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- Share links: Singlepayer and Healthcare. This article was written by Timeshifter. See also: End drug war with universal healthcare.
See: Wikipedia: Health in Portugal and Wikipedia: Drug policy of Portugal. See: Portugal. Cannabis-related links. See: Wikipedia: List of countries by total health expenditure per capita.
Single Payer. Developed world paying half of what USA spends on healthcare.
"Though the United States spends far more on health care than any other nation, life expectancy of the average American is only 78.8 years, lower than the OECD average and the lowest among the top spending nations." - USA Today article: Countries spending the most on health care, from 2015 Nov 14.
Template:Canada versus USA. Healthcare chart
Gallup poll: Majority in U.S. Support Single Payer Healthcare. May 16, 2016. As do doctors. [6].
President of Physicians for a National Health Program: Single-Payer is The Only System that can Achieve Universal Health Care. |
Republican Texas has highest maternal mortality rate in developed world. |
Census Data 'Starkly Illustrates' the Time for Single Payer Is Now.. September 13, 2016 by Common Dreams. The failure of private health insurance. |
Kentucky's Republican governor wants to eliminate health insurance for over 400,000. Like the rest of the Republican South. In contrast: Patients can grow their own medical pot in Canada under new rules. [7][8]. And: Marijuana Growers' Fair Opens in Oregon. First time at a state fair.
The VA: Another reason for single payer. Physicians for a National Health Program. And: New Jersey veterans fight to use medical marijuana for PTSD. |
Portugal
Portugal. Decriminalizing Drugs: When Free Treatment Replaces Prison. New York Times. - Portugal's universal healthcare and harm-reduction drug reform, versus Republican War on Drugs.
Video describes how Portugal's decriminalization and harm reduction reconnects people. 2.. And: Times of London has called for drug decriminalization using Portugal's model. 2. |
Total healthcare costs by country per person
Note the lower healthcare cost per person in Canada for all healthcare costs (public and private):
Above chart is from: US Health Care Spending More than Twice the Average for Developed Countries | Mercatus. Canada's single-payer universal healthcare costs less per person than U.S. healthcare. [9][10]. For more country info and charts: [11][12].
Chart below is from: Per capita healthcare costs — international comparison.
Trillions of dollars
- Medical Bills Still Take A Big Toll in USA, Even With Insurance. NPR. March 8, 2016.
Republicans think they can spend an infinite amount of money (many trillions of dollars) on health-insurance-company-based healthcare, and have an infinite number of babies, to feed their appetite for endless ground wars, and for more inmates for more prisons for more drug war. |
- Killer Mike and Bernie Sanders Have a Barber-Shop Chat About Free Health Care, and Ending The War on Drugs. Youtube. Facebook: ColoradoCare Yes. On ballot in 2016. ColoradoCareYES.co - ColoradoCare would cover all residents and cost less than the current system. One primary payer. Sanders says Clinton fails to mention that 'Medicare for all' (Single Payer) saves families about $5000 a year in premiums, deductibles, and co-pays.
- Medicaid is health overhaul's early success story. Nov. 12, 2013.. And: Jon Stewart Slams 'Moocher' States That Won't Expand Medicaid. Oct. 11, 2013. See: HealthCare.gov.
- 21 Ways the Canadian Health Care System is Better than Obamacare. By Ralph Nader. Nov. 22, 2013. And: People Want Full Medicare for All. By Ralph Nader. Sept. 27, 2013.
Health insurance paperwork wastes $375 billion yearly! CNBC, Jan 13, 2015. Expand for quotes. |
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They estimate the cost of covering all of the roughly 40 million Americans still lacking health insurance would be equal to just about half of the $375 billion in projected savings. The balance of those savings, they write, could 'upgrade coverage for the tens of millions who are under-insured'. ... Of the total of $471 billion in BIR [billing and insurance-related costs], an estimated $375 billion—or 80 percent—is 'additional spending' that would be eliminated by 'a simplified financing system' such as single-payer, the report said. |
- See Wikipedia article: Obamacare.
- Healthcare-NOW! - Organizing for a national, single-payer healthcare system. And: Wikipedia.
- Physicians for a National Health Program. And: Wikipedia.
Universal health coverage by country
Universal healthcare and harm reduction
Portugal decriminalized drugs (based on harm reduction), and has universal healthcare. |
- Wikipedia: Drug policy of Portugal. And Wikipedia: Health in Portugal. And Wikipedia: Harm reduction.
- See also: Portugal. Cannabis-related links.
- Drug war failure: Greens want Portuguese model in Australia. July 19, 2015.
In the USA the Tea Party should support single-payer Canadian healthcare! It is universal healthcare, and gets better health results on average compared to the US. And it costs less per capita.. Many US physicians support single payer.
Also, the Tea Party should support harm reduction in Portugal. It saves billions of dollars by not putting people in jail for drugs. It saves billions more in court and policing costs.
Universal healthcare is the norm in Europe and is essential to Portugal's decriminalization of drugs.
- How Billie Holiday Was Hunted Down Early in the Drug War. April 9, 2015. From the article:
"Imagine if the government chased sick people with diabetes, put a tax on insulin and drove it into the black market, told doctors they couldn’t treat them, ... and then sent them to jail. If we did that, everyone would know we were crazy. Yet we do practically the same thing every day in the week to sick people hooked on drugs." - Billie Holiday, 1956. |
Majority of Americans support Medicare-for-all
- Poll: Majority of Americans Favor Idea of Single-Payer Healthcare System. By Mary Ellen McIntire. December 17, 2015. "Fifty-eight percent of Americans favor the idea of Medicare-for-all, a form of providing universal health insurance, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released Thursday."
