On Single Payer Healthcare
As a candidate you have promised to treat issues in a truly bipartisan manner. On most issues this has clearly been the case.
Single payer is the one single issue that transcends all politics of the American people and they are almost all (65%) clearly in agreement with.
We all want single payer health care.
In the last couple of years I have seen fundraisers for 4 local people in order to pay for their health care because either their insurance refused to cover legitimate costs or they had absolutely zero coverage.
We, as a country, are bound by United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, a treaty initiated and signed by the US government, under article 25 to provide health care to every citizen of the USA as a basic human right:
"Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control."
Treating this basic human right as vehicle for profit is irrational and unconscionable. None of the for-profit answers will ever address all of the issues we are duty bound to resolve. I refuse to watch any politician subsidize insurance companies' profits so that they can continue to provide their death insurance.
Only single payer health care will eliminate the immoral and distinctly unequal practice of rationing for profit.
At the very minimum, medicare - the most cost efficient program in the USA - should be opened up to all Americans that wish to participate and let it compete openly on the free market with the life threatening privatized options.
Everyone voted for real change in the last elections, and we voted for an honest reflection of what bipartisan answers should be. Bipartisan
answers from politicians need to reflect the true wishes of the American people if they are ever going to be truly transformational. Not the faux bipartisan wish lists of politicians and their special interest lobbyists.
Any attempts to "Stay the Course!" with the failed private death insurance for profit systems will be viewed as complete and utter failure on the Obama administrations part to fulfill their campaign promises of a responsive and accountable government to the citizens of the United States of America. And it will prove there is truly no bipartisan hand being outstretched to all. Just to the political elite that have sold out to lobbyists and their unethical corporate interests.
(Just a letter I sent to President Obama because nyceve is at it again over at dkos)
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i've been wondering for months why supporters of Single Payer make it sound as if it is the only viable option.
as far as i know (and i may be wrong, of course, obviously), the Canadian option (i.e., Single Payer) is inferior/less efficient to the forms of socialized medicine successfully practiced in the EU (and elsewhere).
the canadian option is inferior?
why do you say that?
yes, it's true: the least expensive, most efficient way to deliver healthcare is for the public [aka the government] to own the whole kit-n-caboodle outright. britain and spain do this -- the government owns all the hospitals, clinics, etc, and all of the doctors, nurses, etc are government employees. this is true 'socialized medicine.' we have a comparable system here: the veterans administration. the government [we, the taxpayers!] owns the hospitals and clinics, and the doctors, nurses, etc are all salaried government employees.
germany, france, switzerland, many other european countries have a multi-payer system, where the private NON-PROFIT insurance companies are very, very heavily regulated by their governments, so much so that these countries are essentially single-payer also, since the government pretty much tells the insurers who they will cover, what illnesses/conditions they will cover, and how much they will charge.
canada, australia, and iirc, some of the scandinavian countries are basically single payer: the government functions as the insurance company, but the doctors, hospitals, clinics, etc, are NOT government owned. our medicare system is a single payer system too, and could easily be extended to cover all of us.
the norwegians [or possibly it's the the finns, i forget] live about as long as we do, but ALL of these other countries, whether single payer, or socialized medicine, or non-profit multi-payer, they all live longer, healthier lives than we do, and judging by the canadian experience, it's entirely because they went to single payer, since they used to be just as unhealthy as americans.
in a nutshell, under any one of the models, other than ours, you can expect to live 2-3 years longer, be healthier while you're alive, and it costs only about 40-60% of what our system costs. the socialized medicine countries are definitely at the 40% end of that scale, and this is an over-simplification on my part, but the multi-payer countries tend to be slightly more expensive than the single-payer countries, with germany, france, amd switzerland paying slightly more than canada and australia.
hr 676 is probably the most viable option for TRUE reform, since we already have a time-tested infrastructure in place [medicare serves more than 45 million people and has been around for 43 years now]. if this happens, the insurance companies can still sell supplemental insurance [like they do in canada and europe too], but they would probably only need maybe 1/4 of their present workforce.
my personal preference would be to go whole hog, full-on socialized medicine, expand the va system to cover everyone [they already have a working electronic records system too], but i don't expect very many people to agree to do that.
the other option is to regulate all the insurance companies back down to non-profits, but judging by the few numbers i can find on the internet this option means they'd still have to cut back to 1/4-1/3 of their present workforce. either way, they lose HUGE profits and income.
Single payer is not "the Canadian option"
But in every measurable way the Canadian system is better than the US. Costs less, they live longer, they are healthier, less deaths at birth and everyone is covered. (They also have a higher standard of living... But health care is only part of the reason for that).
Personally? I would have no problems with straight up socialized medicine as practiced in some Euro countries. But I think the Doctors, Nurses and other medical professionals here (the majority of whom do support single payer) probably would.
eh, it's close enough to canadian
they call their system medicare, and their medicare IS a single payer system.
OUR single payer sytem would be an improvement on theirs though, if we pass hr 676, since theirs doesn't cover some things like dental and vision, and is iirc, a bit skimpy on mental health care, and hr 676 would cover all those.
usually, people's objections to canadian stems from the disinformation put out by the fraser institute, a think tank run by the few canadians free-marketeers that are still in the wild.
My job is part of the mess, and I'm part of the problem
I work in a managed care office for a community health center in Dorchester MA- (a neighborhood of Boston), and with all that I've seen and been (unfortunately) a part of, I personally can't wait until we all come to our senses and force the government to enact HR676 or the like and make my job unnecessary. I'm sickened by the arrogance and callous dismissal of the commercial insurers who've been calling the shots, dictating whatever minimal treatment and reimbursements they can get away with, but I'm equally disgusted by our local hospital conglomerates/factories (notably Partners Healthcare) for the same behavior, sometimes worse. Bring on the Canadian, Swedish, British, or whatever system you got. It is SO about time.
You should testify
n/t
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
who'd listen?
Or more importantly: who'd listen and then do something? As someone who's much higher up the healthcare foodchain said, "the fix is in." He was referring to the sweetheart deal that Partners HC got from our local insurers that made them a whole pile more money than those hospitals and systems that merely serve poor people. But the sentiment is the same.
...that said, it doesn't mean that I'm NOT going to contact Kerry, Kennedy, and my local rep's ofice today about the exclusion of Rep. Conyers from the BS fest tomorrow; it just means that I'm a little worn out and mistrustful of anything positive occurring.
Don't step into the Moxie Trap, BBB!
Moxie Trap alert!
Why, only this afternoon I was speaking with yet another colleague, decidedly leftist, who not only was not aware that our union has endorsed HR 676 (I started the conversation by a complaint that although they have endorsed it, they do not seem to be doing anything much about it! - a complaint I've made here before), but she had no idea that the bill exists and did not know what "single payer health care" meant! I'm sending her a ton of linky goodness.
Those in NYC who can't make it to DC tomorrow, please consider coming to the Fair Share Tax Reform Rally for New York and bring single payer brochures! [warning: that last link leads to a pdf]
(edited to put in better flyer link)
Talk it up! The effect is exponential!
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We can't afford not to have single-payer!