Time to evaluate the benefits of single-payer healthcare

Healthcare is a fundamental human right. It’s time to stop kicking sand in the face of single-payer healthcare. It may be the strongest solution around to insure every American at a lower cost.

After decades of industry campaigns against this model – dubbed by its critics as “socialized” medicine – it’s important to stop whining and evaluate the many economic benefits.

Healthcare costs have become a crippling personal-finance burden for 45 million uninsured and 25 million underinsured Americans. Those outside of the fractured employer-based system are only one illness away from financial ruin. Lose your job and most likely your health coverage will disappear unless you want to pay exorbitant rates. And it’s getting worse.

Because of the growing jobless rate, some 14,000 Americans are losing their coverage daily. Every 30 seconds, someone in the US files for bankruptcy because of medical bills. An estimated 18,000 Americans die each year from lack of insurance.

A single-payer plan would cover everybody regardless of employment situation and save money by cutting out middlemen. A single-payer program would offer $400 billion in annual administrative savings and provide effective cost containment provisions such as bulk purchasing and global budgeting.

A new report shows that in terms of aggregate health, education, purchasing power, security and general wellbeing, the US has been in decline. As a matter of fact, we are now No. 15. It is up to us to get back to No. 1.

Mike Welling