Vangie Williams, VA-01 Congressional candidate, supports a nationally improved Medicare-for-All System that incorporates vision and dental coverage
Why do Americans pay so much more for health care than other industrialized nations? Our country will spend close to $3.5 trillion for health care — almost twice as much per person than the world’s other industrialized nations — and what do we get for it?
We get worse medical outcomes – even as we leave almost 30 million people without any health insurance, not to mention the tens of millions more who are underinsured.
The U.S. is last amongst 11 developed, high-income nations.
When we pay more than $10,000 a year per person in health care costs it’s no surprise that we end up with hundreds of thousands of medical bankruptcies and tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths inflicted on hardworking American families.
This is a financial calamity and a moral outrage in the wealthiest country the world has ever known.
Changing our approach to health care
In the United States, we treat health care like a business instead of a public good.
The free market is based on the idea that what you get depends on what you can afford to buy. Unfortunately, this is how our current healthcare system functions. Not only is this against the very idea of any insurance (which we buy to protect us from the unexpected and the things we may not be able to afford), but it is against the idea of how people should get their health care.
Health care should be based on what people need in order to get better, not on what they can afford. The free market should not dictate that a heart bypass operation costs an average of $75,345 in the U.S. but nearly half the cost in Switzerland ($36,509) and less than a fourth of that in the Netherlands ($15,742).
Our approach to healthcare should not be the most expensive in the world with lackluster health outcomes.
We can continue to overspend and tinker with our broken and failing underlying multi-payer system which gets poor results. Or, we can transition into a single-payer system where our country will finally meet the standard of all the world’s advanced nations: true universal health coverage and save money at the same time with a Medicare-for-all, or single-payer health insurance system. My Medicare-for-all proposal, Medicare Now++, would incorporate vision and dental insurance as well.
Why Medicare Now++?
Our current multi-payer system is vastly complicated and hugely expensive. It is estimated that about 30 percent of what we spend on “healthcare” is actually spent on administrative costs, including lavish executive salaries and expensive advertising rates in competitive markets. These costs are vastly less in a single-payer system, and experts say that with single payer we could save money. As the senior vice president for health reform at Kaiser Family Foundation has noted: “The advantage of Medicare-for-all, which is much closer to how the rest of the world provides health care to their residents, is that you can achieve universal coverage at a lower cost.”
Medicare Now++ would also help fix other problems endemic with our current multi-payer system that puts unnecessary financial burdens on families due to excessive business costs, out-of-control healthcare expenditures, increased prescription prices and lack of competition. We can dramatically decrease the number of unnecessary deaths due to our current multiple payer system.
Some folks object to the idea of single payer and want the free market to handle it. Unfortunately, the free market is not the best way to distribute health care. And has failed dismally in this regard.
Saving lives should not have a price tag
Far too often, families are asked to put a price tag on the health of their loved ones. And I know what that feels like because I was asked to do the same to save my daughter’s life. No American should have to negotiate between keeping a roof over their head or trying to receive treatment to get better.
How many medical bankruptcies, and how many excess deaths, should we accept in order to maintain our current system?
So the question becomes, “How will we pay for it?”
This is a valid question, and something that needs to be thoroughly discussed by our elected officials. However, in response, I would ask, how much are you willing to pay to protect your health and livelihood as well as the health and livelihood of your fellow Americans? The idea that a person’s life is worth less because they don’t have as much money as the next person is an extremely un-American principle, and one that I don’t subscribe to.
I’ve spoken to residents in the 1st District what they want from health care in this country, and they want a leader who will actively work to find a solution and bring affordable healthcare to Americans, not just repeal and replace a system without making it better. This includes ensuring patients with pre-existing conditions are not discriminated against, bringing more medical providers and facilities to our communities and reducing excess deaths per year.
Medicare Now++ is worth it. Not just for us, but for the future of our nation. America was created for “We the People,” and is not a place where only the wealthy should be able to survive.
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Vangie Williams is a public servant and strategic planner who solves problems for our federal government. A real-world professional with 30 years of experience, Vangie is not a career politician who will put corporate interests above people. She is committed to an economy for everyone, healthy families and investing in our communities. Learn more about her vision to put people first at www.vangieforcongress.com.
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