Sen. Bernie Sanders: Single payer health: it's only fair

Single payer health: it's only fair
US healthcare is grossly distorted by waste and profit, while millions go uninsured. Americans deserve full universal coverage

Bernie Sanders
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 10 May 2011


The United States is the only major nation in the industrialised world that does not guarantee healthcare as a right to its people. Meanwhile, we spend about twice as much per capita on healthcare and, in a wide number of instances, our outcomes are not as good as others that spend far less.

It is time that we bring about a fundamental transformation of the American healthcare system. It is time for us to end private, for-profit participation in delivering basic coverage. It is time for the United States to provide a Medicare-for-all, single payer health coverage programme.

Under our dysfunctional system, 45,000 Americans a year die because they delay seeking care they cannot afford. We spent 17.6% of our GDP on healthcare in 2009, which is projected to go up to 20% by 2020, yet we still rank 26th among major, developed nations on life expectancy, and 31st on infant mortality. We must demand a better model of health coverage that emphasises preventive and primary care for every single person without regard for their ability to pay.

It is certainly a step forward that the new health reform law is projected to cover 32 million additional Americans, out of the more than 50 million uninsured today. Yet projections suggest that roughly 23 million will still be without insurance in 2019, while healthcare costs will continue to skyrocket. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/may/10/healthcare-congress

230+ years ago, health care wasn't written into this big document, and since that document was the greatest thing that ever has been written, ever will be written, and ever can be written, then clearly we can't have health care!!

Nevermind that healthcare covering huge percentages of your paycheck was a completely unbelievable, foreign concept back then...the Founders knew all!

:sarcasm:

Would that our "media" would publish this.

in the Opinion/Editorial section, alongside a Right Winger who says we need to abolish Medicare.

that's about it..

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/10-6

Not to mention, it's a back-burner topic right now.

actually going to get voted on, much less have enough votes to pass.

I honestly don't know how I feel about this.
Sure we should have a proposal but this proposal after the fact isn't much of a consolation prize.