Why is US only "1st World" country w/o health care

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Help Us Kick Up LEGISLATIVE SUPPORT for Single Payer SB 810 "California OneCare"
Dear Edith,

California's landmark single payer bill (we call it California OneCare) launches its legislative journey next Wednesday in Sacramento.

SB 810 (formerly SB 840), authored by State Senator Mark Leno (SF), will be heard by the Senate Health Committee on Wednesday, April 15, at 1:30 p.m. in Room 4203 at the State Capitol.

This is the first step in the process of getting SB 810 through the Senate and then the Assembly.
A huge turnout of supporters is vital.

We want to pack the hearing room to show strong public support. If you can attend, we recommend you get to Room 4203 well before 1:30PM.

This campaign won't be easy. There are many new Senators and Assembly Members who must be educated about single payer. There are other health care reform bills that are being considered but there is only one true reform bill that will bring full care, for all, for less.

Please get the word out to members of your organization to attend on April 15th.

PLUS, here are two more actions you can take to help us pass this legislation.

Action #1: Contact organizations to send SB 810 endorsements on their letterhead stationary.

Organizations that supported Senator Sheila Kuehl's SB 840 need to send a new letter of support for SB 810.

Mail support letter to:
Senator Mark Leno
State Capitol
Sacramento, CA 95814
Or fax support letter to: 916-445-4722

A sample organizational endorsement letter is also posted at www.healthcareforall.org under "act now-organizing".

Action #2: Send your own individual letter of support for SB 810 to your State Senator and to Senator Elaine Alquist, chair of the Senate Health Committee. (Also, ask your friends and family to send letters.)

1. Identify your own State Senator online by visiting http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/yourleg.html

2. Mail support letter to:
Senator Elaine Alquist

State Capitol
Sacramento, CA 95814
Or fax support letter to: 916-324-0283
A sample individual endorsement letter is also posted at www.healthcareforall.org under "act now-organizing"

Thank you for your continued support. WE WILL WIN.

Dan Hodges
Chair, Health Care for All--Caliifornia
OneCareNow.org Campaign for SB 810 is a Project of Health Care for All--California

There's no money for a new healthcare system in califonrnia. We're billions of dollars in debt, remember? Even if we did have government healthcare here, It would resemble the DMV (I've dealt with Medi-Cal before, I'd know). Additionally, I am completely opposed to any health coverage that would give coverage to illegal aliens.

The people sponsoring this bill have done the math. Senator Shiela Kuehl has been working on this legislation for the past 12 years. She introduced it twice as SB840 and it passed both the state senate and the state assembly. But good ol' Guvvner Arnie vetoed it - twice. If we had a different governer, all legal residents of California would now have health care.

California cannot afford our current health care system. It drives businesses away, driving up unemployment. It makes people go bankrupt so they can't meet their mortgage payments and have to go into foreclosure (about 50% of foreclosures can be traced to catastrophic health care costs). People with illnesses that could be easily treated don't go to the doctor, and so they end up in the emergency room, and society has to pick up the bill.

If we didn't have insurance companies using our health care dollars to pay their CEOs multi-million dollar salaries, didn't have health care dollars being handed out to insurance company shareholders, and didn't have health care dollars being used to pay for the hundreds of clerical workers it takes to keep all the paperwork flowing, health care would cost far less and do far more.

RE: your argument that single-payer health care would resemble the DMV - I'm assuming that you are referring to the specter of waiting in long lines? Well, for the past several years every time I call my primary care physician's office to make an appointment, I'm told the next available appoint is three months from now. How's that for a long wait? Then I try to switch to a doctor in a different group, and it takes two months just to get my medical records transferred to the new office, and when they get there half of the records are missing. How's that for efficiency?

If the poverty-line country of Cuba can afford to provide excellent health care to its citizens, why can't we take care of people here? In Cuba every small community has a clinic with a doctor and nurse. Every woman with a newborn baby is visited at home by a nurse within the first week, and periodically thereafter for some months. In the US we pay the most per capita for health care, but the quality of our care is rated as 37th among all nations by the World Health Organization.

When we talk to people from other countries (Canada, France, Germany, England) and describe to them what our health care system is like, they say "Oh, you poor dears."

The ironic thing is that Americans pay more for their health care than countries with free health care. In fact, it's the most expensive health care in the world, yet it fails.

http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/ ... 406c267964

Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor...

Bea, you are just swallowing Michael Moore propaganda without looking at it critically. Cuba's healthcare sucks. I live in Miami, I know a lot of people who fled from Castro. Cuba is not a place where you want to be. Sure, the drugs there are cheaper, as you probably saw in Sicko, but the average monthly income is $30USD so they still can't afford it. The US is also rated higher than Cuba on that same scale you cited, so to focus on our low ranking and then claim that a lower-ranking country has better health care is just delusional. Further, a very large component of those rankings is based on who pays for health care, and it is biased towards favoring state-run systems. In terms of quality of care, the US system destroys France and England.

