By Chris Graham for Augusta Free Press

I’m not here to give you chapter, verse and footnotes on single-payer, why we need to join the rest of the industrialized world in making access to healthcare a basic human right.

You don’t need the data to tell you what’s right.

If you’re of the mindset that the gubmint shouldn’t have anything to do with your healthcare, you’re likely also one who gets government-sponsored healthcare from Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, parts of all of the above.

Or you have a job that provides great healthcare coverage, and you assume you will always have a job that provides great healthcare coverage.

I get why you folks don’t want to see any changes to the status quo.

The ones I can’t understand are the folks who don’t have healthcare coverage at work, don’t qualify for the gubmint healthcare that’s in place now, and still think this single-payer gubmint healthcare thing I’m talking about is bad, mainly because you’re told to by some squawker on the TV.

When you get sick, you don’t go to the doctor. You wait until they get really sick, and then still don’t go to the doctor.

You pray they don’t fall on the sidewalk and end up getting an ambulance ride to the ER. That’s two bills totaling several thousand dollars that comes out of pocket.

God forbid you have something serious happen. Millions are an MRI away from bankruptcy.

A relative of mine was severely injured in a freak accident years ago, and ended up permanently disabled. Her parents went bankrupt, lost their house, ended up divorced because of the stress.

This story happens every day in every community across our great nation, supposedly the wealthiest nation in the world, in history, across the many epochs.

Single-payer takes care of that.

Folks who already have gubmint healthcare won’t lose anything. Those who have great healthcare coverage from their jobs won’t lose anything.

The gubmint healthcare under single-payer would, over time, be less costly. Take the profit motive out of healthcare, and we end up saving 30 cents on the dollar that doesn’t go toward the delivery of healthcare, but goes to middle managers trying to make sure the investors get return by denying coverage.

You know this intuitively, despite what you’ve been sold.

The fearmongers are more transparent than you’re willing to consciously concede.

It’s not about the gubmint having their hands in your healthcare. It’s about who’s proposing it.

You can admit it. If Republicans were the ones pushing single-payer, if Fox News, if Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, were behind it, you’d be all for it.

A little secret for you: all of those guys, they have gubmint healthcare, 10 times better than anything you can dream of having access to.

They don’t have to worry about a big co-pay for a trip to the doctor or emergency room. Or about losing their house if a family member is diagnosed with cancer.

Can you imagine?

Let yourself.

Recent News

Single Payer Resources

Join H.O.P.E.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *