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"a comprehensive Medicare based Single Payer system can make significant contributions to access of quality care for all US residents and in the process generate a much needed and very substantial economic stimulus in the form of jobs, enhanced business and public revenues and increased wages for the population at large." All this for a small net $63 billion increase yielding much more in benefits.
According to Geri Jenkins, co-president of the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association (NNOC/CNA):
IHSP's analysis shows "for the first time that a single-payer system could not only solve our healthcare crisis, but also substantially contribute to putting America back to work and assisting the economic recovery."
The study's lead author and director of the Institute for Health and Socio-Economic Policy (the NNOC/CNA research arm), Don DeMoro, added:
"If we were to expand our present Medicare system to cover all Americans, the economic stimulus alone would create an immense engine that would help drive our national economy for decades to come."
All for a tiny fraction of the Wall Street bailouts that looted the federal Treasury, gravely harmed the country, and delayed for a future time a far more serious day of reckoning.
Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) Support for Universal Single-Payer Coverage
PNHP calls the current system "outrageously expensive, yet inadequate" because of the 50 million or more uninsured and another 30 million or more underinsured. It spends more and delivers less through:
"a patchwork system of for-profit payers. Private insurers necessarily waste health dollars on things (unrelated to care): overhead, underwriting, billing, sales and marketing (plus) huge profits and exorbitant executive pay. Doctors and hospitals must maintain costly administrative staffs to deal with the bureaucracy (consuming nearly one-third) of Americans' health dollars." The potential savings from single-payer financing is "more than $350 billion per year....enough to" cover everyone at no more than the current cost and perhaps less depending on services provided and if government negotiates lower drug prices the way other countries do.
Consider the benefits - single-payer will cover "all medically necessary services, including: doctor, hospital, preventive, long-term care, mental health, reproductive health care, dental, vision, prescription drug and medical supply costs. Patients" will have free choice of providers, and doctors will "regain autonomy over patient care," no longer restricted by insurance company gatekeepers. Overall, health care in America will achieve a quantum leap improvement compared to the dysfuntional state it's now in, worse still if Obamacare passes.
"HR 3962: Affordable Health Care for America Act" - The Public Betrayal Act to Enrich the Insurance, Drug, and Large Hospital Chain Cartels
On November 7, by a narrow 51 - 49% majority, the House passed legislation former CIGNA executive, now critic, Wendall Potter calls "the Insurance Company Profit Protection and Enhancement Act." Add the drug and hospital chain cartels that will profit hugely if it's enacted.
Voting for it - 219 Democrats and one Republican. Against it were the remaining Republicans and 39 Democrats.
Among its supporters were cosponsors of "HR 676: United States National Health Care Act or the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act," including universal single-payer advocates:
-- Anthony Weiner (D. NY);
-- Danny Davis (D. IL), this writer's representative;
