PREFACE: Everbody who has looked into single-payer at all by now knows the cost advantage of eliminating profit-taking insurers from the system. What is not often discussed in the single-payer debate, is that as we would all be paying in to the system through our taxes, even when we are 22 and think we will never need expensive health care, it will cost us each much less per year than any voluntary insurance program which is always dominated by higher-risk participants. Then when anyone is unfortunate enough to need high-cost care the program will have no trouble paying for it. A universal pool like this is a huge advantage to the viability of a program.
The FREE FAX to Senators on the Finance Committee has been provided by 1payer.net, here.I can't afford private health insurance. I'm out of work due to what I hope is a temporary disability, and I'm too young for Medicare. I have an IRA so I won't be destitute when I'm too old to work, especially important as I'm childless and a lifelong tenant, so unless I'm willing to sacrifice my life's savings which would only create serious problems when I'm too old to cope, I'm not elegible for Medicaid. Last year when I was on Cobra, I had a mammogram which showed a suspicious area that should have been retested in 6 months. I can't afford the retest. Single payer would have kept me from having to play Russian Roulette with my life.
Our economic crisis most likely would not have been as serious if we had had single-payer for the past 30 years as industry would not have been crippled in its competition with other industrialized countries by having to subsidize the health insurance of its workforce. Adopting single-payer now would be the single most effective jobs program this country could create. It would be an enormous business subsidy that would give to the taxpayer infinitely more than it takes, given the consequences of such an enormous "insurance" pool of young and old, healthy and sick. Entrepreneurs would be given a real chance at success.
Please give us single-payer health care to save lives and add jobs.