interest; it received this from a campaign spokesperson, Abbey Daugherty:
“Hi,” Daugherty said in an email, “are you suggesting that as a woman she can’t run her own business or have her own independent life?”
Actually, what is being suggested is that Jean Reed isn’t running jack, she’s collecting a paycheck for her husband as he tries to figure ways to make legal his unethical practices. There is a reason that people like Reed and Donald Trump want to gut the Affordable Care Act: money. Not to save money, but to pilfer it for their own tax havens accounts.
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