To Hell With Medical Insurance: Universal Health Care IS Best for US Health and Finance

WillYourVoteBCounted

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Sat Mar-07-09 02:09 PM
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To Hell With Medical Insurance: Universal Health Care IS Best for US Health and Finance

Universal Health Care - Most developed countries have it. We have "universal" roads, schools, water, sewage, fire protection, universal military, etc but propaganda misled the pubic into thinking Universal Health Care is a bad idea. My cousins in New Zealand and Australia have it, my friends in Canada have it, and they are astonished that we in the great USA do not. Astonished!

From Wikipedia:

Nearly 45 million Americans, about 15 percent of the population, lacked health insurance in 2005.<10> The lack of universal coverage contributes to another flaw in the current U.S. health care system: on most dimensions of performance, it underperforms relative to other industrialized countries.<11> In a 2007 comparison by the Commonwealth Fund of health care in the U.S. with that of Germany, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, the U.S. ranked last on measures of quality, access, efficiency, equity, and outcomes.<11>

Avoid medical bankruptices
A recent Harvard University study found that medical bills are a leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States. The study found that many declaring bankruptcy were part of the middle class and were employed before they became ill, but had lost their health insurance by the time they declared bankruptcy.<12> In the U.S., people leaving a job can continue with their former employer's health insurance plan under the COBRA but usually at a rate that is double what the employee paid while employed, and only for a limited time. When an employer-insured person loses a job due to illness and does not have sufficient resources to continue to pay for COBRA health insurance, they also lose their health insurance coverage. A single payer system, it is argued, would avoid medical bankruptcy, which is almost unknown in other advanced western industrial countries.

Proponents and support
Physicians for a National Health Program<14> the American Medical Student Association<15> and the California Nurses Association<16> are among those that have called for the introduction of a single payer health care program. In Congress, Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) has repeatedly introduced The United States National Health Insurance Act (HR 676). As of August 2008, HR 676 had 91 co-sponsors.<17>

The issue has often been debated, most recently in the 2008 presidential elections, and there are signs that the American public has warmed to the idea. A CBS News/New York Times poll published in February 2009 reported that 59% say the government should provide national health insurance (up from 40% thirty years earlier) <18>

Types and variations
The United States, Canada and Australia have single-payer health insurance programs named Medicare; however, Australia's and Canada's programs provide universal health care, while U.S. Medicare is only for senior citizens and some of the disabled.<15> Government is increasingly involved in U.S. health care spending, paying about 45 percent of the $2.2 trillion the nation spent on medical care in 2004.<19>

According to Princeton University health economist Uwe E. Reinhardt, Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP represent "forms of 'social insurance' coupled with a largely private health-care delivery system" rather than forms of "socialized medicine." In contrast, he describes the Veterans Administration healthcare system as a pure form of socialized medicine because it is "owned, operated and financed by government."<20>

The Veterans Administration is a single-payer system and provides excellent quality, said Reinhardt. In a peer-reviewed paper published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers of the RAND Corp. reported that the quality of care received by Veterans Administration patients scored significantly higher overall than did comparable metrics for patients in the rest of the U.S. health system.<21>

Some writers describe publicly administered health care systems as "single-payer plans." Some writers have described any system of health care which intends to cover the entire population, such as voucher plans, as "single-payer plans,"<22> although this is an uncommon usage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_payer_health_care

...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_payer_health_care

By the way, for those who don't want Nationalized Health Care, you can still fork out the dough to private insurance companies if you prefer the high deductables, refusal of coverage, and hefty monthly premiums. Enjoy if you wish.