Addressing inequality in healthcare is a cornerstone of Bernie Sanders’ 2015 presidential campaign. He has supported a national Medicare-for-All, single-payer type healthcare system for decades.
In a 7/28/15 interview with Ezra Klein (Vox.com), he flatly states “Health care, to my mind, is a right of all people…I think every man, woman and child is entitled to health care, and that right exists in virtually every other major industrialized country on Earth.”
He highlights the obvious perversity of having our healthcare managed by private health insurance corporations whose goal is to make money rather than to provide quality care.
He goes on to clarify that the Affordable Care Act – which drove millions of Americans into the arms of private health insurers – has left 35 million Americans without any health insurance at all and the millions who do have insurance facing such high copayments and deductibles, they can’t afford to use it!
HEAL California could not agree more!
We wholeheartedly share Senator Sanders’ vision of a national, universal healthcare system based on Medicare. Without a doubt, having a single payer system will make possible healthcare that is universal, comprehensive, high quality, and truly affordable. And having national single payer is the ultimate goal.
Why national? Because a national system would offer the best opportunities not only to develop efficiencies in administration but also to streamline enrollment and globally manage the costs of treatment and medication. If we won national single payer, we would be ecstatic.
Yet having observed the extremely contentious fight over the ACA that unfolded in the US Congress beginning in 2009 and continuing even today, we believe the best way to support our dream for national reform is to win universal, single payer healthcare in California.
Remember, Canada implemented their Medicare system province-by-province. On July 1, 1962, the Province of Saskatchewan established the first universal, comprehensive single-payer public medical insurance plan on the continent. Over the next decade, the entire country – one province at a time – adopted it.
We believe that a win in California, with the 8th largest economy in the world, will definitively expand the political possibilities of a win at the national level. And California has already passed Universal, Single Payer Healthcare – not once, but twice!
In 2006 and again in 2008, the California Legislature passed The California Universal Healthcare Act (introduced by Senator Sheila Kuehl) only to have Governor Schwarzenegger decline to sign it.
Meanwhile, Representative John Conyer’s HR676, The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, re-introduced in the House of Representatives in 2015 but first introduced in 2003, has never even been debated.
By contrast, the California Democratic Party continues to include single payer healthcare in their platform!
Without a doubt, most Californians support equality in healthcare, without regard to wealth, ethnicity, race, geographic region or any other status. Efficient and fair, single payer will be the engine that powers a 21st century healthcare system.
Working together, we can win Improved, Expanded Medicare-for-All, single payer healthcare in California and in the nation!
Learn More:
http://www.vox.com/2015/7/28/9014491/bernie-sanders-vox-conversation
https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/the-birth-of-medicare
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2014/jul/08/california-ranks-worlds-8th-largest-economy-overta/
http://pnhpcalifornia.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/SB-810-Fact-SheetMarch2011.pdf
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/october/gov_schwarzenegger_.php
Medicare for everyone has to go through, during the past year my co-pays on Obama Care ( which of course was a gift to the insurance companies under the pretext of helping people and an obvious payback for getting President Obama elected ), has been above 1000 dollars, as I’m on social security this is not an answer for the majority of people, especially for the middle class with children , ( a rapidly disappearing group thanks to the unfair tax structure dictated by the top 1%. I was going to vote for the old guard however they have not been doing the job of helping with these problems in the past so I will be voting for change, specifically in regard to the above. I see no way for change unless we vote for an outsider.