The plan he is working on will push, perhaps even force, people to buy insurance, it will subsidize the industry even more than it already is, it will not control costs indeed it will increase taxes to pay for insurance subsidies, and, if there is a public insurance option it will have so many strings attached that it will fail. This is not reform that provide health care to all at a price the nation can afford.
President Obama put forward three goals for health care reform. On every measure single payer wins on the facts.
1. Cover all American: It is the only system that will ensure that every American has access to health care throughout their lives. Single payer will allow people to keep insurance unrelated to their employment. The Massachusetts model on which the senate is basing their plan has failed to insure all people in Massachusetts.
2. Control Costs: Single payer is the only cost-effective way to achieve health care for all because it immediately saves $400 billion in health insurance created bureaucracy, it will uncover hundreds of billions in waste, fraud, and abuse, it will allow for negotiation on the price of pharmaceutical drugs and and it will reduce malpractice as people with bad health outcomes will have health care to treat them. The Massachusetts model has led to rapidly increasing costs.
3. Provide Consumer Choice: Single payer provides people with the maximum choice. They will no longer be limited by the insurance or HMO "approved" list of doctors but rather will be able to pick their doctor, their hospital and their treatment. The senate is conflating choice of health care with choice of insurance. The latter is really irrelevant as under a single payer system people will be able to keep their current doctors and providers or change them. People have maximum choice under single payer.
Real reform of health care is needed. We do not need to tinker with the broken multi-payer system. We do not need to preserve the costly, failed private insurance system -- we need to end it. Single payer has worked in every country that has tried it. Medicare is working in the United States. Single payer is merely expanding improved Medicare to all Americans.
It is time to put single payer on the table, indeed it is time to make it America's national health policy. A private meeting should spur our movement to increase the pressure senators are feeling.
We want real change not symbolic meetings.
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