Why single-payer is the only way to go

You’re told not to like single-payer because big government, bad, private sector, good.

Truth: the private-sector healthcare system that we have costs more and delivers much less than single-payer systems in use elsewhere in the industrialized world.

We spend 17.9 percent of our GDP on healthcare, or $10,348 per person, nearly three times what the UK spends per person, and $2,500 more per person than the next biggest spender, Switzerland.

And both of those countries, and everyone else in the industrialized world using single-payer, cover everybody.

We don’t: 10.3 percent of non-seniors have no health insurance at all, and 28 percent of working adults are underinsured to the point that they basically can’t afford to use the health plans that they nonetheless pay for.

This, of course, makes absolutely no sense, and you have to ask, why do we do it this way?

Because money. That’s why the private sector gets out of bed in the morning. Hospitals in the U.S. spend 25 percent of their revenue on administration; single-payer countries spend 12 percent of revenues on administration.

Administration, in short, is money that we spend in the healthcare field that does not one thing in terms of actual healthcare; it’s money to people to push buttons on computers and print and mail out bills.

You’re told that ObamaCare was some kind of evil takeover of healthcare with the aim of making government bigger.

The people crafting that message are those who profit from the current system, and stand to lose literally billions of dollars if we were to make the change to the way things need to be.

If you’re among the nearly two in five Americans who either don’t have health insurance, or can’t afford to use it, the reason you’ll die earlier than you should is so that people who already have a lot can have a lot more.

Bottom line.

Column by Chris Graham