Lowering the Cost and Increasing Access to Health Care for All

According to our Insurance Commission, there are at least one million people in our State – including more than 100,000 children without adequate access to health care. Even for those with heath care, the cost has skyrocketed thanks to deregulation of the health care industry.

US health care costs are nearly triple what they are in Europe.

Inability to pay for a major illness is the leading cause of bankruptcy in the US.

While the Supreme Court has upheld Obamacare as Constitutional, it does not lower the cost of health care, because it still allows corporations to profit by killing people.

Nor does it fully cover those with pre-existing conditions who are most in need of health care. It still allow corporations to charge much more for those with pre-existing conditions, essentially driving those with medical problems to bankruptcy much like the current system does. Thousands of Americans will still die every year in order to maintain billions in corporate profits. 

“The current health reform law still keeps the fox in charge of the henhouse.”

Obamacare shifts costs to consumers, offers inadequate or unaffordable access, forces Americans to pay higher deductibles for less coverage, and ends up scamming average Americans. Wendell Potter, Former CIGNA vice president.

Physicians for a National Health Plan concluded that Obamacare is unaffordability for most people “because of high co-pays and gaps in coverage that leave patients vulnerable to financial ruin in the event of serious illness;” and also vulnerable to rising predatory costs of for-profit corporations who siphon off hundreds of billions of dollars in excess profits.

Obama also opposed the corporate mandate as a candidate for President in 2008.

A Full Employment Program would Expand Access and Lower the Cost of Health Care for All
Our full employment program would also provide apprenticeships in the health care field to provide quality health care through an improved Medicare for All program which is free to everyone in need, and will save money by reducing the massive wasteful health insurance bureaucracy. And it restores freedom of choice so you pick your health care provider, and your care is decided by you and your nurse or doctor– not by a greedy for-profit insurance executive. This will also be State funded and locally controlled.

Universal Health Care would be billions of dollars cheaper than the private insurance mandate enacted by Congress and would guarantee that everyone would be covered.

Vermont has already adopted Universal Health Care and there are bills in many other States including Oregon, California and New York. We need a truly universal health care system like every other industrialized nation on this planet.

There is a Universal Health Care bill in the Washington State legislature:

I have proposed a slightly different universal health care plan which uses a fairer and more efficient source of revenue: