{"id":309582,"date":"2017-05-24T14:40:40","date_gmt":"2017-05-24T13:40:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/opponents-of-single-payer-think-youre-stupid-but-nothing-is-dumber-than-a-for-profit-healthcare-system\/"},"modified":"2017-05-24T14:40:40","modified_gmt":"2017-05-24T13:40:40","slug":"opponents-of-single-payer-think-youre-stupid-but-nothing-is-dumber-than-a-for-profit-healthcare-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/opponents-of-single-payer-think-youre-stupid-but-nothing-is-dumber-than-a-for-profit-healthcare-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Opponents of Single Payer Think You're Stupid… But Nothing Is Dumber Than a For-Profit Healthcare System"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lack of critical thinking: it\u2019s killing us. And if you get alarmed by the headline of a May 22, Sacramento Bee<\/a><\/em> article, it will continue killing us.<\/p>\n

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One of the few reasonable opinions President Trump expressed recently \u2013 in the face of stark ridicule \u2013 is that healthcare reform shouldn\u2019t be that difficult. \u201cNobody knew<\/a>\u201d He quipped.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I like boiling the healthcare discussion down to very few words \u2013 four in fact \u2013 live longer, pay less. When looked at with those four words in mind, the answer changes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Nobody knew? Well some folks do.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Just look at whom lives longer and pays less. Why the Canadians, the Brits, the French, the Dutch, the Japanese, the Swiss, the Danes, the Italians, the South Koreans, the Israelis\u2026 They knew. <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I could go on and on, but I don\u2019t need to. \u2018Cause if you\u2019re still reading this and you favor our system of paying more and dying sooner \u2013 well forgive me \u2013 but perhaps you\u2019re just too stupid to live.<\/p>\n

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And if the U.S. Healthcare system only caused the untimely and early demise of stupid people \u2013 like Paul Ryan \u2013 who prefer a profit drenched system, then it might be ok. But you and I pay for Speaker Ryan to have some of the best health insurance in the country, so no, it\u2019s not working out that way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Back to the article in the Sacramento Bee<\/em> \u2013 and I\u2019m not blaming the reporter because her editor likely wrote the headline, which reads, \u201cThe price tag on universal health care is in, and it\u2019s bigger than California\u2019s budget,\u201d and while technically true, it\u2019s still less then the price tag on our current system. And in the case of California\u2019s newly proposed Universal Healthcare plan, everyone is covered.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe price tag on universal health care is in, and it\u2019s bigger than California\u2019s budget,\u201d is like saying, the price of a family\u2019s new car is in and it\u2019s more than the grocery budget. It\u2019s just erroneous math compounded with irrelevance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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See using their comparison, the newspaper infers an outrageous price for universal healthcare, but doesn\u2019t adequately mention the savings from scrapping the current for profit insurance system. When you read the article written by Angela Hart, you see that she did look into savings. She even accounted for $100 to $150 billion that employers pay in right now. Her article is far more scholarly than the scare-tactic headline implies. But she says the accounting still falls $50 billion short overall. That\u2019s because there\u2019s no mention of out-of-pocket cash payments (or those foisted onto overburdened credit cards) that also go to pay for our current for-profit system.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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So let’s do this differently.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Right now, Hart\u2019s article says that the cost of California\u2019s proposed single payer system would be $400 billion. But using statistical information released in 2016, the U.S. spends \u2013 on average – $10,345 per person<\/a> for healthcare \u2013 and that\u2019s counting the people who don\u2019t even get it. California has \u2013 as of 2015 \u2013 39.14 million<\/a> people. The total cost for the current system is $404.903 billion. That\u2019s nearly $5 billion more that Californians pay to \u2013 you guessed it \u2013 die sooner.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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$5 billion that could be better spent teaching headline writers logic and math.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Via Common Dreams<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lack of critical thinking: it\u2019s killing us. And if you get alarmed by the headline of a May 22, Sacramento Bee article, it will continue killing us. One of the few reasonable opinions President Trump expressed recently \u2013 in the face of stark ridicule \u2013 is that healthcare reform shouldn\u2019t be that difficult. \u201cNobody knew\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-309582","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309582\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}