Um, maybe they tapped into the 1.3 trillion/year Pentagon budget and decided to use our tax dollars for the benefit of people instead of blowing up others to smithereens for the benefit of the super-wealthy?
We already pay enough for health care for all – we just don’t get it. If you think you're not already paying (getting gouged actually) for "health care" you have allowed yourself to be brainwashed by industry propaganda.
Americans already have the highest health spending in the world, but we get less care (doctor, hospital, etc.) than people in many other industrialized countries. Because we pay for health care through a patchwork of private insurance companies, about one-third of our health spending goes to administrative costs.
Replacing private insurers with a national health program would recover money currently squandered on billing, marketing, underwriting and other activities that sustain insurers’ profits but divert resources from care. Potential savings from eliminating this waste have been estimated at $400 billion per year. Combined with what we’re already spending, this is more than enough to provide comprehensive coverage for everyone.
All other industrialized countries have some form of universal government run health care, mostly single payer. They get at least as good care as measured by all 16 of the bottom line public health statistics, and they do it at 40% of the cost per person on average. If our system were as efficient, we would save over $1.5 TRILLION each year.
On average, other wealthy countries spend about half as much per person on health than the U.S. spends- gee, how do you think they afford that? Which is THE ONLY country (OECD) that does not provide health care to all it's citizens- get the picture yet?
Still loving the private- FOR PROFIT gouging US HEALTH INSURANCE (don't confuse it with CARE) SYSTEM?
Some data:
Here are the per capita figures for health care costs in 2016 in PPP dollars (which take cost of living into consideration) from the OECD:
US - 9,892.3 (this spiraled to $10,224 in 2017)
UK - 4,192.5
France - 4,600.4
Australia (similar obesity) - 4,708.1
Germany - 5,550.6
Denmark - 5,199.3
The Netherlands - 5,385.4
Canada - 4,643.7
Israel - 2,775.7
Switzerland (Highly regulated private insurance) - 7,919.0
Let's compare some bottom line statistics between the US and the UK which has real socialized medicine.
Life expectancy at birth:
UK - 81.1
US - 78.8
Infant Mortality (Deaths per 1,000):
UK - 3.8
US - 6.0
Maternal Mortality (WHO):
UK - 9
US - 14
The WHO using a formula developed by The Harvard School of Public Health ranks our system as 38th in the world. (France & Italy are 1 & 2). This formula doesn't include costs. Bloomberg ranked countries' systems on efficiency which does include costs. We came out as 50th out of 55.
As Einstein said,
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
