It’s time to stop putting political ideology over the welfare of the country. In the world-power that is the United States, medical expenses have long been the number one cause of bankruptcy, with 78% of filers already having health-insurance. It should be considered a serious issue when inhabitants of the wealthiest country have to choose between death or bankruptcy, food or medicine. The healthcare industry has turned into a for-profit business, which despite having skyrocketing costs, leave us at 33rd place in life expectancy and outcomes that are not notably superior. To put it simply, Americans are paying more tax money per capita and getting less. Whether one thinks healthcare is a right or not, you should favor the most fiscally responsible choice, a choice which happens to save millions of Americans lives. And that is the core of a single-payer system. People must wake up and smell the ‘red-scare’ the GOP has been harping on us, they’re beholden to their corporate donors – not fiscal conservatism or what’s best for the country. Healthcare is a basic human need that’s been served as a privilege and run as a business, a business profiting off the very ill it’s meant to help.
The hasty, botch-job Congress tried to pass as an Affordable Care Act replacement failed for a reason. That reason being that the culmination of 7 years of GOP temper-tantrums was a plan to uninsure 24 million, provide a $300 billion tax break for their swamp monsters, cut Medicaid, cut coverage,& raise premiums to a point where 64-year-old making $26,000 a year, would see a staggering $13,000 increase. Promoted by “policy wonks” who just literally have no idea how healthcare works. Per Satan himself, Sean Spicer: “I think if you’re an older man you can generally say that you’re not going to need maternity care.” And the party’s collective intellect/brain, Paul Ryan: “The whole idea of Obamacare is…the people who are healthy pay for the…sick. It’s not working, & that’s why it’s in a death spiral.” (It’s not.) A man who’s been dreaming about medicaid cuts since he was “drinking out of kegs.” A plan so villainous and nonsensical it made emergency services, maternity care, pediatric care, and even hospitalization optional for health insurance companies. Whenever you’re wondering why the government is doing something incredibly heinous, just follow the money. Ryan’s second largest campaign donation contributor is Blue Cross/Blue Shield. And he’s owned by billionaires in general, of course he’s pushing for their tax cuts, but I digress.
Here’s where the numbers come in. Our healthcare spending crowns us with the title of the most expensive and ineffective system in the world. We currently spend $20 trillion a year; $15 trillion through insurance premiums and $5 trillion through co-pays. With the government spending an amount per capita far more than any other nations at $3.2 trillion a year, 17% of our GDP, $10,000 per person. That’s double what the United Kingdom spends, and more than Germany and Canada, for a whole lot of medically induced bankruptcy here.
Contrary to popular American-exceptionalist-belief, this does not give us better healthcare:
“Despite having the most expensive health care system, the United States ranks last overall among 11 industrialized countries on measures of health system quality, efficiency, access to care, equity, and healthy lives, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report.”
In a study, 68% of adults 65+ were found to have at least two chronic conditions compared to 33% in the United Kingdom and 56% in Canada. We are also 33rd in life expectancy and our healthcare outcomes are “not notably superior.”
At this point, you should be asking yourself, who’s to blame for this cost-ineffective system bringing us subpar care? The answer is – the for-profit industry sustained by insurance companies. We’ve created a broken system where the goal is maximizing profit. This inevitably leads to over-treatment, inflated prescription drug prices, and 30 million drastically uninsured. We’re quite literally profiting off illness. It’s a system where the same procedure is charged different amounts depending on your insurance. For many, this industry pushes them into a house foreclosure or death. We’ve twisted the definition of ‘care’ into a greedy, bureaucratic one, antithetical to the reason why people become healthcare providers in the first place. Why are we okay with all of this? Why are we okay with investors and CEO’s making billions of off the most vulnerable in our society while they suffer then inevitably die?
It’s not cost-effective, it’s not outcome effective. The only people this crony system benefits is insurance and pharmaceutical industry CEO’s. Not the people providing healthcare, not the people receiving it. The only reason it stays, is because money has corrupted the democratic process and congressmen are paid to gatekeep for this absolute failure of a system. Done in part by fear mongering about “socialism” to people who can’t even define socialism. It’s an endless circle of misinformation and corruption that’s ruining systems designed to better society.
