Your Turn: Tired of poor service and high copays? Ask Phoenix to vote on Medicare for All Your Turn: It's largely a symbolic vote, but there are real savings behind it if Phoenix chooses to affirm its support for a federal Medicare for All plan.

Benjamin Y. Fong | opinion contributor

The health-care system in the United States is the most expensive and the least effective in the industrialized world.

We pay about three times what other countries pay per capita, and yet we have one of the lowest life expectancies, the highest infant and maternal mortality rates, and highest rates of deaths from preventable diseases.

Nearly 30 million people are uninsured, and another 40 million are underinsured. If we are lucky enough to have health insurance, we’re burdened with increasingly unaffordable premiums, co-pays and deductibles.

Our system was built for profit, not care

The source of our health-care woes is clear: Our employer-based, multipayer corporate health-care system is built for profit, not care. While health-care outcomes decline, health insurance companies are enjoying record profits, their CEOs are making $20 million a year on average, and their administrative bloat is obscene — 18 percent of their costs, by their own numbers.

There is a huge and complicated bureaucracy standing between Americans and their health-care providers, one that keeps people from getting the care they need for the sake of making money. Compare this with a relatively simple system like Medicare, which bears only a 3 percent administrative overhead.

It’s no surprise that, according to multiple polls, a majority of Americans support a Medicare for All plan like the one proposed by Bernie Sanders in the Senate and Keith Ellison in the House.

Medicare for All would save Phoenix millions

Sanders unveils 'Medicare For All' bill Sen. Bernie Sanders is proposing legislation that would let Americans get health coverage simply by showing a new government-issued card. And they'd no longer owe out-of-pocket expenses like deductibles. (Sept. 13)

Medicare for All would establish a single, public, universal health insurance system where everyone, regardless of their employment or immigration status, will have insurance. This means comprehensive health care that is free at the point of service, paid for not on the backs of the sick but through taxes on the rich: no fees, no copays and no deductibles.

Both bills also include the establishment of a jobs and retraining program for those who currently work in the health insurance industry and would lose their jobs if the private health insurance system were abolished.

Earlier this month, I presented a petition to the Phoenix City Council that asks that the council and Mayor Greg Stanton declare their support for Medicare for All, a plan that would:

provide health insurance to the 1 million Arizonans without it,

bring health-care costs down for the average family by $5,000 a year, and

allow us to rein in corrupt pharmaceutical companies like Insys Therapeutics in Chandler, whose founder was recently arrested on racketeering charges related to opioid overprescription.

The mayor and council may argue that this is a federal and not a city issue, but Medicare for All would save the city about $500 million a year in expenses.

How you can help: Call your reps

The council must vote on this petition at their next formal meeting May 16. While this vote is only a symbolic affirmation of a commitment to universal health care, the council’s endorsement would send a clear message that Phoenix cares about the health of its residents.

In addition, Mayor Stanton, who is running for the House of Representatives this fall in the 9th Congressional District, may soon be in a place to vote on House Resolution 676, the Medicare for All bill.

If you want to eliminate our exploitative private health insurance industry and guarantee health care as a basic human right, call Mayor Stanton and your city councilperson to let them know that they should support the petition for Medicare for All.

You can reach Mayor Stanton’s office at 602-262-7111 or mayor.stanton@phoenix.gov. The contact information for your city councilperson can be found at https://www.phoenix.gov/mayorcouncil.

Benjamin Y. Fong is an Honors Faculty Fellow at Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University. Reach him at benjamin.yenyi.fong@gmail.com.

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