Greetings!
On a 1980 relief mission to Uganda, Dick Gregory told Thom Hartmann; “I don’t know why America thinks she has to run around the world forcing people to take our way of governance at the barrel of a gun.” He paused, then added with a sly grin, “When you’ve got something really good, you don’t have to force it on people. 
They will steal it!” Well then, why is America still victim of a for-profit, insurance-driven health care system? I think if our country knew more about the benefits and savings of a Single Payer system they would be lining up to steal it. As a small business owner, I see a different side of health care and I’d like to share a few of my business reasons for stealing Single Payer for all of us…
An educated citizenry would start by rejecting Hillary’s debate claim that a Single Payer system wouldn’t work for us “because it is not the system we inherited”. Obamacare offers some incremental improvement, but it’s frustrating to deal with the half-measure of Obamacare when a better fix, Single Payer Healthcare, is available. I pay for Family coverage and run a small business, where healthcare and Worker’s Compensation are among the biggest expenses I face. I think instituting a single-payer healthcare system would be one of the best possible stimulus packages to ever hit the US. Our company would save over $50,000 a year on family and business coverage alone. That number doesn’t even include all the other possible savings by providing healthcare coverage as a right instead of a privilege. From a business standpoint alone, Single Payer would influence…
- Cost of goods and services
- Greater individual spending power
- Worker’s Compensation costs reduced
- Paperwork and Productivity.
- Legal reform
- Reduced cost of healthcare
Single Payer would NOT be a perfect system. Every other industrialized country has Single Payer of some flavor, and each one deals with their own waste, fraud, abuse, and failure. There would be plenty to criticize in a Single Payer world! But it would still be a huge improvement. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, “Single Payer is the worst form of health care… except for all the others”.
The fight for Single Payer is still going on, albeit quietly. States like Vermont, Massachusetts, and even Oregon are trying variations of Single Payer within their borders. Groups like HealthCareNOW! and Physicians for a National Health Program are pressuring legislators for change. Read this month’s article on “Blazing Blues and Rational Healthcare” and you’ll know we were at this year’s Inner City Blues Festival in support of Health Care for All Oregon, the main group working for Single Payer in Oregon and beyond. It’s still an uphill battle, but I’ve given you a few of my personal reasons to think it’s a battle still worth fighting. What are your reasons, and what will you do to make Single Payer a reality?
Take Care and Make a Great Day!