There’s also no “trickle-down” healthcare. Giving a $300 billion tax break to billionaires and hiking premiums is not the solution to such a disaster. Single-payer is. People dying, foreclosing their houses, and going bankrupt do have jobs (given that 78% of filers had health insurance.) We are the only industrialized nation that doesn’t guarantee healthcare to its people because we’re too busy running it like a business. Yes, other countries have higher taxes but that’s nothing more than a soundbite excuse considering a larger amount of ours go towards healthcare for inferior returns. Recall we spend more per capita for this failed system. And the majority of that goes straight to the insurance industry CEO’s pockets. Other countries cut out the middleman, and don’t spend more on healthcare but simply spend their money efficiently. Since when is that socialism? The United States must enact healthcare reform in this model, saving billions while doing it.
Under single-payer, not only are millions no longer dying because they can’t afford cancer medication, but the citizenry reaps a myriad of economic benefits any fiscal conservative should get behind. We’d all be at townhalls demanding medicare for all already if it hadn’t been smeared by gate keeping corporate shills and their propaganda machines. Single payer saves us trillions, stimulates the economy by helping small businesses and causes salaries to increase – all through a small tax hike. Math is free from passion, so here it goes.
As mentioned, we currently spend $20 trillion in healthcare costs – $6 trillion of that stemming from insurance costs, and $3.1 trillion in tax subsidies to employers. By eliminating the useless middleman insurance companies are through single-payer, we save $9 trillion total from that annual $20 trillion budget. There’s $11 trillion of costs left to take up that can then be covered by a 6.2% income-based premium from employers, and 2.2% income surtax from households. If we look to Bernie Sander’s plan, families of four making under $28,800 would see no such increase. So yes, taxes would increase for everyone else, but by paying a relatively small amount more in taxes for full-coverage healthcare, we’re all saving the enormous amount of $20 trillion we would otherwise pay. By enacting such a tax increase and eliminating the nonsensical insurance industry from the picture, Americans would save $9 trillion a year they would otherwise spend for premiums that don’t cover a papercut.
The economic benefits are endless. An average middle-class family of four, making $50,000 a year, would go from paying $5,600 a year for healthcare to $466 under a 2.2% tax hike. Does that sound like socialism? Moreover, those who would normally be covered by employer-sponsored healthcare would see a salary increase because they’d no longer have it deducted from their paycheck. Small businesses wouldn’t be forced to spend time and money negotiating coverage with insurance companies thus increasing productivity. It’s preventative – saving people from having to go through extended hospital visits and chronic illness treatments. Single payer would also slash costs imposed on hospitals by the industry, to the tune of $400 billion a year. Which is already “enough to cover all the uninsured.”
Furthermore, all the problems under our current system, the shortcomings of the Affordable Care Act, bureaucratic nightmares, disappear. All medically necessary services are covered: doctor, hospital, preventive, emergency, long care, psychological, dental, vision, prescription drugs. People can choose their own provider. Priorities are no longer distorted and better quality of healthcare is provided no matter how much money you make. People would no longer be overtreated because they can pay more.
In addition, single payer would reduce incentives to over treat and lower drug prices according to the PNHP.
Healthcare is a human need, not a luxury. It’s utterly despicable and nonsensical for Americans to pay more per capita than any other nation for people to be led to medically induced bankruptcy, 27 million to be uninsured, 30 million underinsured, and to rank 33rd in life expectancy. To pay more and get less because the health insurance industry must butt in the middle of it so billionaires can line their pockets.
It’s a sad state of affairs when math is a partisan issue, and ideology is more important than what’s best for the country. When in Canada single payer surpasses party lines and conservative prime ministers have made no effort to move in our disastrous direction, yet we can’t have an honest conversation about single payer. When $4 trillion wars aren’t pie in the sky, but properly using our tax system to reduce costs and improve care is. And most of all when the most expensive and cost-ineffective healthcare system in the world is kept around for the benefit of a few multi-billion dollar insurance companies. Healthcare doesn’t trickle down. Single payer is our only saving grace. We must join the rest of the developed world by guaranteeing people healthcare and stop profiting off the sick.
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