Single Payer Health Care - WHY?

HR 676: "Still the One"

by Tim Foley
Change.org Blog
January 17, 2009

The top vote getter among health care ideas in Change.org’s Ideas for Change competition was “Free Single-Payer Health Care for All.” This no doubt is cause for joy for many of you who frequent this page. Weekends have become something of a “Policy Spotlight” for me, with an extensive look at the VA system and the Wyden-Bennett plan over the past couple of weekends. This weekend, I’m focusing on HR 676 — the “Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act” or, more popularly, the “United States National Health Insurance Act.” It’s probably going to be reintroduced into the House of Representatives in March, when it will once again take its place as the most viable path to a single-payer system that covers every American with quality care—no premiums, no deductibles and no co-pays.

Many of you who are health care activists will recognize it by bill number alone You’ve been toiling in the vineyards for its passage for years now. So rather than give a standard write-up of the bill, I’m going to post on it three times this weekend: “The Good,” why both the policy and the bill supporting it make so much sense and inspire so much loyalty among health care advocates; “The Bad,” those areas of the bill that could figuratively use a fresh coat of paint to reflect the different circumstances of today compared to when the bill was first written 4 years ago; and “The Ugly” — the purely political calculations (regardless of sound policy) that do or do not make it a palatable option.

The Good

So these are my 5 reasons why HR 676 is, in the words of Shania Twain, “still the one.”

1.) 8 of the 10 best health care systems in the world have single-payer

If you look at the World Health Organization’s 2000 rankings of the top 10 countries in terms of health outcomes — you’re not going to see us. Ditto for the top 25 countries. You’ll find us at 37th — just above Slovenia and Cuba. But if you look at the top 10, 8 have public, single-payer systems where the government collects higher taxes and guarantees quality health care to all of its citizens. The remaining two have huge percentages of the population in a public program as well.

MORE:
> http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/january/hr_676_still_the_o.php