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From Common Dreams—Sanders Applauds New Medicare for All Study: Will Save Americans $450 Billion and Prevent 68,000 Unnecessary Deaths Every Year:
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Saturday applauded a new study published today by a team of epidemiologists in the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet, which found that Medicare for All will save Americans $450 billion and prevent 68,000 unnecessary deaths each and every year.
“This study confirms that Medicare for All will save the American people $450 billion on health care costs and will prevent 68,000 unnecessary deaths – each and every year,” Sanders said. “In other words, guaranteeing health care as a human right by creating a Medicare for All system will cost substantially less than our current dysfunctional health care system. It will save working class families thousands of dollars and it will prevent tens of thousands of Americans from dying each year. While the CEOs in the pharmaceutical and health insurance industry may not like it, we will end their greed and enact Medicare for All when I am president.”
According to the study, by replacing premiums, deductibles, co-payments and out-of-pocket costs with a progressive tax system, Medicare for All will save the average family thousands of dollars each year and will provide lower-income households the greatest relief.
Struggling hospitals serving low-income communities would be particularly helped by Medicare for All by eliminating uncompensated care, increasing Medicaid reimbursement rates to Medicare levels, and reducing administrative overhead, according to the study.
The study also debunks several attacks on Medicare for All from the private health care industry that made well over $100 billion in profits last year. Doctors and hospitals would see large savings in cost and time from streamlining our bloated and inefficient administrative and billing system, allowing doctors to spend more time with patients, the study found.
The study is the latest in a series of studies conducted over the past three decades that have found that guaranteeing universal health care through a single-payer health care system would not only dramatically improve the health and well-being of the American people, it would cost less than our current dysfunctional health care system that puts profits over people.
Last month, another medical journal found that 19 out of 22 studies done over the past 30 years concluded that moving to a Medicare for All, single-payer health care system would cost less than our current health care system in the first year, and all of the studies showed that it would cost less within a decade of implementation.
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“I'm going to live long enough to live in an America that will assume universal health care is a basic right. That will be amusing and terrific.” ~~Anna Quindlen (2010)
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BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2006—Cheney drank before shooting his pal
E&P:
In an exclusive interview with Fox News' Brit Hume this afternoon, Vice President Dick Cheney took full responsibility for shooting his hunting companion, who has until now been pictured as the guilty party. The interview will not aired in full until 6 p.m. but according to Hume, in summarizing the contents, the vice president remained "totally unapologetic" about the long lag in reporting the shooting to the public—and also said that he had consumed one beer at lunch that day.
Cheney must consume a virtual cocktail of drugs every day because of his heart condition. I wonder what kind of reaction throwing alcohol into the mix might have.
Any doctors in the house?
Update: Here's video of Hume talking about his interview with Cheney. You see, according to Cheney, they drank beer but no one drank beer:
HUME: He said he had a beer at lunch and that had been many hours earlier. And it was dusk, around 5:00 p.m., when this incident happened. And he said that, you know, they had lunch out in the field, a barbecue, and he had a beer. But you said you don’t hunt with people who have been drinking. He said no one was drinking. He said they went back to the ranch afterwards, took a break after that, and went out about 3:00 and so you’re four or five hours distanced from the last alcohol that he consumed. And he said no one was drinking, not he nor anyone else.