Monday, February 24, 2020

The time is past due for medicare for all (#4041)

     The arguments against medicare for all have been weighed and measured and have been found wanting. The idea that we cannot have universal health care is now down to those who argue for profit over life. Everything else is just down to disambiguation of words. A transition over a few years from for profit health care to a government run single payer system is a protection for current workers who would transition from private to public care. There should be every effort made to see to it that no one who wants to keep a job in the current healthcare system loses a job. At the same time the beginning of bringing in every American citizen into healthcare coverage should begin immediately.
     This is not so much a progressive idea that hasn't already succeeded in 32 other industrialized countries as it is we here in America catching up to the moral, and ethical respect we should already have had for our citizenry. Of course this medicare for all will not happen while republicans are in office so when the voting time comes this November let us give ourselves a better life by removing them from office everywhere they are trying to hold on. Back when the republican reagan came into office in 1981 health care became much more privatized. So reversing that profit driven decision is what medicare for all will do.
     Many seem to think that a public option will work because it appears on the surface to be a step in the correct direction. However it is fools gold. Because it allows private insurers to keep a big foothold in the healthcare industry while denying medicare for all the advantage of lowering costs. Because medicare for all is not just about universal coverage, it is also about being able to negotiate from a foundationally strong position of strength to negotiate lower costs across the board. The public option significantly reduces that paradigm and well could be an impediment to public insurance remaining viable. A catch twenty two that the private healthcare insurance industry is hoping for in order to defeat medicare for all. Which is why there cannot be a lifeline tossed out to private insurers. They must be made to wind down and stop profiting off of healthcare miseries.

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