Glossy News editor Brian K. White has create a petition to the White House to create a single-payer healthcare system. Please take a moment to sign it.
UPDATE 11/17/12: Behold the power of GlossyNews.com… the petition reached the signature threshold and is now live at Petitions.Whitehouse.gov.
A single-payer system would do more than piss off a bunch of guys in suits, it would give coverage and an opportunity at greater health to tens of millions, lower overall costs, lower mortality rates, and level the playing field for all employers, with the biggest benefit going to small businesses.
One great resource for reading from the lefty doctor community comes from Physicians for a National Health Program, and one great article about the wealth of benefits from the business right comes from Forbes’ article A Dose Of Socialism Could Save Our States – State Sponsored, Single Payer Healthcare Would Bring In Business & Jobs.
But before we go too far, let me ask you once again, with bells on, to sign the petition.
It’s Better for ALL Workers
Under single-payer, everyone will have healthcare. Emergency coverage, preventative coverage, long-term coverage, rehabilitation coverage, everything. Sick babies and struggling grandmas alike will benefit. This means the guy at Walmart will have the same coverage as the guy at Microsoft. This means the self-employed guy with zero or five employees will have the same coverage as those seemingly indifferent members of congress.
If rich people don’t like it, they can lobby for better coverage for everyone. If poor people don’t like it, they can petition for their coverage to be adjusted accordingly. Everyone gets the same fair shake and in the end, everyone wins.
Businesses Can Better Grow
Imagine if your dog-walking business could offer the same healthcare as IBM. Imagine if you could leave your job in cubicle hell and start your own business without having to worry about your family losing their health insurance. With single-payer, everyone already gets the same coverage, so the playing field is leveled.
Costs WILL Go Down
Even small doctors’ offices employ one or two full-time employees to handle insurance claims. This could likely be handled by the receptionist under single-payer, and just imagine the savings if your ONE doctor didn’t have ONE person just to bill for payment. Hospitals and doctors’ offices will no longer have to deal with the cost of derilict customers, which will also lower costs by not inconsequential margins.
But more than that, many catastrophic costs will be avoided thanks to preventative care. Dealing with asthma on a yearly basis is quite cheap, but not dealing with it and waiting for a cold to become pneumonia can cost tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, and this is just one example of many.
More People Will Live
Every year 45,000 people die in America, the richest nation on earth, because they don’t have medical insurance. That’s 5.13 people every hour of every day. That’s one person every twelve-minutes that dies due to a lack of healthcare. This ends with a single-payer system.
What would you say to the children, parents, siblings or employers of those who died from easily preventable causes? You can’t tell them with a straight face that the status quo is working, because it isn’t.
Fewer People Go Bankrupt, Banks Will Profit
62% of bankruptcies in the US are due to medical reasons. Medical costs rack up quickly. I have a neighbor who went to the hospital last year without insurance, and was seen for fully 15-minutes before being discharged. His bill was over $2,500, and he’s still paying on it today. This nonsense would be a thing of the past.
But the biggest loser under the current system is banks. They are the ones who lose the most. Because patient Y can’t work, he defaults on his debts. If he can avoid getting sick, or just not have ten-times his income in medical bills, he won’t default on his debts. This benefits everyone. Bank lending rates can come down, bank profit rates can go up. Everyone wins.
More importantly, no one would go bankrupt just because their daughter or husband got sick while they happened to be unemployed, newly at a job, at a job that doesn’t provide for medical care, or running a small business. Medical bankruptcy is a shameful smear on a civilized society.
Insurance Employees Would Be Given Retraining
All of the bills that have hit the House have included financed retraining programs to cover the displaced workers from the insurance industry. These people wouldn’t become economic refugees, but rather be given full retraining and job placement opportunities.
But what if they were? Would that be so bad? Is it better to preserve a handful of administrative jobs if it means tens of thousands dying every year? Is it better to keep these heritage companies alive if it means that people die? No, it is not.
If we can better life for all Americans while strengthening small businesses and the lives of real, individual Americans, this is an easy route to go.
So again, I have to tell you, HERE IS WHERE YOU GO TO SIGN THE PETITION.
CONCLUSION
Now is the time. We’re ready to do this. It’s almost 2013 and America is still living a healthcare system according to 1940s sensibilities. Every other first-world nation has adopted universal healthcare, and while Obamacare is a great step in the right direction, it’s a very small step, and one our president’s re-election should suggust we might want to go beyond.
I hold no illusion in my head that this petition will actually cause a massive change in American politics, but it IS something we can do, and as such, it’s something we MUST do.
Powerful commentary Skoob.
When I lived in Germany I was covered by such a system as England’s.
My total income tax for a year was at most 30% of my wages and usually around 25%. When I went in for a minor emergency once I was in, examined, X-rayed, fixed up and out the door in the same amount of time that it would take to just fill out the admission forms in the U.S. And all I had to do was swipe my credit card-like insurance ID and they would see me. No rejections. Same was true for dental care. It was a breath of fresh air to know I would be taken care of anywhere I went in Germany no matter what happened.
People did abuse the system which is always going to happen and happens in this country too, but it will never be a perfect world that we live in.
I think we could come up with a similar system in this country that would work for every one and everyone could be happy with.
I totally agree with this, America’s needed an NHS for decades. Unfortunately, I would have to join yet another site to sign the petition and I already have more passwords than I can remember. Sorry.
We did it! We got enough signatures. This is now live on the White House petition site.
