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Yahoo!Sitting on the governor's desk awaiting signature at this moment is Senate Bill 840, considered to be the gold standard in single-payer health care financing bills. Imagine your current health plan, however good or bad it might be, then add comprehensive coverage of dental care, vision care (including eyeglasses), mental care, hospice, hearing aids, chiropractics, acupuncture, preventive care, substance abuse treatment, the list goes on, and of course prescription drugs. Now remove all of the co-payments and deductibles.
Sound too good to be true? It's not. Politically independent analysts (and the fact that most of the industrialized world has some form of single-payer) support its financial viability. In fact, the state would actually save money. Funding comes from the existing federal block grants, and from everyone who is able to pay into the system. If you have any sort of comprehensive health care coverage now, you (and your employer, if they are contributing) will be paying less under SB840.
Around 30 percent of our health care dollars are currently wasted by the private insurers. The buying leverage of a single-payer also yields huge savings. Having everyone participate in a single risk pool is the clear winner for financing of health care, as no one can ever predict what their needs will be with certainty. The current system of multiple risk pools is woefully inefficient and wasteful. Please urge Governor Schwarzenegger to sign this bill into law!
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You have to ask yourself one simple question, if you are skeptical about single-payer.
If they use this financial model in many large industrial nations, and they are as terrible as the rightwing Rupublicans like to say, why haven't they been repealed?
Remember in many of these nations they operate under "parlimentary" types of governmental systems. In those systems in one election you can sweep into national power when one political party gains the majority number of seats in their legislative house.
So if the healthcare system was terrible in Germany, France, or Denmark you would have seen public outcry and elections would have caused action to abolish or reform these systems.
So as my friends on the Right like to say let the "market" decide. Well it has. Hundreds of millions of Europeans live under these systems and are apparently satisfied. THAT IS THE MARKET.
We should do this. If the Governor won't do it, then his eventual successor will. We have to keep beating on this issue until we are successful and get it passed.
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nick_needs_insurance (anonymous profile)
September 15, 2008 at 12:08 p.m. (Suggest removal)
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