Expanded and Enhanced Medicare For All

Next to the Kitchen Table Economy - rising prices at the pump and grocery store, the most important single issue that would address the basic fear of most people would be to replace expensive, hard to access, and incredibly inadequate 69th rated remedial sick care with Comprehensive, Holistic, full-spectrum and effective Health Care as a Human Right for EVERYONE.

The FIRST step on the road to that cure would be to pass HR3421 style Medicare For All.  It's likely that the bill will be reintroduced next year and will, as usual, be ignored unless We the People demand it be considered.

HR3421 - Expanded and Improved Medicare For All Summary

See how much your family will save: Medicare For All Household Savings Calculator

The Government (taxpayer) is already covering over 60% of the cost of the current increasingly failing system.  This isn't "government health care", it's eliminating the leeches in the middle whose control of the system is fatal and who are not necessary for the provision of care.

Interesting facts about how bad things really are today:

The COST of Corporate Profit in "Health Care"
November 11, 2024

As has long been the case, the U.S. health care system is by far the world’s most expensive while providing the worst results among the world’s advanced capitalist countries. And that expense continues to get larger and more unaffordable.

Just how large is the cost of private profit in health care? Almost two trillion dollars! Unbelievable? It certainly seems so. But that is indeed how much more money the people of the United States spent on health care in 2022 than they would otherwise have spent if the U.S. had a single-payer system. This is the direct result of a health care system that is designed to extract maximum profits rather than deliver health care. A system unique in the world in the extent that corporations such as insurance and pharmaceutical companies are allowed to play such a large role.

Health care spending in the U.S. is so extreme that the spending by the U.S. government alone is higher than the total spending (as a percentage of gross domestic product) of any other country. Incredibly, the government was banned from negotiating drug prices until the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 was signed into law, but only some drug prices in some programs can be negotiated, a bountiful windfall for Big Pharma. Spending on health care in the U.S. in 2022 reached 16.6 percent of the country’s GDP with government spending alone accounting for 14 percent of GDP. The country with the next highest total, Germany, saw total health care spending account for 12.7 percent of its GDP.

Another sobering result of U.S. health care is that United Statesians “live the shortest lives and have the most avoidable deaths.” The Commonwealth Fund reports pulls no punches about this sad result:

“The U.S. ranks last on four of five health outcome measures. Life expectancy is more than four years below the 10-country average, and the U.S. has the highest rates of preventable and treatable deaths for all ages as well as excess deaths related to the pandemic for people under age 75. The ongoing substance use crisis and the prevalence of gun violence in the U.S. contribute significantly to its poor outcomes, with more than 100,000 overdose deaths and 43,000 gun-related deaths in 2023 — numbers that are much higher than in other high-income countries.”

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/11/10/the-cost-of-corporate-profit-in-u-s-health-care-reaches-2-trillion/

(Behind a very low paywall.  Counterpunch is worth a few bucks)