Why do you feel that the U.S. is the only place that medicare for all or single payer isn't worth fighting for?

Lack of healthcare as a right almost killed my mother (gave her a heart attack and stroke) last year and forced her into early retirement and extreme poverty, Where should she have moved in anticipation?

I do not feel that the U.S. is the only place that medicare for all or single payer isn’t worth fighting for. Next question please.

We are probably closer to getting to a single payer system than you might think. There are active proposals in Congress and in various states.

The difficulty, as it always has been, is money. Too many people make enormous amounts of money off the current system. And they spend that money to preserve the current structure.

It’s absolutely worth fighting for here. I’m actively fighting for it. I suggest doing the same rather than taking such a fatalist approach!

I think our fetish for capitalism is what has made us so slow compared with the rest of the world. But even this year we are making progress. As recently as last year, Bernie was treated like lunatic fringe for proposing single payer. Now it has a dozen or so cosponsors in the Senate.

Single payer yet may exist in the US. It will depend on whether the present administration turns us into radioactive dust or not. If not, then one of the blowback effects will be a single payer system.

As to why we do not have it presently I think you can blame the fact that we have a government that allows bribery and writes the laws of the land based on the amount of money that it will put into the pockets of those in Congress. Take all the bribery (political contributions) out of the equation and you will see a 180 degree change in society and the support of the citizens as opposed to the moneyed elite.

As Frankie Boyle said in a recent comedy show…

“This is a country of people who not only don’t have healthcare – they don’t want healthcare, and they’re angry if someone offers them healthcare.”

I have always wondered why nobody ever questions the morality of allowing a third party to know what went on between a patient and a physician.

They can’t know what went on between you and your attorney, or you and your confessor. Why you and your doctor?

But once that argument is lost, as it has been, single payer is inevitable. No need to fight. Just wait.

The fact that universal single payer healthcare has not been achieved in the United States is just one in a series of stark examples of the country’s subservience to vested interests in direct opposition to the common good. It is one of the clearest lessons on the criminal failures of this country’s Federal legislators that you are likely to find.

@Josie :: Do you consider your insurance company a third party?

@josie Amen. With PDMP and insurance offering “incentives” to people who share all their medical information willingly, it’s all getting rather shady and intrusive.

@KNOWITALL :: Do you think your doctor just puts “Medical Stuff” on the invoice? The insurance companies have known everything forever.

And it is hilarious or sad that you think the insurance company (for profit) would do less bad shit than the government given the same amount of info.

@johnpowell Still talking down to people I see.

@KNOWITALL Are you going to ignore his point because it wasn’t stated nicely, though? He’s right. In our current system there is already a third party that gets access to our medical information and uses it to harm us: insurance companies.

This issue is life-or-death. A study showed that for every 830 uninsured, 1 person dies unnecessarily per year. With about 27 million still uninsured in the US, that’s about 32,000 deaths a year.

That’s more than 2x the number of people who die from gun homicide in the US annually.
More than 2x the number who die from heroin overdoses.
More than 3x the number who die from DUI.
More than 10x the number killed by terrorism since 2001.

@Mariah Yes I am. Life’s too short for wasting words with rude people.

OK. Just remember….life’s even shorter when you can’t access healthcare :)

@Mariah True! My original point was that each year, Major insurance companies get MORE intrusive. This year it’s a new info sheet for your doctor to fill out and fax back, and if they do, you get a discount on rates. We also have compulsory online healthcare reps, that we have to participate with if they call you for a health concern. They basically hold you hostage with rate increases/ decreases.

Ah, in that case you might not agree with @josie as much as you thought when you made your first comment. He’s making an argument against single-payer by saying that it requires us to give up our privacy to the government. @johnpowell and I are trying to point out that insurance companies are already intruding on our medical information in our current system.

I’m curious where you stand on single-payer, but I’m not going to make you continue this conversation with me or anything if you don’t want to.

@Mariah I am also against, but for other reasons that privacy. We gave that up a long time ago imo.

I’m curious why you’re against, if you don’t mind elaborating.

@Mariah One big obstacle is that no one has found a way to pay for it without raising taxes. Access and quality of care are also concerns. Britain’s socialized health care is government ran, scary.

Even Canada’s model excludes prescriptions, eye and dental, which is far from ideal for American needs.

“Cost is often the biggest stumbling block. The $400 billion annual cost of California’s single-payer plan would have been triple the annual state general fund budget, and the bill had no suggestions for how to pay for it”

Is this not an issue that’s worth raising taxes over? Considering that it would save 32,000 lives each year, and that the most common reason why people fall into debt anyway is due to medical expenses? I for one would be happy to pay more in taxes if it meant never having to worry about dying or falling into deeply into debt because I’m sick.

The people could vote on that, and if that’s what we choose, that’s fine. I don’t think lowering the standard of care, or losing important things like dental care, are acceptable. Now if that came with a Death with Dignity component, I’d be more apt to agree with the ‘greater good’ scenario.

Cool. Thanks for the discussion. This issue is my passion these days, as a chronically ill person.

@Mariah I’ve got a mother who’s battled breast cancer all over her body for eight years and a husband with more health issues than any one human should. I appreciate your passion, I’d have to learn a lot more about it before a vote. And I’m sorry for your health situation.

@KNOWITALL – Under every possible proposed funding, you would pay less than you do now. The U.S. tends to dislike taxes when they are called “taxes”. But when they are called “premiums”, we don’t seem to mind.

But beside the funding, which is no problem whatsoever, you raise some concerns about it being “government run”. There are many flavors of proposals, but I don’t see how eliminating the uber-profitable insurance companies, or reducing them to a single one, should cause any concern. I’d like to hear your concerns here.

Also, consider the freedom we would have if our access to healthcare wasn’t tied to an employer.

See above.
Nobody has medical “insurance” anymore.
“Insurance” is a bet. You bet it will happen. They bet, according to actuarial statistics that it will not. My parents had “insurance”. They paid their (and my) routine medical bills but had “insurance” against the expensive accident or disease.

Now, everybody has a third party payer, because nobody wants to pay for the routine medical expenses.

The individual pays into the kitty, a guy in a suit takes a cut of the money, and then the same guy decides how to distribute the rest so that he still gets the same cut.

I have VA, but the best deal I ever had was with my family physician. He would charge an annual fee, and in exchange I would get X number office visits, X number prescriptions and a house call. He retired from medicine three years ago. Too bad. He was a good doctor.