By Ron Crumpton, Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate
In 2010, congress passed legislation that made it illegal to deny insurance to those with pre-existing conditions, allowed young people to stay on their parent's insurance until age 26, and provide financial assistance to those who could not previously afford health insurance.
With passage of the Affordable Care Act, there are more than 16 million people who have insurance that did not have it before, and the apocalyptic consequences predicted by naysayers, including those heavily invested in the previous broken system, have not come to pass.
While the Affordable Care Act has improved the lives of millions of Americans, there are many who have fell through the cracks due to holes in the system and the refusal of many Republican Governors, like Alabama Governor Robert Bentley, to expand Medicaid.
Other shortfalls of the legislation can be directly attributed to the millions that insurance companies, big pharma, and other companies in the healthcare industry spent on lobbying to influence the politicians who crafted the legislation.
The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) has been an undeniable success, and an important step in improving the health care of the American people, but it is just a step and not the final solution.
There are still more than 33 million Americans that do not have medical insurance, and many Americans have either faced complications with their insurance coverage, or seen their premiums rise based on the revenue based decisions of private, for-profit insurance companies.
For these, and other reasons, I am a strong advocate for single-payer health care as the best solution to our chronically expensive, and under covered health care system. We need a Medicare for all system nationwide.
Single-payer health care is when the government collects all health care fees and pays all health care costs. This would eliminate waste and allow us to provide medical care to everyone for less than we currently pay as a nation in insurance premiums. This system has successfully allowed countries like France, Canada, and Taiwan to rank well ahead of the United States in the cost, and quality of health care rankings.
In addition to profits, insurance companies have high administrative costs due to executive salaries, advertising, lobbying and other business related expenses that would be eliminated under a single-payer system.
Hospitals would see a reduction in billing and administrative costs by dealing with a single-payer as opposed to dealing with more than 1,500 insurance companies with different rules and procedures for billing and obtaining approval for medical services.
Everyone would have the same access to medically necessary services, devices and prescriptions. There would be no fees or copays, and care would be based on need and not the patient's ability to pay. Costs would go down for everyone.
Instead of paying insurance premiums, employers would pay a payroll tax of 4.75% on all employees, and employees would be accessed a payroll tax of 3.5%.
According to a study by the New England Journal of Medicine, 95% of Americans would pay less for health care than they are paying now, and that even with the vast increase in comprehensive care, a single payer system would reduce overall cost by $400 billion annually.
This plan would not only increase the availability of health care that is based on patient affordability, it would increase access because we would be able to prevent the closing of many of our rural hospitals that has been epidemic due to rising costs. The plan would provide them with a budget that would allow them to serve the people in their area.
The simple fact is, the availability of care should not be based on one's ability to pay, and the health of the American people is not something that provide huge profits to companies that try to provide us with as little health care as they can get away with under the law.
This is especially evident when it comes to absurd prescription drug costs, when identical drugs from Canada, and other countries cost considerably less than their US counterparts, the system is broken, this is most harmful for our senior citizen population who live on a fixed income, and those with chronic conditions who need medication as part of their daily lives. The recent stories of price gouging on life saving medications in the United States demonstrates this disturbing problem.
Health care is a human right. The health of the American people directly affects the health of our economy and our nation as a whole, and it is important that we do everything that we, as a nation, can do to provide every American with the heath care they need, when they need it.