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Subject: Single Payer Universal Health Care
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Download and print these trifold brochures to help promote single payer
Universial Health Care

http://www.kucinich.us/supporter_resources/otherpdfs/HealthCareBrochurePetition.pdf

http://www.kucinich.us/supporter_resources/otherpdfs/HealthCareBroch_NoPetition.pdf

Learn More:
http://www.kucinich.us/issues/universalhealth.php

Health care is currently dominated by insurance firms and HMOs, institutions
that are more bureaucratic and costly than Medicare. Right now, private
companies are charging about 18% for administration, while the cost of
Medicare administration is only 3%. People are waiting longer for
appointments. Fewer people are getting a doctor of their choice. Physicians
are being given monetary incentives to deny care. Pre-existing illnesses are
being used to deny coverage. It's important to understand that insurance
companies make more money by NOT providing health care. A single-payer
system can save money by investing in preventive care, as well as by cutting
out the insurance companies' profits.
Insurance companies do not heal or treat anyone. Physicians and health
practitioners do.

Non-profit national health insurance will actually decrease total health
care spending while providing more treatment and services -- through
reductions in bureaucracy and cost-cutting measures such as bulk purchasing
of prescriptions drugs. A study by researchers at Harvard Medical School and
Public Citizens found that health care bureaucracy last year cost the United
States $399.4 billion. The study estimates that national health insurance
could save at least $286 billion annually on paperwork, enough to cover all
of the uninsured and to provide full prescription drug coverage for everyone
in the United States.

How would we pay for it?
Funding will come primarily from existing government health care spending
(more than $1 trillion) and a phased-in tax on employers of 7.7% (almost $1
trillion). Employers who provide coverage are already paying 8.5%, on
average. That would raise about $920 billion. In addition to that, there's
already over a trillion dollars being spent a year in local, state and
federal dollars for health care. The American people are already paying for
universal health care; they're just not getting it.

Privately delivered health care, publicly financed -- has worked well in
other countries, none of which spend as much per capita on health care as
the United States. The cost-effectiveness of a single-payer system has been
affirmed in many studies, including those conducted by the Congressional
Budget Office and the General Accounting Office. The GAO has said: "If the
US were to shift to a system of universal coverage and a single payer, as in
Canada, the savings in administrative costs (10% to private insurers) would
be more than enough to offset the expense of universal coverage."

Over the years, groups and individuals as diverse as Consumers Union, labor
unions, the CEO of General Motors, the editorial boards of the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution and St. Louis Post Dispatch, and Physicians for a
National Health Program have endorsed a single-payer approach. In the
"Physicians Proposal for National Health Care," 7,782 physicians agreed that
"proposals that would retain the roles of private insurers -- such as calls
for tax-credits, Medicaid/CHIP expansions, and pushing more seniors into
private HMOs -- are prescriptions for failure."

It is sound economics -- what actuaries call "Spreading the Risk" -- to
extend Medicare to younger and healthier sectors of our population, thereby
putting everyone in one insurance pool. It permanently saves and improves
Medicare, while eliminating duplicative private and government
bureaucracies.

====================================
Petition to the Democratic Party:
We Want Universal Health Care
(you do not have to be a democrat to sign the petition)
http://www.kucinich.us/petitions/petition_text_uhc1.php?s=p
I, the undersigned, approve the establishment of a universal single-payer
national health care system in the U.S.

Such a system will be publicly financed and privately delivered, allowing
people to choose their own health care providers. The system will provide
preventive health care, dental care, mental health care, and affordable
prescription drugs. This system will make health care available to everyone,
regardless of pre-existing conditions, status of employment, or income
level.

I urge Democrats to make this resolution a plank in the 2004 party platform.

http://www.kucinich.us/petitions/