Bernie Sanders Is Once Again Saying the Us Spends Twice as Much on Healthcare Cnn Twitter

Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont and a erstwhile presidential candidate, is serving his 2d term in the US Senate. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion articles on CNN.

(CNN)Permit'southward exist clear. The American people are increasingly tired of a wellness care organisation that works for Wall Street investors, insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry -- but ignores their needs. They desire existent alter, and poll later on poll shows that they want to movement toward a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system. And for proficient reason.

Today, the United States has the virtually expensive, inefficient, and bureaucratic health care arrangement in the world. Despite the fact that we are the only major state on earth not to guarantee health intendance for all -- and have 30 million uninsured and fifty-fifty more who are underinsured -- we now spend more than twice as much per capita on health care every bit the average developed country.

According to a recent Arrangement for Economic Co-performance and Development assay, nosotros spend more than than $10,300 per capita on health intendance. Meanwhile, Canada spends merely $4,826, French republic spends $iv,902, Germany spends $5,728, and the United Kingdom spends $4,264.

Further, despite this huge expenditure, which now constitutes near xviii% of our GDP, our wellness intendance outcomes are worse than most of these other countries. For instance, our life expectancy is 2.five years lower than Germany's and our bloodshed rate for children under the historic period of nineteen is at the top of the list compared to other developed countries.

The ongoing failure of our health care organization is directly attributable to the fact that -- unique amid major nations -- information technology is primarily designed not to provide quality care to all in a cost-effective way. Instead, the system makes maximum profits for health insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry and medical equipment suppliers.

The Medicare-for-all legislation that I wrote, which at present has 16 co-sponsors in the Senate, would provide comprehensive health care to every man, woman and kid in our state -- without out-of-pocket expenses. No more than insurance premiums, deductibles or co-payments. Farther, information technology would expand Medicare coverage to include dental and vision care. In other words, this plan would do exactly what should be done in a civilized and democratic lodge. It would allow all Americans, regardless of their income, to get the health intendance they need when they need information technology.

Nether the electric current system, while thousands of Americans die each yr because they lack admission to the health intendance they desperately need, the top five health insurance companies last year fabricated $21 billion in profits, led by the UnitedHealth Grouping, which made $ten.56 billion.

As tens of thousands of American families face bankruptcy and financial ruin because of the outrageously loftier toll of health care, the CEOs of major insurance companies receive disgustingly loftier levels of compensation. Co-ordinate to Axios, in 2017, the CEO of UnitedHealth Group, Dave Wichmann, received $83.2 one thousand thousand; the CEO of Aetna, Marker Bertolini, received $58.seven million, and the CEO of Cigna, David Cordani, received $43.ix million.

Today, equally an indication of how dysfunctional our current arrangement is, about 1 out of every five Americans cannot afford to fill the prescriptions given to them past their doctors considering we pay, past far, the highest price in the world for prescription drugs. A 2013 study showed that in 2010, the United states paid, on average, about double what was paid in the United Kingdom, Australia, and Switzerland for prescription drugs. Since 2014, the cost of 60 drugs commonly taken has more than than doubled, and 20 of them accept at least quadrupled in cost.

While millions of Americans are unable to afford the medicine they desperately need, or are forced to cut their pills in half in order to save money, five top drug companies made over $50 billion in profits last yr and, in 2015, x prescription drug CEOs fabricated a combined $327 million in total compensation.

Would a Medicare-for-all wellness care organisation exist expensive? Yes. But, while providing comprehensive health care for all, it would be significantly less costly than our current dysfunctional system because it would eliminate an enormous corporeality of the hierarchy, administrative costs and misplaced priorities inherent in our current for-profit system.

Instead of doctors and nurses spending a pregnant part of their solar day filling out forms and arguing with insurance companies, they could exist using their time to provide care to their patients. We'd be able to save upwardly to $500 billion annually in billing and authoritative costs. That money could be used to greatly expand primary care in this state and make sure that all Americans got the health intendance they needed when they needed it -- saving billions on expensive emergency room intendance and hospital visits. Instead of paying the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, we could save hundreds of billions over a ten year period through tough negotiations with the drug companies.

The benefits of a Medicare-for-all, single-payer organization are and so obvious that even a recent study washed by the right-fly Mercatus Center estimated that it would save Americans more than $2 trillion over a decade, reducing the projected cost of health intendance between 2022 and 2031 from $59.7 trillion to $57.6 trillion. Needless to say, that wasn't the point the study attempted to emphasize. Rather, the author of the study was hoping the headline -- "Medicare for All costs the federal authorities $32.half-dozen trillion" -- would frighten the American people and get them to oppose it.

While opponents of Medicare for all focus their criticism on the increased taxes the American people will have to pay, they conveniently ignore the fact that ordinary people and businesses will no longer have to pay sky-loftier premiums, co-payments and deductibles for private health insurance.

At a time when wellness intendance in 2018 for a typical family unit of four with an employer-sponsored PPO plan now costs more than $28,000, according to the Milliman Medical Index, the reality is that a Medicare-for-all system would relieve the boilerplate family meaning sums of coin.

A recent report by RAND institute that moving to a Medicare-for-all system in New York would salvage a family with an income of $185,000 or less nearly $3,000 a year, on average. Even the projections from the Mercatus Center suggest that the average American could save about $half dozen,000 under Medicare for all over a 10-year menstruum.

A Medicare-for-all system not only benefits individuals and families, it would benefit the business community. Small- and medium-sized businesses would be gratuitous to focus on their cadre business goals instead of wasting precious energy and resources navigating an incredibly complex organization to provide health insurance to their employees.

Needless to say, there is huge opposition to this legislation from the powerful special interests that profit from the current wasteful system. The insurance companies, the drug companies, Wall Street and the Koch brothers will undoubtedly spend billions on lobbying, campaign contributions and television ads to defeat Medicare for all. But they are on the wrong side of history.

Here is the bottom line: If every major country on earth can guarantee health care to all and achieve improve wellness outcomes, while spending essentially less per capita than nosotros do, it is absurd for anyone to suggest that the U.s.a. of America cannot practice the same.

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Source: https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/16/opinions/medicare-for-all-now-bernie-sanders/index.html