Single Payor Q&A

I found some interesting numbers on this site. Perfect for discussing pro and con with those who dont understand the argument For universal healthcare and think they are against it. URL to comparison/data chart points >>>http://www.grahamazon.com/sp/compare.php


In a single-payer health system, everyone has health insurance. According to the Institute of Medicine, 18,000 people in the United States die every year from a lack of health insurance--that's two people every hour.

Let's look at the systems side-by-side. You make up your mind. If you'd like to know where the numbers are coming from, you can always dig deeper. More comparisons are made in the Financing and Other Questions sections.

Think of how much less-crowded emergency rooms would be if people could see a primary care doctor when they were sick, instead of only going to an ER when they become sicker.

Click link in title or type www.grahamazon.com/sp/

Achieving Universal Health Care

Currently 47 million Americans do not have health care coverage. Millions more Americans are under-insured, causing bankruptcy and tearing families apart. Every other industrialized nation in the world provides a basic standard of universal care for its citizens. DFA members are working to make sure America's sick are no longer left behind.

DFA members have taken this fight local. From the California legislature to the Governor of Massachusetts, we've been on the ground lobbying local leaders to fix our broken system....

DFA members supported the expansion of the State Children Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) to cover more than 10 million American kids. We wrote letters, made calls and met directly with elected members of both parties. ...we worked in coalition with our partners in the Service Employees International Union and others to... overturn the President's veto.

In the words of Governor Howard Dean, "we can guarantee healthcare for all if we give every American the freedom to choose between keeping their private insurance - if they have any - and a universally available public healthcare option like Medicare." That is why DFA has launched StandwithDrDean.com -- the online organizing hub for healthcare reform.

select link in Title for Democracy for America Issues Healthcare

The Health Care Reserve Fund: A Historic Commitment to Reform

From The President via Whitehouse.gov

As I have said more than a few times before (even on this blog) reducing health care costs is the key to the country’s fiscal future and also to providing relief to American families from rising health care bills.

We began that process in February in the budget overview, which included a $634 billion health care reserve fund -- a substantial down payment toward health care reform. On Monday, when we release the Summary Tables and Analytical Perspectives of the Budget, you will see that the full Budget does exactly the same thing and includes $635 billion in a health care reserve fund.

As in the February overview, about half of the health care reserve fund in the full Budget comes from savings in Medicare and Medicaid that would improve the health care system’s efficiency and quality. There is a change (the "$635 billion" in the above paragraph is not a typo). In the time since we released the February overview, the health care reforms in the reserve fund have been re-estimated to save about $7 billion less over the next 10 years, while the limitation on itemized deductions has been re-estimated to save about $51 billion less over this period. We closed this gap by dedicating some other tax enforcement measures and loophole closers totaling $60 billion. This then brings the reserve fund in the full Budget to almost exactly the same total as before.

How do we do it?

(select link in title above to read more @ Whitehouse.gov also, follow the Obama administration on Twitter and Facebook)