Single Payer Health Care: How We Can Achieve It, a Call to Action

Republicans don’t want single-payer because they really would prefer we pay for everything, from healthcare, to education. Forget about conceding to party lines. Think about who needs health care and why they need it. The CDC figures that as of 2012, 117 million people have chronic illnesses. We Americans are not as healthy as we would like to imagine. Our entire system is in decay, with extreme bills making people unable to keep up their payments when treating a chronic health condition. This is frustrating to many of us average folk who see billionaires getting immense tax breaks. The money just piles on, since the majority of Americans are far from being the 1%.

Why Republicans wail, gnash, and drag their feet at single payer and government involvement is a bizarre state to deal with. The current system needs a grand overhaul, with universal coverage being a guarantee since access to health care is a human right the United States is failing abysmally at giving to everybody. Somebody has to talk sense into the opposition. What if you have a family member who is dying? What would you do then? Our government just plain doesn’t care about health care. They may be invested in wanting people to die in order to conveniently lower the population. The problem with private insurance is that the cost goes up without controls on that cost. Single payer could bring drug costs down.

Some people get paranoid that single payer would lead to longer waits, and higher taxes. We can do this without increasing our taxes, however, since the SSI program is already free health care for the low income. I had to stick it out in some jobs to feed that money into my SSI benefits. The real problem with becoming single payer in a country as “large” as the United States is that 85% of Americans get health care from a job. Americans are only fearful of an increase in taxes. Now my idea is that some billionaire could throw a lot of money to health care so as to cut back on the taxes. Billionaires have billions. They have money to throw at this problem. But they are lazy and won’t do much about this. It is up to me to become one and set a good example of what a billionaire should do with their money.

If the government is too scared to provide a single payer option, then the 1% needs to step up to the plate. Transforming the health care crisis in the United States is merely an act of saying “we have health care” and it is accessible to all people, legal or not. Health care should be a constitutional right as well as a legal right. The solution is not necessarily Medicare for all since people feel it is easier to find physicians who take Medicare. Anti single payer health care system people think that it would stifle the private sector to have universal health care coverage. There is nothing that scares a doctor more than “I can’t treat you here because of your insurance.” Somehow, Canada remains our shining example of good health care for all people, covering a big country, as large as the United States.

Canada leaves the health care up to each province or territory. Health care is free in Canada and that is the bottom-line here. We Americans suffer from Canada envy. U.S. health care is getting more expensive by the day every time new medications come out. Universal health care would be all about treating illnesses before they start such as making a type 2 diabetic lose weight. It is a long fight with Republicans and other opponents to universal health care, or single payer, whatever you want to call it. It is up to those of us who want to fight the good fight to convince Republicans that they need to accept single payer health care. Many times, conservatives say they do not believe in big government but could they believe in changing health care to save lives? Leave it up to the states. It is not that hard.