I'm a dual citizen of Canada and the United States. I am disgusted by the broken system of US healthcare. One of the best critiques of it was written by a former president of NARAL Pro Choice America: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090427/michelman
I'm reminded by this story that her situation is not unique. We (Americans or people living in the US) are only about four steps or less away from ending up in a similar situation of bankruptcy, poverty, and destitution.

I live in the U.S. and I am a citizen of the U.S. I have health insurance which covers my doctor visits, pharmacy costs and hospitalization. Where do you get the idea there is no health care in the U.S.. Or do you mean we don't have government run health care. Thank goodness for that! The government brought you the Challenger Disaster and post hurricane Katrina emergency action. Do you want these incompetents providing health services too? If the government ran the supermarkets we would soon all be going hungry at night.

ruveyn

NHS (the state run British health care system) bashing is one of the favoured British pastimes, but after all and remembering that it is one of the cheapest systems in the western world ($ per capita p.a.):

USA: 6,714
Switzerland: 4,312
France: 3,554
Netherlands: 3,383
Germany: 3,328
Sweden: 3,119
UK: 2,784

It works quite well. The main indicators (life expectancy, child mortality, etc.) are well within the western standard. So the state-run NHS produces the same health care for roughly 40% of the money.

http://www.who.int/countries/en

As far as efficiency of the current US system: i.e. it's ridiculous to have to transfer someone with a heart rate of 35 from one ER to another across town because of insurance, or have someone develop complications that screw up every subsequent step in their recovery because an insurance person (on a phone, who's never examined the patient) disagrees with their neurosurgeon's assessment that they need more days in ICU. And people are afraid the government will cause things to be inefficient and screwed up?

High quality care may be there, but it's not necessarily accessible in some glib way. A person who's had cancer when young will likely be uninsurable for life. And how high quality is the care if someone has their life saved, but has their finances destroyed by it, endangering their ability to deal with future health issues (and not just for them, but their family members also)? Other countries show it can be done better.

People need to stop listening to the well-paid for and heavily promoted corporate propaganda. Micheal Moore is one person, and corporate America pretty much has the rest of the American media as it's mouthpiece.

I have no doubt it can be done better. Right now in the U.S. we have a hybrid system with the worst characteristics of purely government and purely private health provision. We should be entirely free market or go the Canadian single payer route. Right now the bean counters are in charge and most of the costs involved are due the the following:

1. Administrative inefficiency.
2. The cost of malpractice lawsuit avoidance.
3. Inconsistent government regulation.

Even so the free market is making a dent. At Wal Mart one can get generics at $4.00 a pop. Not bad. So the pharmecutical problem can be solved in a straightforward way.

At CVS one can get diagnostic services for a very low cost administered by nurse-practicioners rather than by MDs. That means one can find out if he/she has high cholesteral and low HDL, high blood pressure and such like for a few bucks.

This shows that the private sector approach can provide low cost adequate medical services in some areas. The socialist dream of the very best care being given to everyone equally is unattainable everywhere. Those with the money will always be able to buy the best. That is true everywhere in the world.

My proposal is to let Wal Mart go into the hospital business.

ruveyn

Not really - Let's talk about the UK with its state-run healths system, the NHS. If you have a minor (or let say standard condition) you can choose between private hospital to pay for (with a higher standard of comfort and other facilities) or the NHS with it sometime quite low standards in comfort. If it comes to serious matters, than the NHS is often the only one how has the capacity of providing certain services and the specialists employed,

Besides this the NHS has via law the monopole of treating transmittable diseases which the government sees as public health issues, like TB, HIV or syphilis.

You can also go sometime private with the NHS, but this differs only in matters of comfort, but not in matters of treatment. It is bit like a train: Buying a first class ticket does not transport you faster, but with more space for your legs.

Last edited by Dussel on 12 Apr 2009, 1:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

well, there's two things at work.

There are a lot of Big 'whatever' industries that are making money hand over fist (or were until recently), jacking up expenses at multiple times the amount of inflation.

Because most drug companies, at least, are worldwide, they can't charge what they want for drugs, except in the US. So, it's possible to say that the US pays for the rest of the world's drugs...

or maybe we're just evil...

This is largely true: by respecting patent rights and not having as many generics, America is footing the bill for drug development for the rest of the world. We also are conducting most of the research in medicine and pushing the field forward.

Then again, you have to compare the way americans view a patent vs the traditionnal definition of the term.