Single Payer Health Systems
In reply to the discussion: A "die-hard conservative Republican" embraces Universal Health Care [View all]cleduc
(653 posts)My family has used both heath care systems (US & Canada) since the early 1970s.
The thing that blew me away was watching Obama's town halls in the 2008 campaign. The stories coming out from people who lacked health care were absolutely heartbreaking.
Then Alan Grayson hammered home the point on the floor of congress referencing Harvard's report that 44,000 Americans were dying every year due to a lack of health care. He mentioned a young man who passed on cancer treatment and went home to die so that his care wouldn't put his wife and kids into bankruptcy. Words cannot adequately describe my horrible feelings about that.
And that's where the GOP logic was completely lost for me. The GOP would spend trillions fighting wars in the Middle East but wouldn't spend a fraction of that to save the lives of their own citizens. I will never ever understand or accept that position from the richest country on earth. And Mitt Romney wants to go back to that. On that issue alone, I could never support him because on Day 1, he effectively wants 44,000 Americans people to resume dying without heath care each year. It makes no sense.
The US spends dramatically more on health care per capita than any other nation on earth. Yet US life expectancy is way down the list. For what the US spends, they should be at the top of the list or very close to it.
Part of the trouble for US jobs is the global competition. Whether a US company pays or an individual pays, that drives the cost of a US job for a company up. And therefore, that costs the US jobs.
If the US went to single payer, they could enjoy Canadian health care service levels & Canadian life expectancy (top 10 in the world) for very roughly about 60% of the cost the US is paying now and the entire country would be covered = 44,000 fewer deaths per year. That would also put a big dent into the US deficit AND bring a bunch of jobs home to the US. So even if those hard hearted don't care about US people dying without health care, it would help the US economy and the US deficit. The big losers would be the insurance companies who like Romney, probably stash a bunch of their cash overseas to avoid taxes.
If I were making an ad against Romney, I'd show the Harvard report (and others like it) and then show Romney heartlessly directing a death sentence to those people on Day 1 of his administration.
Sorry for the rant but this issue upsets me because it's so needless. There is a better way. Obamacare is far from perfect but you at least have a framework to get there. Romney offers nothing but a return to what doesn't work beyond continuing to make the rich richer.