The truth is, we are already paying for Universal Single payer health care. We just aren't getting it.
This OECD study shows (see top graph on page 13) that the U.S. government already pays out more money, per capita, in health care expenditures than any other country, except Norway.
What that means is, we are already paying for universal public health care, we just aren't getting it.
If we changed to, say, the French system (argued as the best in the world) the amount of money the government spends on health care would actually go down. In other words, universal single payer means we'd all be in for a TAX CUT!
This begs the question: Why even ask for a Public Option?
The compromise position ought to be Private Option - for those who want it.
Since the rule of thumb in insurance is, the bigger the pool, the lower the cost, and since we're 6 times larger than France, we might expect even more and bigger savings.
The point is we are already paying for universal health care, we just aren't getting it.
The government could make a policy change tomorrow and the cost to government, and thus the tax payer would go down.
In essence, then, universal public insurance would be free - because it's already paid for.
Public Option, then, shouldn't be the compromise position.
Private Option should be the compromise position.
Obama should say that, we're flipping the switch on a certain date, and from that point on everybody is covered - whether they want it or not. However, if you have a private plan you think is great, and you want to keep, you can. It's your option - that's the private option. It will be redundant though, because you are already covered.
Everyone else, can then go into work on Monday, tell their HR department that they want the insurance benefit monetized and rolled into their paycheck.
As a bonus, everyone will also be getting a small tax break to reflect the efficiency savings in the plan.
If you are involve in savings and medical spending account plans, you have an additional bonus, you won't need that anymore.
The resulting increase in purchasing power, will lift up demand and we will be able to walk out of our current Great Recession that we are in.
Call that the Double Mega Bonus.
So for the price of a tax cut, we get free health insurance for life and get out of the Great Recession we are in.
The current plan is not only killing our economy, killing our industries, and killing all our jobs, it's also killing people. 50 million are without health insurance. 18,000 people will needlessly lose their lives this year because they didn't have enough or any insurance coverage -- EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE ALREADY PAYING FOR IT!. That's six times more people dying than Al Qaida killed on 9/11 or that died when Pearl Harbor was bombed.
The current plan benefits, at most, maybe 3,000 billionaires and near billionaires. For their sake we sacrifice our economy, industries, jobs, and tens of thousands of lives.
For the life of me, I don't understand how Americans can accept this. We need to hit the streets on this. If I told you that for the the price of three hours on a Sunday afternoon walk with friends, you would get a free health care insurance for life, wouldn't you join such a protest? At least 50 million who don't have insurance should show up - and another 30 million more whose rates keep going up and/or who are under covered.
I'm over sea's right now, and frankly, I'm not the leadership type, nor do I have organization. But it seems to me this should be low hanging fruit for organizing. Remember, 18,000 of our fellow Americans are needlessly going to die this year because of this scheme. That's worse than 9/11. Yet nothing gets done. I'm dumb founded.
We should be holding our own "tea party" for health care insurance and throw the whole concept back in Fox's face and use it against them. They drew 8,000 people nationwide, we could draw 80 million. And guess what - they'd have to publicize it - for free - because it's a manifestation of their idea (the tea party part). Or call it a Coffee Walk for health care. Whatever.
The imposition of the current system says that United States is not a democracy. It is a plantation. To paraphrase John McCain from the election last summer: "We're all n!gg@rs now."