It's time to guarantee healthcare to all Americans as a human right Bernie Sanders

[Uncle Joe]

Let’s be clear. The current healthcare system in the United States is totally broken, dysfunctional and cruel. It is a system which spends twice as much per capita as any other major country, while 85 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured, one out of four Americans cannot afford the cost of the prescription drugs their doctors prescribe, and where over 60,000 die each year because they don’t get to a doctor on time.

It is a system in which our life expectancy is lower than almost all other major countries and is actually declining, a system in which working-class and low-income Americans die at least ten years younger than wealthier Americans.

(snip)

Since 1998, the private healthcare industry has spent more than $11.4bn on lobbying and, over the last 30 years, has spent more than $1.8bn on campaign contributions to get Congress to do its bidding.

(snip)

Under Medicare for All there would no longer be armies of people billing us, telling us what is covered and what is not covered and hounding us to pay our hospital bills. This simplicity not only substantially reduces administrative costs, but it would make life a lot easier for the American people who would never again have to fight their way through the nightmare of insurance company bureaucracy.

(snip)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/18/healthcare-us-human-right-medicare-for-all-bernie-sanders

[CrispyQ]

1. Seriously, I thought a pandemic would change everyone's mind.

People would see that it's important to keep the entire community healthy, even the folks you don't like, so you don't get sick! But I couldn't have been more wrong! Seen on FB:

We're going to have to retire that old phrase,
"Avoid it like the plague," cuz it turns out, we don't.

[Grins]

2. I'll go one further: Health care is a matter of national and economic security.

[kacekwl]

3. Yes please. I will

Vote for any one, any party that makes that happen. I'm sure millions more that pay thru the nose for the right to live in reasonably good health without going broke will join me.

[Marcus IM]

4. America is not Cuba

And that is for sure.

The Cuban gov't forces universal health care on Cubans just to placate them.

A DUer actually posted that in response to some questions about Cuba's health care system.

[Uncle Joe]

5. Apparently Cuba is forcing their people to live longer too!

They just don't know the perks and freedom of allowing their citizens to die at a younger age.

The U.S. knows better, it helps solve the social security funding problem if more of our people would just die younger.

(snip)

PIP: The new Cuban government in 1959 began overhauling the for-profit health system which, 30 years later, resulted in free health services for all its citizens which is integrated with national social and economic development. Life expectancy in Cuba is higher than that of the US (72.5 vs. 71.9). Health workers have eliminated polio, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, and diphtheria. Malnutrition incidence amount 1-15 years olds is 0.7% compared with 5% in the US. The Cuban health system began in the 1960s as a curative system based in hospitals but shifted during the 1970s and 1980s to a primary health care system based in communities. It consists of 6 hierarchical, interlocking levels: national health institutes and hospital centers (quaternary care-super specialty), provincial hospitals (tertiary care-high specialty), municipal hospitals (secondary care-specialty), area health centers (primary or community care) serving 25,000-30,000 people, sector polyclinics serving 4000-5000 people, and minipolyclinics served by a family physician team (family physician, nurse, and social worker) covering 600-700 people. The family physician team strategy has strengthened disease surveillance and completed information about health status and characteristics of neighborhoods. Neighborhood residents determine their own health care and protection. In fact, volunteer brigades build minipolyclinics and housing for family physicians and nurses. Critics of the Cuban health care system claim that the physician-to-population ratio is too high and that it makes up too much of the gross national product (almost 15%). Yet even though the US health system is the largest industry in the US and it has achieved impressive technological advances, the health of millions of US citizens deteriorates. The US needs a system that provides just, equitable, and quality health care to all. Thus US social workers should actively work toward national health insurance and on service delivery models.

(snip)

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2315760/#:~:text=Life%20expectancy%20in%20Cuba%20is,with%205%25%20in%20the%20US.

Not just that but apparently they don't value the freedom of allowing "health" insurance corps to make a killer profit on the Cuban peoples' health care.

They have a lot to learn.

I wonder if they even have any billionaires?

Certainly not as many as we do, so they don't to worry about leaving their billionaires behind.

(snip)


All of this despite Cuba spending just $813 per person annually on health care compared with America’s $9,403.

In Cuba, health care is protected under the constitution as a fundamental human right. As a poor country, Cuba can’t afford to equivocate and waste money upholding that. This pressure seems to have created efficiency. Instead of pouring money into advanced medical technology, the system is forced to keep people healthy.

(snip)

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/11/cuba-health/508859/

[Marcus IM]

6. Strange that Democratic reps support the same things for Americans that Cuba has. Sanctions remain

Even some DUers argue for the current US extraterritorial sanctions that for 60 years are specifically designed to cripple the Cuban economy - but call out Cuba's bad economic condition and blame it on communists and marxists.

Whacked.

[Uncle Joe]

7. What's most strange is how the Republican Party has all but given up on governing

trying to improve the peoples lives and the total accepting by their leadership of frauds in the Congress.

As far as I can tell virtually none of the Republicans Reps in Congress even care, it's like mass psychosis.

Too many of them have have gone fascist or at best are acquiescing to it.

That scares me much more than Cuba

[Marcus IM]

8. How and why would Cuba scare any American?

I don't get it.

[Uncle Joe]

9. The emotional roots gong back to the Cold War.

The mercenary roots being our corporate media is for all things corporate/oligarch first, last and in the middle.

In U.S. Royalty they're our barons, dukes and I believe the vast majority of time power behind the throne...but less and less behind it.

FOX being a prime example

To them any concept of the public good, ie: Medicare for All represents an existential threat to their personal bottom line.

Follow the money.

[Marcus IM]

10. Oh, I know. Fl. politics R and D is all about punishing Cubans in Cuba.

Utter fuckkery to attempt to starve a nation that threatens no one into submission for American style crony crapitalism.

[Uncle Joe]

11. I believe times are somewhat changing for the better in that regard

There seems to be an increasing number of connections, at least over years past.

[Rhiannon12866]

12. Well said. It's long past time that we caught up to the rest of the western world...

[Hortensis]

13. By all means, Bernie, if it's time, DO it.

2016's "Pearl Harbor" kind of smashed Democrats' agenda for expanding on what we started and we're still fighting for survival of our democracy and the people's right to choose ANY healthcare system.