Image: Politico

Pelosi is not your friend.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a bold message for Americans: she doesn’t care about what you want.

The talks around single-payer healthcare, also interchangeably called Medicare for All, has been a hot topic amongst the Democratic Party. This week, over 100 House Democrats have put forward a single-payer bill.

However, Nancy Pelosi has yet to support the bill despite it being overwhelmingly supported by Americans.

Recently, in a Rolling Stone interview, Nancy Pelosi was quoted saying, “Single-payer…That is, administratively, the simplest thing to do, but to convert to it? Thirty trillion dollars. Now, how do you pay for that?”

Nancy Pelosi is being purposely obtuse. You might ask how?

Yes, implementing Medicare for All would cost us $32 trillion. However, by saying that statement you’re only representing half of the truth. The truth is that keeping our current system in place will cost us $37 trillion.

Mercatus Center, a right-center think tank that has been in part funded by Koch Industries and ExxonMobil, accidentally proved the case for Medicare for All. In the study, the Mercatus report found that Medicare for All would actually save us $2 trillion.

"Let me thank the Koch brothers, of all people, for sponsoring a study that shows that Medicare for all would save the American people $2 trillion over a 10-year period,” Sen. Bernie Sanders said in a video he shared on Twitter. “I suspect that it is not what the Koch brothers intended to do, but that is what is in the study of the Mercatus Center."

However, newer studies have shown that the savings could be even more. According to a study by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, we could actually wind up saving $5.1 trillion.

While all of these savings are happening, all Americans would have basic health coverage.

Pelosi even says herself that administratively switching over would be the simplest thing to do. After all, not having to bill hundreds of separate insurance plans would cut administrative costs greatly.

The false talking point about not being able to afford it has been debunked time and time again. We can’t afford to NOT pay for it.

We could expect these kinds of lame talking points from the Republicans, but this is our Democratic leadership, people!

Image: SF Gate

BuT aT LeAsT sHe CLapPeD aT tRuMp!

Overwhelmingly Supported By Americans

Over half the country currently supports Medicare for all. According to a new Reuters survey, 70% of Americans support it. That’s more than half the country.

What does it say about our political system if what the people OVERWHELMINGLY want is completely ignored and tossed to the side? Instead, the wants of the greedy few outweighs the needs of the many.

So why is it so popular? Well, our current system provides us with more expensive healthcare for worse health outcomes in comparison to every other industrialized nation.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans are still uninsured and around 47% of Americans can’t afford to cover a $400 emergency.

That’s almost half of the country…

Costs More For Worse Health Outcomes

In the U.S., 1 in 3 campaigns on GoFundMe are for medical bills.

Americans are paying more than other developed nations for the same prescription drugs.

Humira — a top-selling injectable medication to treat rheumatoid arthritis — is set at $2,699 per administration in the U.S.

Image: Vox

That’s twice as much as the price in the U.K. and our salaries are not much higher than theirs.

The U.S. ranks last on most measures of financial barriers to care, with one-third (33%) of adults reporting they did not take a prescription drug, visit a doctor when sick, or receive recommended care in the past year because of the expense.

- commonwealthfund.org

The U.S. also ranks last when it comes to healthcare outcomes when compared to other industrialized nations. There are many deaths that could have been prevented if people didn’t put off going to the doctor because of how EXPENSIVE it is.

U.S. citizens shouldn’t have to sacrifice their health to appease health insurance & pharmaceutical companies who continue to profit off of us and deny us care while having spent nearly $555 million on lobbying in just 2017 alone.

The travesty that is the U.S. healthcare system costs everyone more. By allowing Americans to access free healthcare whenever we need it, we would pay less overall, see better outcomes, and eliminate massive amounts of debt that many of us go into over medical bills.

But are the Medicare for All outcomes as good as we think they would be?

Medicare For All Health Outcomes

There’s been a lot of fear around whether “government controlled” healthcare would result in worse health outcomes. However, according to study after study, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Our current system has ranked us in at last in comparison with the U.K., Canada, France, Germany, and the Netherlands — just to name a few.

Out of all of the countries ranked, the U.S. is the only one that doesn’t offer universal health insurance coverage.

Another great example is the Veterans Health Administration.

Image: www.va.gov

The Veterans Health Administration is the largest integrated provider of health care in the United States. The medical care is provided by the federal government to eligable veterans.

Despite many attempts and arguments to private the system, the VA healthcare system has consistently out-performed the non-VA/private sector in quality of care and patient safety.

In an independent study back in 2013, veterans were highly satisfied with their the care that the VA provided them with.

In fact, the same can be said for many other government-provided health plans in the United States.

Americans who get their health insurance through government-sponsored or assisted plans, such as Medicare and Medicaid or veterans insurance, are more likely to be satisfied with the way the healthcare system is working for them than those who have employer-paid insurance or who pay for insurance themselves.

- Gallup News

It should go without saying that Americans without healthcare are the least satisfied.

How To Pay For It

In the U.S., the first step that we need to take is to get rid of the for-profit middleman known as the insurance companies.

Senator Bernie Sanders proposed some options to finance Medicare for All:

Taxing capital gains

Limit tax deductions for the wealthy

Raise the estate tax

Impose a one-time tax on currently held off-shore profits

What it comes down to is making the wealthy, Wall Street, and profitable corporations pay their fair share in taxes — something they should have already been doing!!!

Another suggestion, we can also stop spending trillions of dollars on offensive wars and cut our military bases in half.

To say that one of the wealthiest nations in the world can’t afford to provide healthcare for its citizens is absurd.

It’s good to know that when the banks decided to make poor decisions that bankrupted them, the government happily bailed them out — but when it comes to the health of their citizens…well, the price seems to be far too steep.

So why isn’t Nancy Pelosi supporting Medicare for All? Because she’s paid not to.