A Growing Wave Favors Single Payer Health Care
D. S. Mitchell
Across the nation our cities and towns are full of working families, seniors and students who are uninsured or struggling with unmanageable health care costs. Americans spend more money per person on health care than any other industrialized country with worse results.
For many, the lack of access to affordable health care leads to decreased quality of life. It often is choices. The choice of being able to work, or attend school. A choice between food, or medication. For others it boils down to waiting until the health care situation becomes emergent. Sadly, for many it leads to death.
Health care affects all Americans. Whether it affects you, or your neighbor, your sister, your grandmother. Affordable health care crosses traditional boundaries and is one public policy issue that touches us all. It is a unifying thread of need, not of agreement.
The New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt offered new ideas and new solutions for a country without health care and created the first American social safety net. More than eighty years have passed since the first struggles to provide basic health care was initiated in the United States. A lot has happened since the 1930’s but America still is struggling with a realistic view of health care. Public health care policy that serves the most people the most effectively should be the agreed goal.
As I have mentioned in the past it is time we join the countries of the modern world and provide health care for all. Once you decide health care is a human right, not the privilege of a few that are wealthy enough to afford insurance, great movement can take place. Once that thought has been internalized we must take those beliefs to the ballot box. Vote your values and make sure that your elected officials vote our values. We must hold them accountable.
I recommend you decide your top three issues that will cinch your vote. Such as: health care, abortion, environmental protections. Then carefully read the party platform for both of the parties. Because no matter what that candidate says, or says he believes, the party platform will tell you point-blank how he or she will vote when presented with legislation. The candidate will fall in line behind the rest of the party and vote the party platform. The tax bill vote last night proves that point. The senators voted along party lines. Period.
We are a two-party system,the Democrats and the Republicans. The Republicans have made it their mission to destroy health care in America, while the Democrats are torn between two factions within the party, one demanding single payer (Medicare For All or Universal Health Care) and the other group supporting an ObamaCare type system.
That struggle between competing ideologies I believe will soon coalesce around single payer. I was at a Town Hall Meeting with my representative, Suzanne Bonamici recently. There were about two hundred at the meeting. Suzanne asked how many supported Medicare For All. Every hand in the room went up. I am a supporter of single payer, but I was surprised at the support it got.
The single payer idea is gaining momentum nationwide and Bernie Sanders is carrying the banner to the younger generation. A forward thinking vision is needed in Washington DC. Right now the congress is filled with old, white men. I believe that 2018 and 2020 will see a dramatic transformation in the face of the American congress. I am encouraged by a vigorous grassroots participation that has bloomed since the 2016 election. Empowerment is in the air. Dialogue is happening. Now we need to send Democrats and Progressive Independents to the halls of government. It is time to create a new congressional image. That means, white, brown, yellow and red. Women and transgender and gay. Muslim, Jew and Christian. We need a congress that looks and thinks like the majority of us.
Until we replace the old face of the government with a fresh new face, one committed to health care for all; we as a country will struggle with health debt bankruptcies, uninsured and under-insured people, and untreated conditions.
Until we have those new legislators that are committed to single payer health coverage call and voice your concerns to your members of Congress. Stay abreast of your local issues. Don’t miss an election. Participate in the process. Run for office, volunteer to distribute yard signs. Donate.
To my Oregon readers be sure to vote YES on Referendum 301 to affirm our commitment to health care for all Oregonians. Mail-in ballots must be returned by January 23, 2018.
Calamity Politics is a voice of the Resistance. Support Medicare For All.
Join the Resistance.
Dar
