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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 12/3/19

Donald Trump In Secret Talks To Privatize U.K.'s National Heath Service

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Director of U.K.-based advocacy group Global Justice Now, Nick Dearden, said in a statement the documents Corbyn publicized "clearly show the British negotiators being bullied by Trump's administration, and Boris Johnson dancing to the tune of U.S. big business."

He added:

"The U.S. is demanding damaging changes to the British economy which threaten our public services like the NHS, our food standards and farmer livelihoods, our access to new cancer medicines, and our ability to tackle climate change. U.S. officials are damning [sic] about parliamentary scrutiny over safety standards and are even trying to dictate what positions Britain can take in international fora [sic]."

Brexit is presenting the United Kingdom with an historic mess, and mirroring our dysfunctional for-profit health insurance system will only compound it.

The United States is the only advanced country in the world without a national healthcare system.

Despite paying the most for healthcare, we are not the healthiest country.

Healthcare costs in the United States are the leading cause of bankruptcy.

We pay a lot in taxes in this country (unless we're super-wealthy). Consider all the additional costs we incur in prescription drugs and doctor visit co-payments. For too many, it's too much.

The United States needs a single-payer universal healthcare system because health should not be profitable. Wealthy business leaders, pharmaceutical executives, and politicians who legislate for them should not get rich off others' pain and suffering.

As author and progressive radio personality Thom Hartmann stated in his book Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class--And What We Can Do About It:

"Of every $100 that flows through corporate insurance programs and HMOs, $10 to $34 sticks to corporate fingers along the way. After all, Medicare doesn't have lavish corporate headquarters, doesn't use corporate jets, and doesn't pay expensive lobbying firms in Washington to work on its behalf. It doesn't 'donate' millions of dollars to politicians and their parties. It doesn't pay profits in the form of dividends to its shareholders. And it doesn't compensate its top executive with more than $1 million a year, as do each of the largest of the American insurance companies."

There are many permutations of national healthcare systems, and we do not need to follow any other country's model in lock step.

The United Kingdom, for example, practices socialized medicine in which t h e government owns and operates most of the healthcare providers and doctors are government employees. Although technically a single-payer system, it is just one model.

Canada and many other nations, on the other hand, contract with private providers in which doctors still run their own practices.

This is the difference between "socialized medicine" and "single-payer."

We could learn a lot from Britain.

Of all of its pressing national issues, sliding backward into an American-style for-profit healthcare model should not be among them.

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Ted Millar is a writer and teacher. His work has been in featured in myriad literary journals, including Straight Forward Poetry, Better Than Starbucks, the Broke Bohemian, Caesura, Circle Show, Cactus Heart, Third Wednesday, and The Voices (more...)
 

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