Rep Pramila Jayapal's Medicare For All Act fixes America's dire and broken health-care system; take action to support it now!

What citizens, going where? I thought the rich canadians came here.

I can’t think of a single developed country where there isn’t systemic economic inequity.

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Like this one.

I think the private insurance companies are the most corrupt organized crime in the US. I was real pissed when it became illegal for me to not do business with them thanks to the ACA.

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The thing I loathe, despise, and hate about the Medicare for all argument is the idea that Medicare is the best we can do. How can the same jackasses who fellate American exceptionalism be so impoverished for ideas when it comes to healthcare? We can not only do as well as other rich nations…we could do BETTER!

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Just about the only thing I like that Trump is doing besides killing the TPP is getting out buts out of some excursions in the middle east. We spend way to much on “defense” no argument there

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A lot of people with means would rather spend the money to go to Mexico to get surgeries done than deal with the costs of surgery here in the states.

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More recent numbers from CHCF’s 2018 Health Care Almanac.

It is sad that we already spend more public money per-capita than any country besides Switzerland, but the government only manages to cover 38% of the population.

We need serious cost controls, but no one, not Jayapal, not Sanders and certainly not any Republican seems interested in putting them in place.

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You are absolutely correct, which is why improving US mortality rates and decreasing morbidity will rely on ending travesties like Flynt, Michigan’s water system, the war on drugs and a profoundly racist criminal justice system which has eliminated almost 1 in 5 black men from every day life, replacing the US’s TSCA with a precautionary comprehensive chemicals policy like Europe’s REACH, on the US states collectively or the federal government nationally adopts mandatory paid family leave policies along the lines of European nations, I can go on (and on: I teach this stuff in a School of Public Health), but notice that none of these public health problems are resolved by universal high-quality single-payer health care. US health will improve measurably when we get to single payer, but won’t be anywhere near the top of the list of population health in developed countries from doing so.

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Does her plan include how they plan to pay for it?

@Mangochin
“Systemic inequity” can be measured. We do not rate well compared to other developed nations. Moreover inequity in the US is not constant. I recommend reading Piketty for a global history of income and wealth distribution inequality.

The size of the risk pool is not quite the whole issue: in the present system private insurers have an incentive to select for individuals who are less to file a valid claim, and to exclude individuals who are more likely to do so (e.g, “preexisting conditions”). The point is not to compare the performance of private selective risk pools to public coverage on an in-pool per capita basis, but to compare coverage of the US population via single payer to coverage of the US population via multiple payers.

(Aside: In the latter system public coverage options end up shouldering larger risk per capita than private insurers.)

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For example…

&

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Two can play that game:

Maybe it’s the case that rich people go wherever they think they have an advantage.

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Under the current system perhaps, but very effective under socialized medicine.

Um, no, if you look at all those other systems you’ll find that they also cover preventative care, which is a tiny fraction of the cost of healthcare-after-the-fact, which is one of many reasons why they can do so much better for so much less than we do. You’d almost think American drug companies wanted us to get sick…

Wait, are you saying that the current mode of killing the golden goose (and every gosling she ever had) is bad for long term prosperity? Gosh, whodathunkit? :roll_eyes:

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The term “Know-Nothing” has a specific meaning in American history, one which since has become useful in describing the approx. 25-30% of the electorate who (under various names – the Silent Majority, the Moral Majority, the Teabaggers, the MAGA-ites, etc.) have formed movement conservatism’s sucker base since the days of the Southern Strategy. John Rogers facetiously characterised this percentage as the “crazification factor”, but despite the joke it’s proven surprisingly accurate.

And, yes, obviously, I tend to disagree with easily distracted and ignorant rubes and temporarily embarrassed millionaires who regularly vote against their own economic interests. So sue me.

Obviously, I didn’t coin that term to describe a single-payer universal health insurance system (my preferred generic descriptor for whichever system replaces the current broken one). But I understand why “Medicare for All” is used as a conceptual shorthand. As you note, Medicare is a well-run government medical insurance programme with which many Americans are familiar, so it’s a good starting point for them to understand that single-payer universal is not some alien and evil “soshalist” plot but something that already exists and works for the elderly.

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As someone with a lot of “preexisting conditions” (i.e., a human being on the tail of the bell curve, but a human being nevertheless), this is what pisses me off the most. Why are profits more important than a person’s life?

Oh sorry. Stupid question.

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Well, I mean, health insurers don’t wish you’d die.

They just wish you were rich enough for them to cash in on your misery.

But not rich enough to go to another country where you’d be able to get universal treatment and leave their ecosystem.

They wish you were medium rich. Like, middle class. Too bad the republicans and corporate interests teamed up so hard to make being middle class almost impossible.

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https://twitter.com/disco_socialist/status/1101221767681462273?s=20

https://twitter.com/disco_socialist/status/1101265289927221248?s=21

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When I worked in a hospital in Germany, there was a cardiologist who only accepted private patients. They did get special treatment, but eventually he had to go back into the public patient rotation because he wasn’t doing enough cases to stay up with current technology and techniques.

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yes GIF by Aflac Duck

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