The United States already has universal healthcare, just not for everyone.
We offer it to seniors through Medicare. We extend it to low-income families through Medicaid. We created public insurance marketplaces under the Affordable Care Act to mimic what the rest of the modern world calls a critical right. Yet somehow, when it comes to covering all Americans, we stop short and call it “too expensive.”
That’s a moral and fiscal failure. It’s time for the United States to adopt a truly universal healthcare system, whether we call it Medicare for All, single-payer, or universal care.
Research calls it common sense because the irrefutable evidence is no longer just persuasive, it’s overwhelming.
Gov. Jared Polis, last week, in releasing his draft Colorado budget for next year, went to great lengths to point out that the cost of the state’s Medicaid program is fiscally unsustainable.
An astounding one in five Colorado residents receives some sort of Medicaid benefits.
That’s good news for the hardworking families who can pay their rent or mortgages and see a doctor with medical issues before they become an issue for the emergency room. It’s good news for all of Colorado that, in theory, pays less for health insurance because hospitals provide less healthcare without being compensated.
But it’s bad news for Colorado taxpayers because the cost of Medicaid expansions and the increasing lack of federal support for the program — as well as the current effort by the Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans to abandon tax credits for the health-insurance exchange program — mean we will all pay more for less health care, no matter where we get it from.
Polis is right. The Medicaid system must be reeled in to protect the state’s ability to fund schools, roads and public safety.
But without a true, sustainable “public option” or real universal healthcare, the looming debt will simply move from increased state taxes to wildly increased “medical care” taxes, imposed on all of us by insurance companies and healthcare providers.
It’s completely avoidable, but not under the current political leadership in Washington.
The U.S. spends twice as much on healthcare as other wealthy nations, — $10,966 per person annually, compared with $5,697 in comparable countries, according to repeated and verified research. Yet American life expectancy lags behind, and our infant mortality is higher. Our fragmented, for-profit health insurance industry drains billions of dollars every year in administrative waste and profit margins while leaving millions uninsured and tens of millions under-insured.
And for those who scoff at systems like the ones in Canada and Germany, saying that such universal healthcare systems mean patients must wait for care, call your doctor and ask how long the wait is for an annual physical exam or any care that isn’t linked to a medical emergency.
Meanwhile, the very programs misled Republicans and Democrats deride — Medicare, Medicaid, and the ACA — are proof that single-payer systems work. They’ve saved lives, controlled costs, and given millions access to care who would otherwise go without.
States like Colorado that expanded Medicaid have dramatically reduced preventable deaths and hospital bankruptcies. Yet these same states now face fiscal cliffs because they are shouldering what should be the federal government’s responsibility.
If Medicare is good enough for everyone’s parents, why isn’t it good enough for everyone’s children?
Universal healthcare is not a radical idea. It’s a moral and economic necessity, and it’s the successful norm across the developed world. Every other G7 nation guarantees it: Canada, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, and the UK. Only the United States refuses to join them. The result? Higher costs, poorer outcomes, and an economy weighed down by medical debt and job insecurity.
Our current system is not only inefficient but cruelly inequitable. Because healthcare in America is tethered to employment, losing your job often means losing your doctor.
Critics warn that universal healthcare will mean higher taxes. But those arguments miss the point, and the real numbers. Yes, single-payer systems rely on taxes, but Americans already pay for healthcare through premiums, deductibles, and surprise bills that function as an invisible, regressive tax on the sick and the poor. Under a progressive, universal system, those costs would be spread fairly. And as for wait times, Canadians and Europeans may wait longer for elective surgeries, but no one waits for emergency care, and no one goes bankrupt because they got sick.
The notion that universal coverage would stifle medical innovation is equally hollow. Most breakthrough research — including the COVID-19 vaccines — was funded not by private insurers but by the National Institutes of Health, a taxpayer-funded agency. American ingenuity won’t vanish if we stop letting insurance executives profit from denying care.
Colorado and other states that expanded Medicaid have done what Washington would not. They have proven that public coverage saves lives. But they can’t keep doing it alone without going bankrupt. It’s time for the federal government to finish the job.
“Meanwhile, the very programs misled Republicans and Democrats deride — Medicare, Medicaid, and the ACA — are proof that single-payer systems work. They’ve saved lives, controlled costs, and given millions access to care who would otherwise go without.”
What a hilariously outright lie. In what universe have these programs controlled real, actual costs? By Dave’s own claim, we have the most expensive system in the world, so he undermines his claim in the same article. Outlays for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services have climbed from $1.095 trillion to $2.2 trillion since the “Affordable” Care Act passed. The charge for a live birth and two night in a private hospital room went from $1000 inflation-adjusted to $25,000 since the Great (haha) Society passed Medicare and Medicaid, which were passed with the assurance that they would actually mitigate costs for everyone else from increasing. States that have passed their own “universal healthcare” plans are way in over their head on the actual costs.
In what universe would an actual “universal healthcare system” in this country not become just another high-cost graft program?
I invite the indivdual who wrote the above to compare costs between the nations that already have universal healthcare against our costs. While making this comparison, she or he should also look at the number of lives covered for that cost. You cannot just compare costs. You have to also compare what you get for those costs. In the nations quoted in this piece, the number of lives covered is all of them. No one has to worry about “health insurance.” We know what it is here, as we subsidize a corporate welfare program for CEOs and shareholders. To avoid the “high-cost graft program,” which is a good point, a single-payer system would eliminate the middle person or the middle insurance company, grafting what it can out of the system. That’s one way that single-payer nations better control their costs. It’s why Medicare (not Medicare Advantage) has far less expensive admin costs than the private insurance racket. We could do it here if we wanted to.
