Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org (Home - Stephen Lendman)

It’s the only equitable system, no other, supported by thousands of US doctors nationwide.

America is the only developed country without universal coverage, spending on average double the annual per capita amount in these other nations - a deplorable system, designed for profit-making, not providing essential healthcare for people in need.

Marketplace medicine in America is the world’s best - based on the ability to pay. A fundamental human right is commodified, rationed to enrich insurers, drug companies and large hospital chains instead of providing vitally needed universal coverage.

WaPo editors lied, claiming “single-payer health care would have an astonishingly high price tag.”

Its source: the establishment Urban Institute (UI) - outrageously claiming Medicare for all would increase government spending by $32 trillion over the next 10 years. Utter rubbish!

UI’s board of trustees includes a former US deputy attorney general, university presidents supporting dirty business as usual, a leading global PR firm chairman and CEO, a former Clinton chief of staff, a former Clinton HUD secretary, and a real estate development firm chairman, among others like themselves.

WaPo: “(E)xpanding Medicare to all would not automatically result in a radically more efficient health-care system.”

“A big reason (Washington) does not clamp down on health-care spending is that it is hard to do so politically.”

“Doctors and hospitals have…resisted efforts to scale back the reimbursements they get from federal health programs.”

“To realize the single-payer dream of coverage for all and big savings, medical industry players, including doctors, would likely have to get paid less and patients would have to accept different standards of access and comfort. There is little evidence most Americans are willing to accept such tradeoffs.”

All of the above arguments and similar ones are specious - other than the political one because US administrations and Congress are corporate-controlled.

Rich and powerful interests run things for their own benefit, ordinary people shut out. “We the people” is a meaningless figure of speech, applying only to America’s privileged class.

If instituted like in all other developed nations, universal coverage would be funded by “savings obtained from replacing today’s inefficient, profit-oriented, multiple insurance payers with a single streamlined, nonprofit, public payer, and by modest new taxes based on ability to pay,” Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) explains.

“Premiums would disappear; 95 percent of all households would save money. Patients would no longer face financial barriers to care such as co-pays and deductibles, and would regain free choice of doctor and hospital.”

“Doctors would regain autonomy over patient care.” Hundreds of billions of dollars spent annually for insurance premiums would disappear. Burdensome bureaucratic paperwork and hassling from insurers would be eliminated - taking valuable time away from patient care.

Millions of Americans under Obamacare and Trumpcare (under the House-passed version) are left uninsured - most others way underinsured, leaving them vulnerable in case of catastrophic illness or injury.

Hospitalizations and drug prices are increasingly unaffordable for tens of millions of Americans.

Insurers game the system, stripping down policies, limiting or denying care, increasing co-pays, deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs.

The cost of healthcare in America is “disproportionately borne by middle and lower income (households, along with) families facing acute or chronic illness,” PNHP explains.

Americans spend far more for healthcare than do citizens and residents of any other country worldwide.

Yet its marketplace medicine system delivers less than all other industrialized countries for tens of millions of its citizens.

It’s a deplorable situation, rectified by universal coverage - everyone in, no one left out.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

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My newest book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."