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What Single-Payer Advocates Stand For
What Are the Problems?
The U.S. spends about twice as much on health care per person compared to all other developed countries. Yet our life expectancy is lower, our infant mortality higher, and our overall health poorer. Health care in the U.S. is rationed by the ability to pay for it. More than 45,000 Americans die each year because they lack health insurance. Illness and unpaid medical bills account for over 62% of all bankruptcies. Shockingly, about 78% of those medical bankruptcies were for people who had health insurance at the time they got sick. Insurance companies act as costly middlemen and unlicensed health providers, adding little value to the system but profiting from it immensely. Currently, 31% of every healthcare dollar is spent on costs that have nothing to do with health care. We strongly believe that it is morally wrong to allow other Americans to suffer or die because they cannot afford to pay for health care. No other industrialized nation allows this to happen to their citizens. Neither should we.
What is Single Payer?
Single payer, an improved "Medicare for All", is publicly funded and privately delivered health care. It is a system in which a single public or quasi-public agency organizes health financing, but delivery of care remains largely private. This is similar to how Medicare works in this country. Doctors are in private practice and are paid from government funds. Patients are free to choose their health care practitioner, hospital or clinic. Just like the way Medicare is funded, everyone pays into the health care system through taxes according to income. There are no additional premiums, co-pays or deductibles. Over 90% of Americans would pay far less for health care than they do now. Everything can be done more efficiently and at less cost without for-profit health insurance companies.
Why is Single Payer the Best Solution?
Medicare is an example of single-payer system. Single-payer financing is the only way to recapture the money we now waste by having for-profit health insurance companies. For example, we would not have to pay for things that have nothing to do with health care: overhead, underwriting, billing, sales and marketing departments, lobbying, paying dividends to stockholders and paying exorbitant executive salaries. Estimates on savings with single payer range from $350 billion to $400 billion per year. That's more than enough to provide comprehensive health care to everyone without paying any more into health care than we already do.
Featured Article
"Ten Things You Can Do for Healthcare Reform"
The Nation, May 5, 2010
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed by President Obama is, we hope, a first step on the way to a Medicare-for-all type program, which would offer better coverage at a lower cost by cutting out private insurers. Under the new healthcare system, however...
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What You Can Do
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True Claims
Medicare Pays for More than Health Care
for the Elderly
Medicare pays for:
1. The sickest Americans: the elderly and
the disabled
2. Most medical residencies
3. Most durable equipment for many
hospitals
For-profit health insurance companies
do Not pay for:
1. The sickest Americans: the elderly and
the disabled
2. Medical residencies
3. Durable equipment for hospitals
Featured Donor
Health Care for All Texas wishes to express gratitude to Dr. Dan Wirt for his generous support which helped make this website possible.
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Healthcare Reform Updates
Healthcare reform is complex. Be knowledgeable. Stay informed
on this fast moving, important issue. Our site will keep you
abreast of current research by health experts and credible
news articles so you will be able to separate myth and
misinformation from reality and facts.
June 23, 2010
The Commonwealth Fund released its 2010 Update on how the U.S. Health Care System Compares Internationally. Despite having the most costly health system in the world, the United States consistently underperforms on most dimensions of performance, relative to other countries - as it did in 2004, 2006 and 2007. The U.S. health care system ranks last or next-to-last on five dimensions of a high performance health system: quality, access, efficiency, equity, and healthy lives when compared with six other industrialized countries.
The 150,000-member League of Women Voters endorsed single-payer
healthcare reform (or "an improved Medicare for all") at its national convention on Monday. Read more...
Why do other countries spend less on health care and yet achieve near-universal coverage and often better outcomes than the United States? These are some of the questions addressed in Health Care in World Cities, a new book published by Johns Hopkins University Press. Read the review.
Does the U.S. have health care apartheid? Read Dr. Margaret Nosek's Commentary published in Quality of Life Research.
Stat Shot!
60% of the annual U.S. health care bill is paid through taxes for government sponsored health programs (Medicare, Medicaid, federal, state, municipal employees, Indian Health Service, Military, VA, and other health care-related tax deductions). In 2004, the U.S. spent $6,037 per person compared to Canada at $3,161, France at $3,191, Germany at $3,169, and the U.K. at $2,560. Read more...
Featured Commentary
On May 14, 2010, Health Care for All Texas participated in a debate sponsored by the Benjamin Rush Society, a conservative medical student organization promoting free market solutions to our health care crisis. The question posed was "Is Health Care a Right?"
Get this design (or one with an adorable dog) on several products
Health Care For All Texas
Single Payer is health care based on need, not ability to pay
Catch a sneak peak of the latest HCFAT video: A parody of Beyonce's "Single Ladies"