I invite you to actually compare the costs of what we have now versus what we had in 1960 when these systems weren’t in place. We were not a Third World country in 1960 and costs were far lower on an inflation-adjusted basis. Comparing our system to other nations is that of apples and oranges due to the sheer scale of demand in place–and even nations like Canada are feeling the pinch to the extent that they are encouraging people undergo MAID due to the stresses on their systems.
Health insurance costs are commiserate with what they are being charged by the hospitals. A service that was $1000, inflation-adjusted, 60 years ago and is now $17,000 after the negotiated payout to the hospital from $25,000 is not due to “corporate welfare for CEOs and shareholders”–a question-begging premise to begin with, as the insurance companies do not set the price of the service, anymore than banks or the federal government set the price of college tuition, automobiles, or homes. But I understand that marxists need that boogeyman to designate in their “oppressed/oppressor” false duality.
The contention that a single-payer system would eliminate the graft is also begging the question, given that we already have plenty of examples of fraud within the Medicaid system alone. As for Medicare, the $2.2 trillion annual outlay for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services belies the claim of “controlling costs,” considering Medicare Part A is the only feature of Medicare that receives any kind of revenue stream, nor have those programs mitigated the cost of medical services for everyone else, as was promised when they were passed.
We won’t ever do it here, because you expect to get it for free, while the actual cost is borne by everyone else who makes a dollar more and above than you. That’s why state health insurance programs have all either gone underwater, or have been abandoned due to the prices charged at the front end. So that contention can be summarily dismissed as well.
Well, one of the features of a publicly-funded program is that it is free at the point of service. In other words, you’ve been paying for it all along, so, viola, it’s free when you need it. This is how Medicaid, Medicare, and the VA works. Another point of this system versus our smorgasbord of competing plans is that everyone pays for it and, by god, everyone is in it.
One of the geniuses of America’s health care mess is that everyone else pays for it. Employer-sponsored is the customers paying for it; public employee sector is the taxpayers largely paying for it., The people who pay for it, often do not “qualify” for what they are paying for. This is what publicly-funded systems across the world address. In other words, it ain’t free man, but it’s free when you need it as you’ve already paid for it.
I agree with you about “Health insurance costs are commiserate with what they are being charged by the hospitals.” Now this is true and that is so much of the problem. Check out how much the hospital CEOs are pulling down. Yes on a “service” that was $1,000… is now $17,000…. due to corporate welfare for CEOs and shareholders.” This is the problem. Hospitals pretty much set their own rates and then “negotiate” with the insurers about payments and so on. This is why a proctology exam, for instance, will have twenty-five different prices for the same exam. The bogeyman that the “marxists” need here is not because the marxists need it for the “oppressed/oppressor “false duality,” but because it is there, it is a bogeyman, and it is a duality of oppressed/oppressor. Why, for example, should you be oppressed by having your healthcare, your life, at the mercy of an entity that cares about your dollars more than your life? This is the crux of the question, whether you are a marxist (whatever that is) or not.
In regard to your comment about how we were not a third-world country in 1960, I agree with you there. Costs were far lower back then and there are some reasons for this which have done us little good. I do not want to wade into the weeds about this here, with a myriad of facts, percentages, and statistics, but the rise of monopolistic power, such as with the robber baron era, has had a fantastic amount to do with this. It has also more or less turned us into a nation that is becoming a third world country with a first rate nuclear power.
Single-payer systems are not a complete “nirvana.” They undergo pushes, pulls, and stresses, just like every other system. In many nations, right wing politicos have been trying to divide and conquer these systems so they can corner some of that money flowing from us into the system to care for us for themselves. This is what the GOP and the corporate demos are doing here, what CMS is doing. This what “Medicare Advantage” is all about, private Medicare, which is what that $2.2 trillion is all about. Insurance companies make more money by ripping off Medicare. ripping us off, then they do selling plans that feed corporate welfare while giving us little or nothing in return.
Yes, on Medicare Part A. But remember that there’s a reason for that and one that could have been addressed by Congress. Remember who gets the benefit of being nice to corporations in the form of campaign contributions. That’s why they jack out Part B from social security and force us onto a supplement program that can cost us retirees $400 a month. Under a single-payer program, this would no longer be the case. The politicos would lose that revenue stream and, of course, the capitalists would lose their welfare programs at our expense. This is why they won’t do it.
The prices charged at the front end are what a publicly-funded system would regulate and it is why the politicos and the welfare kings and queens at the top do not want it. They want excessively high prices for nothing. In a publicly-funded system, the cost is borne by all of us, but we all also get something in return for it when we need it. The contention is real. It is there in why Medicare, for instance, has something like 3% admin costs on the dollar and private insurance is something like 30% to feed that beloved corporate welfare. Which would you rather have?
“Check out how much the hospital CEOs are pulling down. Yes on a “service” that was $1,000… is now $17,000…. due to corporate welfare for CEOs and shareholders.” This is the problem.”
No, that kind of cost increase isn’t due to “corporate welfare for CEOs and shareholders,” and you have absolutely zero proof that this is the case. It’s just more marxist “oppressed/oppressor” false dualities, and no, your silly political theology has no basis in reality.
” I do not want to wade into the weeds about this here, with a myriad of facts, percentages, and statistics”–For someone who wrote such a long-winded post full of generalities, that’s exactly what you should have done.
The rest of your post is just a bunch of rhetorical handwaving and false dilemmas, as is the wont of leftists. No need to take it seriously.
And no, those services aren’t “free”–the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services costs $2.2 trillion in outlays. Sorry, but starting off your post with a flat-out lie doesn’t bolster your case at all.