Public Comment
Medicare-for-all
The recent debacle of Trumpcare, has provided impetus to Bernie Sanders’s new proposal of Single Payer for all. Several progressive groups are backing a single-payer system, including the Working Families Party, the Progressive Campaign Change Committee, CREDO, Social Security Works and National Nurses United.
Both Trumpcare (which is a meaner version of the ACA) and the ACA have serious shortcomings.
There is an urgent need to remove insurance companies from the healthcare business. These companies should not be making a profit from people’s sickness.
The overhead and profits they impose on doctors and hospitals are costing upwards of $500 billion annually. These savings could be used to fund a single-payer program.
The insurance companies have an average overhead of 20 percent compared to 2 to 3 percent for Medicare. In addition, Medicare-for-all would be able to negotiate drug prices at substantially lower costs. This would yield an additional annual savings of $100 billion. It is an absolute abomination that under the current system, Medicare is prohibited from negotiating drug prices.
Our current broken system is rated 37th in the world for delivery of health care – at substantially higher costs. This should trouble every American. Medicare-for-all time has come.
