Imagine Single-Payer Healthcare and what the reaction would be. [View all]

[MineralMan]

Single-Payer healthcare is by far the best way to distribute healthcare among a population. No question about that at all, and most of the industrial world has already implemented it. So, why don't we have that?

Simple. It's tax-supported healthcare. Like Social Security and Medicare, we pay into it and everyone in the program benefits from it. And that's the issue that would bring screams from the Right. A lot of people would be covered who would be unable to contribute to their coverage. Poor people. Old people. Struggling people. And yet, a Single-payer universal healthcare system, like the ones in most of the western world, would cover healthcare costs for those people, just as much as it would cover healthcare for everyone else.

We're getting complaints from the libertarians, the Republicans, the young, in some cases, and others about the unfairness of mandatory health insurance in the ACA. Imagine what we'd be hearing if real tax-supported single-payer universal healthcare were being implemented this year. Everyone pays according to their income and everyone benefits according to their need. That's the idea. You pay now, while you're healthy, and get healthcare when you're not, and maybe even when you are no longer paying into the system.

But, we're impatient, selfish, and short-sighted. That's obvious from the complaints about ACA. Had this year been the first year of tax-supported single-payer universal healthcare, I can promise you that the screaming would be many decibels louder, and it would be coming from the same voices who are screaming now about ACA.

We must decide, as a nation, whether we want healthcare to be a right, not a privilege. We must decide and we must accept that we all have to pay the costs of it. Until we do, we will not have single-payer universal healthcare. Until we become a nation that accepts that we must think long-term instead of short-term and that those in need today may be us tomorrow. We must develop a better social consciousness than we have now. We must grow.

Bottom line: The complaints, whining, and screaming we're hearing now about ACA would be ten times louder if single-payer universal healthcare was being implemented this year. That is why we do not have it. To get it, we are going to have to make a shift in our way of looking at a lot of things.