JANUARY 25, 2018
BY BERNIE SANDERS
This is a pivotal moment in
American history. Do we, as a nation, join the rest of the industrialized world
and guarantee comprehensive health care to every person as a human right? Or do
we maintain a system that is enormously expensive, wasteful and bureaucratic,
and is designed to maximize profits for big insurance companies, the
pharmaceutical industry, Wall Street and medical equipment suppliers?
We remain the only major
country on earth that allows chief executives and stockholders in the health
care industry to get incredibly rich, while tens of millions of people suffer
because they can’t get the health care they need. This is not what the United
States should be about.
All over this country, I have
heard from Americans who have shared heartbreaking stories about our
dysfunctional system. Doctors have told me about patients who died because they
put off their medical visits until it was too late. These were people who had
no insurance or could not afford out-of-pocket costs imposed by their insurance
plans.
I have heard from older people
who have been forced to split their pills in half because they couldn’t pay the
outrageously high price of prescription drugs. Oncologists have told me about
cancer patients who have been unable to acquire lifesaving treatments because
they could not afford them. This should not be happening in the world’s
wealthiest country.
Americans should not hesitate
about going to the doctor because they do not have enough money. They should
not worry that a hospital stay will bankrupt them or leave them deeply in debt.
They should be able to go to the doctor they want, not just one in a particular
network. They should not have to spend huge amounts of time filling out
complicated forms and arguing with insurance companies as to whether or not
they have the coverage they expected.
Even though 28 million
Americans remain uninsured and even more are underinsured, we spend far more
per capita on health care than any other industrialized nation. In 2015, the
United States spent almost $10,000 per person for health care; the Canadians,
Germans, French and British spent less than half of that, while guaranteeing
health care to everyone. Further, these countries have higher life expectancy
rates and lower infant mortality rates than we do.
The reason that our health
care system is so outrageously expensive is that it is not designed to provide
quality care to all in a cost-effective way, but to provide huge profits to the
medical-industrial complex. Layers of bureaucracy associated with the administration
of hundreds of individual and complicated insurance plans is stunningly
wasteful, costing us hundreds of billions of dollars a year. As the only major
country not to negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry, we spend
tens of billions more than we should.
The solution to this crisis is
not hard to understand. A half-century ago, the United States established
Medicare. Guaranteeing comprehensive health benefits to Americans over 65 has
proved to be enormously successful, cost-effective and popular. Now is the time
to expand and improve Medicare to cover all Americans.
This is not a radical idea. I
live 50 miles south of the Canadian border. For decades, every man, woman and
child in Canada has been guaranteed health care through a single-payer,
publicly funded health care program. This system has not only improved the lives
of the Canadian people but has also saved families and businesses an immense
amount of money.
On Wednesday I will introduce
the Medicare for All Act in the Senate with 15 co-sponsors and support from
dozens of grass-roots organizations. Under this legislation, every family in
America would receive comprehensive coverage, and middle-class families would
save thousands of dollars a year by eliminating their private insurance costs
as we move to a publicly funded program.
The transition to the Medicare
for All program would take place over four years. In the first year, benefits
to older people would be expanded to include dental care, vision coverage and
hearing aids, and the eligibility age for Medicare would be lowered to 55. All
children under the age of 18 would also be covered. In the second year, the
eligibility age would be lowered to 45 and in the third year to 35. By the
fourth year, every man, woman and child in the country would be covered by
Medicare for All.
Needless to say, there will be
huge opposition to this legislation from the powerful special interests that
profit from the current wasteful system. The insurance companies, the drug
companies and Wall Street will undoubtedly devote a lot of money to lobbying,
campaign contributions and television ads to defeat this proposal. But they are
on the wrong side of history.
Guaranteeing health care as a
right is important to the American people not just from a moral and financial
perspective; it also happens to be what the majority of the American people
want. According to an April poll by
The Economist/YouGov, 60 percent of the American people want to “expand
Medicare to provide health insurance to every American,” including 75 percent
of Democrats, 58 percent of independents and 46 percent of Republicans.
Now is the time for Congress to
stand with the American people and take on the special interests that dominate
health care in the United States. Now is the time to extend Medicare to
everyone.
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