Click to enlarge:
Health insurance administration costs
Obamacare is better than the old healthcare system. Drug rehab for harder drugs is now paid for by Obamacare. It is far cheaper than jail. But Obamacare does not cover everybody because of the incredible waste of health insurance companies. Single-payer covers everybody (including veterans, most of whom are only partially covered by Veterans Administration care).
Health insurance paperwork wastes $375 billion yearly! CNBC, Jan 13, 2015. Expand for quotes. |
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They estimate the cost of covering all of the roughly 40 million Americans still lacking health insurance would be equal to just about half of the $375 billion in projected savings. The balance of those savings, they write, could 'upgrade coverage for the tens of millions who are under-insured'. ... Of the total of $471 billion in BIR [billing and insurance-related costs], an estimated $375 billion—or 80 percent—is 'additional spending' that would be eliminated by 'a simplified financing system' such as single-payer, the report said. |
- President of Physicians for a National Health Program: Single-Payer is The Only System that can Achieve Universal Health Care. Jan. 20, 2016. From the article:
"We're talking about an overhead of about less than 3 percent [in Medicare], which is in huge contrast to private insurance companies, which runs in the double digits, often as high as 18 percent."
Single payer is much easier to use (almost no paperwork for patients), is far cheaper per capita [13], and gets better overall health results.
- U.S. Healthcare Ranked Dead Last Compared To 10 Other Countries. June 16, 2014. Forbes: "Many continue to falsely assume that we pay more for healthcare because we get better health (or better health outcomes)." Why Do Other Rich Nations Spend So Much Less on Healthcare? The Atlantic. July 23, 2014. And 200 million claims were denied yearly before Obamacare. [14][15][16][17][18].
Health insurance companies suck money from their hosts, but provide no tangible service. Just like toll-road companies. See: Toll Roads Are A Bad Idea. Both just handle the money, and take a cut of the money. Health insurance companies build costly buildings to house the accounting staff, and claim deniers. Toll companies build costly 16-lane toll plazas, often on expensive urban land.
More in Minnesota have health coverage but still can't afford to be sick. July 26, 2015. "In Minnesota, the share of people with health insurance has climbed to 95 percent from 91 percent since 2013, as the federal Affordable Care Act has taken hold. But insurers such as Blue Cross and Blue Shield and Medica have competed hard to hold down premiums as more people shopped for coverage; one way to do that is to offer more products with high deductibles and other forms of 'co-insurance.' ... As a result, even those with health insurance can face out-of-pocket costs that run to thousands of dollars, and health care providers, big and small, are seeing more bills that are left unpaid. Court cases filed by health firms seeking repayment have more than doubled since 2005, according to a Star Tribune analysis of state court records."
Doctors quitting because of bureaucracy
- I quit medicine. Here's what future doctors should know going into it. Rachel Kwon. 15 June 2016. The Guardian.
Before Obamacare started in January 2014
- Patients Mired in Costly Credit From Doctors. Oct. 13, 2013.
- Despite slight drop in uninsured, last year’s figure points to 48,000 preventable deaths: health expert. Sept. 12, 2012. Due to lack of health insurance.
Cannabis is safer
Return to top. See article: Cannabis is safer.
Obama correctly said that cannabis is safer than alcohol. See: Cannabis is safer. He also said marijuana should be treated more as a public health issue than a criminal one. And: Obama signals support for legalizing medical marijuana. [19]. See video.
USA. 1 in 10 deaths of working-age adults are alcohol-related (disease, overdose, car crashes, falls, violence, etc). 87,798 per year, 2006 to 2010. [20][21][22][23][24]. See longer article: Cannabis is safer.
Imagine if Mitt Romney had been elected President in 2012 instead of Obama.
Obama on marijuana legalization. [25]. "My suspicion is that you’re gonna see other states start looking at this". The Washington Post. Jan. 22, 2015.
Above quote is from Sanjay Gupta interview of Obama on April 15, 2015. Interview aired on CNN on April 19, 2015. [26][27][28].
Obama administration asks Supreme Court to reject lawsuit filed by Republican governments in Oklahoma and Nebraska to stop legal marijuana in Colorado [29]. December 2015.
Holder's Legacy: Steering Away From the Drug War and Mass Incarceration. [30]. Attorney General Eric Holder (2009-2015) under President Obama.
The majority of people incarcerated in prisons and jails in the USA are in due to drug-related offenses, crimes to get money for drugs, or drug-related parole or probation violations. Wikipedia: Drug-related crime. The number of inmates in the USA has increased almost 5 times over since 1980. It peaked in 2008. Obama's Democrat landslide in 2008 turned the incarceration rate around. The cost of the U.S. drug war is at least 1.5 trillion dollars. Cannabis is safer! Share link. |
References
- ↑ The political economy of universal health coverage. Background paper for the First Global Symposium on Health Systems Research, 16–19 November 2010, Montreaux, Switzerland. Pacific Health Summit. National Bureau of Asian Research (November 2010). “Figure 2. Global Prevalence of Universal Health Care in 2009; 58 countries: Andorra, Antigua, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Luxembourg, Moldova, Mongolia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Panama, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, UAE, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Venezuela.”