American Retired Seniors

Congressman John Conyers will reintroduce HR 676, his single-payer healthcare bill in the 111th Congress. Please ask your representative to cosponsor the bill and actively work with Rep. Conyers to gain additional cosponsors.  In order to ensure HR 676 is part of the healthcare discussion in Congress, we need 150 cosponsors by the end of February.Former Sen. Tom Daschle, President-Elect Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, called for “a government-run insurance program modeled after Medicare” in testimony before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions as part of the solution to our healthcare crisis. His plan also includes health insurance corporations. Only HR 676 would implement a sustainable, fair, and efficient solution to the healthcare crisis as well as providing economic stimulus.

While single-payer healthcare proponents have made good headway in the House, there is still no companion bill in the Senate. Urge Sen. Edward Kennedy to sponsor a companion bill to HR 676 in the Senate.

Our current system is the worst of capitalism and the worst of socialism; it is not a ’system’ at all.

If you study all the facts surrounding single payer, it becomes clear that it is the best and most economical solution.

Americans currently spend 15+% of our GDP on health care, the highest of any industrialized nation. And yet the U.S. rates last among industrialized nations in almost all quality measures. The next less expensive system among industrialized nations is France’s at 12.5% of their GDP. They have the highest ranked system. If the U.S. continues on its current track, we will reach 20% of GDP by 2020. Expanding the current system to cover all will quicken our move to the 20% level.

Single-Payer Healthcare is expected to save about 25% of our current cost. Businesses and employees will pay substantially less tax to fund single payer than they are currently paying in premiums. Companies will be relieved of their liabilities for health care for retirees. This will increase businesses’ ability to expand. It will enable greater US entrepreneurialism. Additionally, we will be able to close down a third to a half of our prisons if we cover mental health and addiction. This will be a huge cost savings to local governments.

Winners in single payer are citizens and providers (25% overhead savings). Losers are drug companies and insurers. However insurers should compete for the administration contracts – they are better than the federal government at minimizing overhead with technology.

Consider this:

The United States ranks 23rd in infant mortality, down from 12th in 1960 and 21st in 1990.

The United States ranks 20th in life expectancy for women down from 1st in 1945 and 13th in 1960.

The United States ranks 21st in life expectancy for men down from 1st in 1945 and 17th in 1960.

The United States ranks between 50th and 100th in immunizations depending on the immunization. Overall US is 67th, right behind Botswana.

Outcome studies on a variety of diseases, such as coronary artery disease, and renal failure show the United States to rank below Canada and a wide variety of industrialized nations.

Dr. Paul Phochfeld, an emergency physician who spent three decades of frustration into producing a video “Health, Money and Fear” about why our sick health care non-system is so expensive, what it says about us and what we can do about it. It is available for viewing at http://www.ourailinghealthcare.com.  I HIGHLY recommend Americans watch the videos on this site.

Dr. Phochfeld goes on to state “I am deeply disturbed by the noise emanating from the Beltway that suggests that despite all the talk of change, in health care, we are going to get more of the same. We cannot allow that to happen. Health care reform is not about health care anymore. It is about the political process in which big money influences big decisions. We must educate and motivate people to yell louder than the lobbyists. “Health, Money and Fear” is a tool to be used by those who agree with this.”

John Nichols with The Nation adds the following to this discussion:

There is an unhealthy tendency on the part of politicians and journalists to see discussions about economic recovery and health care reform as separate debates.

In fact, one of the most important steps on the road to economic recovery – or, more precisely, toward a new, responsible and sustainable prosperity – involves the fundamental reform this country’s broken health care system.

But it must be the right reform: the establishment of a national single-payer style healthcare reform system by expanding the existing Medicare system to cover all Americans. According to a new “Single Payer/Medicare for All: An Economic Stimulus Plan for the Nation” study released today by the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association, such a reform would provide a major stimulus for the U.S. economy by creating 2.6 million new jobs and infusing $317 billion in new business and public revenues into the economy. This reform would, according to the study, add $100 billion in wages to the currently sputtering U.S. economy.

Indeed, notes the NNOC/CAN, the number of jobs created by a single-payer system, expanding and upgrading Medicare to cover everyone, parallels almost exactly the total job loss in 2008. “These dramatic new findings document for the first time that a single payer system could not only solve our healthcare crisis, but also substantially contribute to putting America back to work and assisting the economic recovery,” says NNOC/CAN c o-president Geri Jenkins, RN.

Specifically, notes Jenkins, expanding Medicare to include the uninsured, and those on Medicaid or employer-sponsored health plans, and expanding coverage for those with limited Medicare, would:

1. Create 2,613,495 million new permanent good-paying jobs (slightly exceeding the number of jobs lost in 2008) — and jobs that are not easily shipped overseas

2. Boost the economy with $317 billion in increased business and public revenues

3. Add $100 billion in employee compensation

4. Infuse public budgets with $44 billion in new tax revenues

“Through direct and supplemental expenditures, healthcare is already a uniquely dominant force in the U.S. economy,” says the study’s lead author, Don DeMoro, who directs the Institute for Health and Socio-Economic Policy, the NNOC/CNA research arm. “If we were to expand our present Medicare system to cover all Americans, the economic stimulus alone would create an immense engine that would help drive our national economy for decades to come.

The union is highlighting its “Single Payer Job Recovery” plan with a major rollout today and activists with Progressive Democrats for America and other groups that support single payer are staging a national call-in to Congress Thursday. Here’s the PDA Action Alert on the new push for single payer:

Congressman John Conyers will reintroduce HR 676, his single-payer healthcare bill in the 111th Congress. Please ask your representative to cosponsor the bill and actively work with Rep. Conyers to gain additional cosponsors. In order to ensure HR 676 is part of the healthcare discussion in Congress, we need 150 cosponsors by the end of February.

Former Sen. Tom Daschle, President-Elect Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, called for “a government-run insurance program modeled after Medicare” in testimony before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions as part of the solution to our healthcare crisis. His plan also includes health insurance corporations. Only HR 676 would implement a sustainable, fair, and efficient solution to the healthcare crisis as well as providing economic stimulus.

While single-payer healthcare proponents have made good headway in the House, there is still no companion bill in the Senate. Urge Sen. Edward Kennedy to sponsor a companion bill to HR 676 in the Senate.

Linkback: Americans Should Support Single-Payer Healthcare Bill HR 676

Filed under: Medicare and Health Insurance