Sanders' Medicare-for-All Plan Takes Aim at For-Profit Healthcare System

[Ferd Berfel]

It stuff like THIS that is causing Bernie to Surge!


http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/01/18/sanders-medicare-all-plan-takes-aim-profit-healthcare-system?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork

It is 'time for our country to join every other major industrialized nation on Earth and guarantee health care to all citizens as a right, not a privilege.'

Just before Sunday's Democratic primary debate in South Carolina, Bernie Sanders released the details of his Medicare-for-All universal healthcare proposal, saying it is "time for our country to join every other major industrialized nation on Earth and guarantee health care to all citizens as a right, not a privilege."

The plan (pdf), also known as single-payer healthcare, builds on the successes of both Medicare and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), "eliminating expensive and wasteful private health insurance," and saving taxpayers money by "dramatically reducing overall health care costs and bringing down skyrocketing prescription drug prices which are far greater in the United States than in any other country."

According to the Sanders campaign:

The shift to universal health care would be paid for with a 2.2 percent health care premium (calculated under the rules for federal income taxes); a 6.2 percent health care payroll tax paid by employers; an estate tax on the wealthiest Americans and changes in the tax code to make federal income tax rates more progressive.

Under the plan, individuals making $250,000 to $500,000 a year would be taxed at a rate of 37 percent. The top rate, 52 percent, would apply to those earning $10 million or more a year, a category that in 2013 included only the 13,000 wealthiest households in the United States.

[Recursion]

1. For profit health *insurance* system, not for profit health *care* system

Huge difference, a huge difference that is ultimately why I think O'Malley's plan, rather than Sanders's, is the answer.

[Jefferson23]

2. Exactly, the reason we don't have this in the US is not because it ranks low on its merits.

It's because it takes the profits out of a field that should not be profit driven
in the first place.

As long as it is profit driven the costs will not be managed well nor will it include
everyone.

[enid602]

3. single payer

Funny how the only other major country that has true SP is the UK. Berniecare would be four times the size, providing he's successful in lowering per capita health costs by 60%. Which he won't because he's against tort reform, and has voted againt it twice. ALL other developed countriies have varying degrees of tort reform. If Bernie is so against for profit insurance mandated uniiversal health care, why do most develiped countries have it?