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See the Events page March 4 (Thurs.) 6:30 pm SAHNC
monthly meeting
New location:
SAAPAC Office, 7122 San Pedro
April 8 (Thurs.) 6:30 pm SAHNC
monthly meeting
New location: SAAPAC Office, 7122 San Pedro See
the
Events
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See the News page
See the News
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The Lesson of the
Struggle for Healthcare Reform: Is American Democracy Truly the Best
that Money Can Buy?
by Frank "Pancho" Valdez A Different View of National Nursing Home
Week
by Frank "Pancho" Valdez We Need Single-Payer Healthcare, Improved
Medicare for All
by Diane Kilby Better than the Public Option by Mark Camann and Vibeke Mendonca-Lee |
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How YOU can help
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San Antonio Healthcare-Now Coalition
We believe
universal access to affordable,
quality health care is a basic human right.
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Congressional leaders are committed
to passing healthcare reform this year. What's the next step?
See our Events page.
Click here to read why the national Healthcare-Now organization opposes the current Senate bill. Click here to read the op-ed "Healthcare, American or European Style? The Choice is Yours," by our former co-chair Vibeke Mendonca-Lee. Click here to read the op-ed on single-payer that we submitted to the San Antonio Express-News. |
We advocate a single-payer solution to our nation's healthcare needs. Medicare is a single-payer system that is much more efficient and effective than corporate health insurance. If it were adequately funded, Medicare would be even better. We want Medicare to be expanded to cover all Americans throughout their entire lives.
Effective healthcare reform must meet
two essential goals: universal coverage, and long-term cost
reduction. As steering committee member Vibeke Mendonca-Lee
explains,
Our
present system fails on both counts. It is a fragmented,
inefficient mess. Yet, at any mention of a national health
program, anxious conservatives cry "socialized medicine, loss of
choice, rationing of care, and increased taxes!" So, let's look
at the realities:
The healthcare delivery system in
America is more than a crisis. It is a source of national shame
and international embarrassment. In spite of expenditures that more
than
double what most other industrialized nations pay per capita, we are
ranked only 37th in the
world by the World Health Organization in terms of longevity, infant
mortality, fair access, and overall
health maintenance. Recent
census data show that 47 million Americans remain uninsured, with
another 50
million inadequately protected against catastrophic illness. More than
a quarter of the uninsured are between the ages of 19 and 29.
Three in five personal
bankruptcies in
this country are the result of medical bills, with 3/4 of these
occurring in families who had insurance when illness struck. And,
perhaps most shocking, the National Institute of Medicine reports that
an estimated 45,000 Americans die needlessly each year simply because
they can’t
afford healthcare or are denied treatment by insurance companies
despite living in a wealthy country.
The reason for this dismal failure is simple. Under our current
for-profit insurance system, more than 30% of all healthcare dollars
are
wasted on administrative costs (primarily aimed at avoiding insurance
payouts), expensive advertising and marketing schemes, excessive
corporate salaries, lobbying for legislative protection of the status
quo, and stockholder profits. Despite ever-increasing premiums
shared
by employers and employees alike, 60% of all healthcare spending is
currently paid by federal programs, and 20% is paid by individuals
through
co-pays and deductibles, leaving for-profit insurance companies
responsible for only 20% of monies paid out while they collect billions
from both business and individual policyholders. Insurance companies
are free to avoid covering sick people, to deny coverage based on prior
illness, and to earn enormous profits by insuring primarily the young
and
the healthy, while public programs struggle to care for the old and the
sick.
The answer is equally simple: A single-payer, publicly funded,
privately provided healthcare delivery system would cover all
Americans, while eliminating administrative waste and duplication of
services. A single-payer system based on
Medicare would be established by HR
676, The United States National Health Care Act, which
has 85
Congressional cosponsors. (The same bill had 93
cosponsors in the 110th Congress.)
Our friend J. C. Dufresne of Cibolo
confronted much of the anti-single-payer rhetoric through his letter to
the San Antonio Express-News:
Every
day
we hear the same healthcare myths from politicians and industry
alike, but what are the facts?
Myth: We don't want a government-run
healthcare system like Canada where it takes a year to get a hip
replacement.
Fact: Some hospitals in some
provinces take that long, but many if not most don't. Let's
assume hip replacements only have waiting lists of six weeks in the
U.S. Guess who pays for the vast majority? None other than
Medicare, the federally-run single-payer system.
Myth: If we have government-run
healthcare, then healthcare will be rationed.
Fact: Healthcare is rationed now in
the U.S. to a much greater degree than any other developed
country. It's just that it's rationed to who can pay rather than
to who needs it most.
Myth: Government-run healthcare
won't let you choose your doctors.
Fact: Private insurance companies
don't let you choose your doctor. If the doctor you wish to see
isn't in your network, either you don't see him or you pay the bill
yourself.
Myth: Government-run healthcare
tells doctors which medications they can prescribe.
Fact: Private insurance already
tells doctors which medications they can prescribe by limiting what
they will pay or how high your co-pay will be.
Grassroots action is needed to make
single-payer politically feasible, as HR 676 is stalled in
Congressional committees due to the
opposition and influence of big insurance and big pharmaceuticals.
Supported by Physicians for a National
Health Program and
Healthcare-Now!, alongside a
broad grassroots
network of activists, faith-based organizations, labor, and
professional groups, HR 676 would provide comprehensive
health care coverage to all Americans while saving an estimated $317
billion annually. It does this by cutting out the middleman,
eliminating duplication of coverage, improving and expanding the
current Medicare system (which operates successfully with a 5%
overhead), without excluding pre-existing conditions or limiting care,
while preserving complete freedom of choice of healthcare providers and
leaving all treatment decisions to the patient and chosen physician. Click Here to read more about HR 676.
The
San Antonio Healthcare-Now
Coalition is affiliated with the national Healthcare-Now
movement. We are NOT affiliated with Health
Care
for America Now
(HCAN). Read about the difference between Healthcare-Now and HCAN
here.