Single Payer is Better
One summer the butterflies disappeared from our small town where American farms were introducing a new pesticide. I became an environmentalist at 9. Clean air seemed to be something that was being taken for granted, and still is.
Not long after that realization, I was at my father’s church practicing piano when I heard a scream in the basement. The janitor had fallen and was having convulsions — it was one of the scariest things I’d ever seen. His epileptic attack had not damaged his head or body, but the ambulance arrived when he was still knocked out. When he became conscious, he was angry, “I don’t need an ambulance! I can’t pay for this! I don’t need this!” and he ran away in fear.
Last summer, when I was 47, a young woman had an epileptic attack in the New Jersey cafe I was visiting. I was so glad I was not alone this time, and many people came to her aid. When the ambulance arrived, there didn’t seem to be any fear about what was happening. I was worried that she did not have insurance, but perhaps, I thought, the ACA meant she was still on her parents’ plan.
What if she was uninsured? This morning on NPR, I heard a health insurance CEO complaining that not enough healthy people are buying health insurance. If this was her, she’d arrive at the hospital and they would ask for insurance information, and if she did not have it, the hospital would bill her family the most expensive hospital fees in the world.
Possibly, if she were living under the poverty line, she might qualify for Medicaid. But if she lived in Kansas, she could still be out of luck, since Medicaid has been under funded and limited by Republicans in their opposition to Obama’s ACA.
My husband, Jonathan Sarrow, and I have been publicly advocating for single payer healthcare since the late 1990’s. We thought single payer made economic and moral sense, to protect everyone from prenatal care until death, and that more than enough countries have demonstrated success at universal healthcare. Since then, we’ve seen our insurance payments climb steadily, both for our personal expenses and as an expense for business. We have a family member who is now on COBRA, and his pre-existing condition will make his insurance more expensive than ours, even under the ACA.
Before we moved to New Jersey, we attended Healthcare for All meetings in the San Fernando Valley, and we walked with NAMI (National Alliance for Mental Illness). Mary, who benefitted very much from, and provided outreach for NAMI, used to say how single payer work was really “pro-life,” but we all acknowledged then that the term has lost wholistic meaning, especially in the politics of 2016. Providing more universal access to physical health care and mental health care simply does promote life and healthy families.
We all wanted the ACA to pass to insure more people, and we supported it as a stepping stone to a Single Payer system. The ACA has done very good things, like train doctors and expand non-profit healthcare in L.A. The Republicans intend on reversing this beautiful outcome from the ACA.
I have visited two of these nonprofit clinics, and they affordably provide wholistic care to women, children and men, comprehensive AIDS care, adolescent care, mental health, dentistry and optical care. We need to expand nonprofit healthcare like this to more neighborhoods because they provide excellent care while they control costs, and can include everyone.
Personally, we, like many Americans, have very expensive health insurance. I don’t believe that most of the medical care me and my family have received has been the same quality, or had the consistency that nonprofit clinics seem to offer. The exception to this is our children’s Pediatrician’s network, whose family supports Single Payer Healthcare for greater access and affordability. These are principles they apply to their own practice already.
The California Senate recently passed #SB562, which may be the beginning of a nonprofit movement, but as of August 1st, nonprofit health care seems far less important to Democrats than rolling back local control of CO2 for oil companies; accomplished by Jerry Brown in only two weeks.
Health insurance is not directly about providing health care, yet “coverage” is all the press, politicians and industry reps can talk about; how and where and who will have health insurance. For-Profit health insurance was introduced by Richard Nixon, who envisioned an affordable public/private system that covered everyone, without any sense of a “pre-existing” condition. My insurance company could not care less if me or my family sees a doctor regularly — but the companies that pay for insurance do.
Health Insurance today is about limiting medical treatments, and limiting access to doctors, but providing immense wealth to CEOs and shareholders through our premiums, copays and “deductibles.” Profit is standing in the way of most Americans receiving life-giving healthcare. This scalping of profit from health care spending, heavily funded by middle and upperclass families, is often defended by the industry and their lobbyists, as an “economic” need to retain administrative jobs that have grown faster than health care providers. Home-office insurance executives positions now outnumber licensed female doctors in the U.S. We have a national crisis the insurance companies don’t talk about: We have a doctor shortage.
The health insurance CEOs make anywhere from $8–$30 million dollars each. The “CEO” Superintendent of the Los Angeles school system, the 2nd largest in the nation, who employs thousands of people, and educates over 600,000 students, makes much less than $1 million a year. The budget of a wholistic, nonprofit clinic is less than $1 million (with ACA funding). Despite this enormous private wealth, insurance “providers” are asking Congress to subsidize their outlay for the sick. They are privatizing the profits, and asking the public to treat disease. This all happens in the light of day, among the din of well-funded, willful, political deafness, but don’t call them bad people for their greed, and don’t demand better access or better health care outcomes.
I don’t know about you, but I want my health care dollars treating the sick, training more doctors, and building community clinics, not continuing to expand the health insurance profession, and multi-million dollar CEO salaries.
Single Payer, Universal Healthcare is the only way to:
- Saves millions of Californians and Businesses Rising Premiums and Deductibles — Health insurer profits now nearing $1 Trillion
2. Lower pharmaceutical prices through public negotiations
3. Public responsibility and transparency encourages funding and training for new doctors, forgiving loan programs, and building more health centers — the public arm of the ACA has been doing this, and Trump is stopping it.
4. Hopefully, Single Payer/Medicare for All could create more public momentum to finally clean the air.
Saves Lives. Saves Money. Provides more Care.
No wonder 70% of Californians want it. Single Payer is Better
I’ve met so many SP activists in the last few weeks, from every generation, who are standing up for better health care, and better access. Standing up for the women and children who need it most. Standing up for minorities and immigrants that need it most. This is a civil rights issue, and an environmental health issue, and, it corrects the long standing economic injustice of American healthcare policy.
Join with us:
Single Payer is Better https://www.facebook.com/SPisBetter/
Please support Health Care for All California
and Courage Campaign lobbies for SP: https://www.facebook.com/CourageCampaign/ Sarrow Studio and Courage Campaign held a Single Payer workshop in July (I’ll post details on my website later)
We love Nurses!! https://www.facebook.com/calnurses/
We support Labor United for Universal Healthcare http://laborforhealthcare.org/
California Coalition for SP https://www.facebook.com/CampaignForAHealthyCalifornia/
Hold Speaker Rendon accountable for not taking #SB562 to the Assembly Health Committee: https://www.facebook.com/RecallRendon/
P.S. Power is also standing in the way of most Americans receiving healthcare, but Congress and the Pentagon have plenty of doctors. In Washington D.C., there are almost 4.5 times as many doctors per 100,000 people as the entire state of California.
