Bring Single-Payer Healthcare
Single-payer healthcare, “Medicare for all.”: It’s one of Bernie Sanders’s core policy proposals and arguably what contrasts him most against the Democratic Party establishment. As lonely as he might appear behind his podium, Senator Sanders is certainly not the only person who advocates for such a system in which the government, rather than insurance companies, acts as the primary provider of medical care. Along with the congressmen who have endorsed the so-called National Health Care Act since its introduction to Congress in 2003, a majority of American physicians (according to the journal of the American College of Physicians) and the people of Britain, Canada, Australia, Spain and Taiwan can testify to its success. Sanders believes that the best way to realize the necessity of universal healthcare in this country is to eliminate the wildly inequitable, inefficient status quo that currently ties us down. No more complicated, misleading insurance plans and expensive bureaucracy—just a tax paid by those who have the means to a government that represents the interests of every American. And why, exactly, should we listen to Sanders?
America is no longer worthy to carry the title of “the greatest country in the world,” by any reasonable measure. Another nation hasn’t replaced us, per se; we’ve just simply failed to uphold the standards upon which our country was founded. Special interests have bought our elections, the half trillion dollars we borrow each year to bankroll our military is seemingly never enough to curtail international terrorism, we emit three times the amount of CO2 per capita as the European Union and our students’ test scores rank 30th in the world (think about that—can you even name 30 developed countries?).
As proud as we are about our national heritage and America’s role during the twentieth century, it is near impossible today to declare the superiority of our way of life with a straight face. And why should we? Instead of lying to ourselves, we must look at our problems squarely in the face and solve them, beginning with those we can definitely conquer, like raising our healthcare legislation to the standards of Western Europe (though it’s not a purely “single-payer” region, universal healthcare is, well, universal there). We currently spend three times more on medical services than countries like the United Kingdom, while diseases like diabetes and cancer continue to rise and America remains 39th in the world in terms of life expectancy. These facts need to change.
As the chief guardian of its people, should the United States government use the money it borrows to a) increase military spending and find out if “sand can glow in the dark”; b) convince people through advertising that it’s okay for the richest 10 percent of society to live 12 years longer than the poorest 10 percent and to oppose any changes to our healthcare system; or c) institute a single-payer, socialized healthcare system that has the potential to save our country five trillion dollars over the next 10 years and bring us up to par with the rest of the developed world? I imagine, at this point, that you’re able to see which answer I want you to choose (so choose it)!
Some opponents of a single-payer system claim that we shouldn’t be following Europe’s lead since our country is so much larger than those across the pond and that it’s not “American” of us to use them as an example. To those critics I respond: “American-ness” does not entail rejection of the outside world! It means embracing all the knowledge we can get our hands on, the successes and failures of past and present and combining that knowledge with a tad of bipartisanship to create the best healthcare system the world has ever seen. And I can assure you, whenever the single-payer movement wins the fight, the system we create will be uniquely tailored to the needs of Americans and will reflect the vital creativity that surely still lives within our people.
You may think my argument bizarre, rude, boring or lacking in specifics of policy, but I know one thing for sure: It is ethically awful that in the 21st century, millions of people in the United States of America are left to suffer without adequate healthcare. I urge those who don’t agree to look inside themselves and consider what sort of moral compass they claim to uphold. If we can’t base the decisions we make for our country (or lack thereof) on the virtues of respect, equity and love, who are we to judge those men who have no regard at all for human life?