I authored another one that's within five signatures of going live, will you sign it too? https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/shut-down-white-house-petitions-they-never-get-sincere-response-few-read-them-they-are-ultimately/nBtJ7d4R
I only need five more signatures to make this one get published. https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/shut-down-white-house-petitions-they-never-get-sincere-response-few-read-them-they-are-ultimately/nBtJ7d4R
This one's fizzled, sadly, but I have another petition that is only FIVE signatures away from going live. https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/shut-down-white-house-petitions-they-never-get-sincere-response-few-read-them-they-are-ultimately/nBtJ7d4R
Done.
Hey Bargis,
We have to appreciate that there are vast cultural differences between our nations.
We pay health insurance whether we need it or not. If we don’t, that’s fine – we’re helping those who do.
If we need it – we get it. And we get the best.
It saved my wife’s life – as you know.
It strikes me that there’s a dichotomy between people being prioritized for treatment for ‘Cocaine Rotted Nose’ as opposed to ‘Cancer Of The Womb’
On the basis of Wall Street economics.
“Because I paid for this.”
Fuck your nose up with coke and you’ll be fine. As long as you pay the premiums. Get cancer and you’re fucked – because you didn’t pay the suits.
Quite frankly it’s ridiculous to claim that health insurance on a private basis works, The premiums don’t pay health care professionals – surgeons, doctors, nurses, – they pay Republicans in suits and ambulance chasers out to make a fast buck. Not to mention the Republican bastards who were in power at the time, who conned the world into investing into a failing system with the lure of profit on a frankly unrealistic scale. That was the Republicans.
For Christ’s sake, shouldn’t we all be looking out for one another?
Or is that too complex a concept for people who are getting old and insecure to get their heads around?
Empires fall – people don’t.
With respect – you come across as scared.
There’s nothing to fear – only fear itself.
And the Republican Party.
It reads to us like Thatcherism all over again.
I’m not a socialist – but there needs to be a balance, and a more worthy pioneering spirit than the seemingly traditional Republican mantra of ‘I’m All Right Jack,’
You’re not all right. You’re on your own. It’s dinosaur thinking.
But, don’t worry what others think. You haven’t so far, and hey – why spoil the habits of a lifetime?
Skoob.
Great socialized healthcare? Then why do wealthy Brits and Canadians (and many others) seeking healthcare flock to the US for specialized and advanced treatment?
The reason is the treatments offered by some heavily socialist countries (like the UK) isn’t on par with what is provided here as far as cutting edge diagnosis and care.
Basically, it’s a two tier system in some other countries with the wealthy getting whatever they need because they pay for it and the peons waiting in line (oten months as in Canada) for what we regard as a routine test or procedure.
The same will happen here in the advent of ‘socialized medicine’ with the wealthy paying for there own healthcare and the poor receiving lower tier ‘just adequate’ care. Single payer insurance is hardly the answer to a complex problem but there are other ideas floating out there that have a higher probability of success of giving the nation’s healthcare apparatus to the same people that give us such “well operated” services such as the Post Office, TSA, and Amtrack.
I have neighbors who live both here and in the UK. One of the first things they had done when they came here was (they paid of course) was to have first-class dental care which they said wasn’t as advanced in the UK. (The second thing was, the wife had a boob job and face lift.)
Nice try Skoob1999, but historically what you often say is far, far from any resemblance of normal, sober reality.
In England we have the National Health Service. It’s funded by working people, who aside from paying tax, make National Insurance contributions. These fund the NHS. It isn’t without controversy. There are complaints – to be expected within such a massive organisation – all of which are investigated.
If people need treatment, they get it. And they get the best. My wife and I have contributed throughout our working lives to this system, which is frequently described as ‘the envy of the world,’
Rich or poor, there are no boundaries. You have an accident or you get sick, or pregnant, or anything requiring treatment, you get the best available. Even if you fall over drunk and bang your head – the help is there. And the care is non-discriminatory.
Nobody here ever, ever needs to sell their home to fund health care. To us, that idea seems ludicrous, because in the American model, the money goes to the guys in suits, the number crunchers, the insurance brokers, and not to the surgeons or the nursing staff.
Last year, my wife had a problem. She was referred to a specialist, had an MRI scan and was diagnosed with Endometrial Cancer. Within days she had surgery.
Thankfully, the prognosis is excellent, and she’s fully recovered. Although she has to be monitored over a five year period. The point being that it’s something we’ve invested in all our lives, and when we needed the service, it was there.
In the UK, there’s no such animal as an ‘ambulance chaser’ and no recorded incidences of sick people being turned away from a hospital for treatment. It’s far from being a Utopian system, but it’s by far and away the best on the planet.
The way I see it – the people who complain the loudest in the USA about state funded health care/Obamacare, or whatever are just selfish individuals with no regard for their fellow man.
Who then scream the house down when they lose everything because they had ‘the wrong type of insurance.’
It’s an elitist attitude. And you can be reasonably certain that you’ll have problems with it at some stage.
Being a UK citizen, and not a US citizen, I’d wholeheartedly endorse Brian’s petition. But I won’t vote one way or the other because it’s something which doesn’t affect me personally.
I don’t have to worry about healthcare.
You guys seem to have an issue to pursue.
Over to you.
Signed.
…sorry, love to play but I've already paid 7.5% ( plus another 7.5%) of every earned dollar every week toward healthcare for the last 40+ years….
signed
Come on guys, let's petition for a single-payer healthcare system. We need this!