(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) Progressives will continue to promote the single- payer idea, with U.S. government would provide direct health services to all Americans. The Veterans Administration (VA) health care system is a socialized, Although the VA system has offered good health care to many.
Table of contents
- 1. CANADA’S NHI – OVERVIEW, ORIGINS AND HISTORY
- Navigation menu
- Universal health care
- A radically patient-centered proposal to fix health care in America
Martin Luther King Jr. King was envisioning ending poverty and ensuring economic and social rights for all, including people of color who were -- and still are -- most affected by economic injustice, and he predicted strong resistance from the powers that be. Half a century later, progress toward this vision has been halting at best, and resistance is enduring to this day.
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- Kush (Boys of Rome Book 2)!
- A single-payer system, like Medicare, is the cure for America's ailing healthcare.
The country is currently experiencing the largest concentration of wealth since the s and the biggest income inequality gap since the late s , with inequitable financing of health care directly contributing to this injustice. In the private health insurance system, low-income people pay proportionally more for health care than the wealthy, while receiving lower value insurance plans.
One in three people in the U. This inequitable market-based system -- with its different and unequal insurance products, different and unequal prices for health services, and different and unequal access to doctors -- is both unjust and unsustainable. Public, tax-based financing of health care would take an important step toward realizing Dr.
King's vision by ensuring both universal access to care and equity in the payment for care. Moreover, it could free up resources for other public services, since universal health care is about sharing costs more equitably, not raising new money. To situate this in Dr. King's frame, radical health care reform is about economic redistribution through taxes, not about raising extra billions of dollars.
1. CANADA’S NHI – OVERVIEW, ORIGINS AND HISTORY
Vermont's movement for the human right to health care has produced new evidence for this. Governor Shumlin's own proposal for public financing showed that 9 out of 10 families would see their incomes increase if the state moved to universal health care, with only the wealthiest facing a decrease, while the system overall would generate substantial savings.
Yet the governor's plan tanked because his business tax proposal was inequitable: That is why Vermont's Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign recently prepared its own equitable financing plan , using the governor's data as a baseline but adding new revenue designs. At the core of this plan is an innovative, progressive business tax that takes into account company size as well as wage disparity.
Tax obligations would be lower for small businesses and for those with low wage gaps between the top 1 percent and bottom 50 percent of wage earners. This would ensure not only that businesses pay based on their ability, but also incentivize them to raise rather than lower wages for the majority of workers. Other revenue sources modeled in the Campaign's plan include a progressive income tax and a tax on the capital gains, stocks, and financial transactions of the wealthiest 1 percent.
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This plan, published by the Vermont Workers' Center and the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative , shows that public health care financing at state level is not only financially and economically feasible but essential for paving the way toward a more equitable society.
By moving from private, market-based insurance to public financing of universal care, we flip the way we pay for care, so that low- and middle-income people pay a smaller share of their income on health care than the wealthy -- the opposite of the current system. The Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign's financing plan was delivered to Vermont legislators along with an open letter from over economists from across the country. Health care is not a service that follows standard market rules; it should be provided as a public good.
In Edward Hare's words, "It's making us uncompetitive and turning us against each other. And nearly everyone admirably avoided the political rhetoric that has clouded rational thought about a truly complex problem. The possible causes related to the symptoms suggested above are numerous in a channel that includes, in your comments, food and tobacco producers of unhealthy products Christy Hitchens, Tom Dolembo ; lifestyle equipment and service providers; developers and manufacturers of high-cost pharmaceuticals and medical equipment James Shanahan, Karen ; health care providers such as doctors and hospitals placing profits before client needs David Stahl, John Van Slyke, Roger Chen, Jan Fersing, Hugh Quick, among others ; the agency problem separating payers such as individuals, businesses, and the Government from users Adam Hartung, Tom Witt, William Freyd ; profit-oriented risk managers and payment processors such as insurers R.
MacKenzey, Emre Erkut, and others ; specialized service providers including malpractice lawyers at various points in the channel C. Cullinane, Michael Otten, and others ; providers of currently insufficient and uncoordinated information and education Mark Beaty, Carlos V. All of this is transpiring in an economy in which more and more people work as contractors in need of portable self-insurance and a consumer-based rather than an employer-based insurance system Greg Bownik, Al Rossow, Katherine Daley.
No wonder it's hard to define the problem and take action or that several of you concluded that the response requires more time to gather and digest information, test ideas, define the purpose, and align it to a strategy Akram Boutros, Jack Slagle, Nikos Mourkogiannis, among others.
Universal health care
This all will require more leadership Paul Karras, Phil Clark. There was general agreement that change is needed. The means by which change should be achieved is in question. Where, for example, should fiat or regulation "push" , incentives or subsidies "pull" , or the provision of new information, education, or even competitive alternatives be employed?
- Comparisons of Health Care Systems in the United States, Germany and Canada.
- Sacrifice of the Season?
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Given the current proclivity toward "pull" or as we discussed in an earlier column, "nudge" to what extent and how should we employ incentives? For example, Curtis Craig suggested, "Let's incentivize quality of health care and deincentivize unhealthy or inefficient practices.
What do you think? It is said that health care is the biggest threat to the long-term health of the U. Americans pay much more for what they get at least measured in terms of share of GNP spent, results obtained, and the percentage of the population covered than any other country.
A radically patient-centered proposal to fix health care in America
And things don't seem to be getting any better. There are a large number of examples of various approaches to the problem extant in the world, nearly all of which include greater government involvement than in the United States. The current debate in the U. Harvard economist Greg Mankiw, for example, argues that a public option, to the extent that it will require Government subsidy while providing price leadership under a nonprofit cover, will over time drive most if not all health care to the public option as happened with home mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac , creating the equivalent of a single-payer option.
As he argues, "consumer choice and honest competition … are usually achieved without a public provider. We don't need government-run grocery stores or government-run gas stations to ensure that Americans can buy food and fuel at reasonable prices. For example, behavioral economists would tell us, among other things, that in the world of health care: Why, in a country that provides more medical research to the world than any other, can't Americans get health care right?
Is it a problem of too much money chasing the problem?