RT @RepRoKhanna: Medicare for All would save an estimated 68,000 lives a year while reducing U.S. health care spending by billions of dolla… at
— StillFeisty✍️🇺🇸 (@AnneBai66) February 18, 2022Healthcare is so expensive that many Americans put off seeing a doctor until their health has seriously deteriorated. Even with the Affordable Care Act, some 30 million Americans have no health insurance coverage at all.
Not only do too many dollars go to super-specialists and too few to preventive generalists, but the administrative costs involved in private for-profit insurance are humongous. About a third of what the typical American pays for health insurance goes to the people who oversee billing and collections. And then of course there are marketing and advertising expenses, and the profits that go to shareholders or private-equity managers.
Finally, if the pandemic taught us anything, it's that we need to decouple health insurance from employment. Losing a job shouldn't mean the loss of a family's lifeline to healthcare.
RT @RepJayapal: In just one week — we added three new co-sponsors to my Medicare for All Act — bringing us to a record amount of support.… at
— Cindylouwho (@CLWagner73) February 18, 2022The Affordable Care Act was a good start at reform, but today I'm urging Congress*to replace private for-profit health insurance with Medicare for all. This would lead to far lower total costs - including premiums, co-payments, deductibles, and taxes - and it would cover all Americans. People could keep their same doctor or other health-care provider, and could buy private insurance to supplement it - just as some people now buy private insurance to supplement Medicare and Social Security. But as Medicare and Social Security have demonstrated, we shouldn't need to pay private for-profit insurers boatloads of money to get the insurance we need.
I have no illusions this will happen soon. But the road we're now on is unsustainable - economically, politically, and socially. Eventually, we're going to have some version of Medicare for All (and hats off to members of Congress who are leading the way, such as Representatives Pramila Jayapal, Debbie Dingel, and Ro Khanna). The question is how much unnecessary cost and hardship must we bear before we do?
RT @thehill: .@RepJayapal: "Medicare for All would cut the dangerous ties between employment and health coverage. Not only that, it would a… at
— Montgomery Co Democratic Party - Texas 🌊🗳🗽🇺🇸 (@MCDPTexas) February 18, 2022* The hearing was well-attended by members, and the conversation was thoughtful and intelligent. A few Republicans got into their age-old "socialism" rant, but I quietly pointed out that Social Security and Medicare - both hugely popular with the public - were also criticized by Republicans as being "socialist" when first proposed.
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