Single-Payer Health Care Does Not Work
The best thing about all seven of these false accusations is the inconvenient truth that they are all currently present in the United States' current approach to healthcare, even after Obamacare was passed to reform
1.) We already ration care - and we do so based on income (read: "ability to pay"). If you get sick or injured and you have shit tons of money, you are likely to receive care by highly-paid specialists at the "best" hospitals and receive five-star service in a private room that looks more like a tile-floored hotel room than a hospital.
If, however, you get sick or injured and you earn a middle-to-lower class income, you can expect to pay most of a month or year's wages to sit for over an hour in an overcrowded waiting room at an understaffed hospital and see an overworked, overstressed doctor for less than ten minutes, and you may spend that wait sitting on a gurney in a hallway because the rooms are all filled.
But, according to idiots, single-payer healthcare will lead to the rationing of care.
2.) The charge that single-payer healthcare would not save money must exist in some magical space where math doesn't exist. Maybe the people who make this idiotic (not to mention statistically and empirically false) argument were those who Rick Santorum praises for being home schooled, because clearly they never learned the basic math skills that indicate "Greater Than" and "Less Than."
Here's is a chart showing a fun set of actual facts:
The United States spends 61% more money, per capita, than the next highest spender, Switzerland (based on 2008 figures - this number continues to increase).
The basis of this argument is that so much money is wasted on fraudulent cases, that it can't possibly cost less than our current system. Ironically, we spend more money per capita than every other nation in the world, and literally twice as much money as the vast majority of nations.
3.) Compensation of physicians and healthcare providers is a serious issue...and it should be considering a staggering 87.6% of American medical school graduates had outstanding educational loans averaging $129,943 (2006).
That's right...averaging. In the all-too-likely even that the math idiots who level other money-based charges against single-payer healthcare are formulating the arguments in support of this, just shoot them in the forehead. They're likely to pay less in health care costs...because they'll be dead.
I'm all in favor of physicians and healthcare providers being paid generous salaries for their services. I am not in favor, however, of receiving subpar services, being ignored for six-to-eight hours before I see someone, and being sent home misdiagnosed and paying them out the ass for it.
We already compensate our healthcare providers exponentially more so than any other country in the world, and for what? It's certainly not for...
4.) ...The quality of care we receive in this nation is not only not "the best in the world," it isn't even the "better than average"in the world. By every metric of comparison, we are one of the WORST providers of healthcare in the industrialized world...and we pay more for it than any other country in the entire world.
However, Conservatives and TeaTards would have us believe that we are receiving top-notch care. They are lying to you, and doing it with a straight face.
Let me stress this: WE are not receiving top-notch care; the rich are receiving top-notch care. The rest of us are receiving subpar services and paying more for it than anyone else in the entire world.
5.) Medical decisions are already taken away from doctors and patients by insurance companies who determine what procedures, tests, and medications they will cover. That is a fact. The government is consistently willing to pay for nearly any procedure, test, and treatment that any of the beneficiaries of our already existing government-run healthcare services require, and expanding that coverage to all citizens won't change that.
This is not only a lie, it's completely devoid of reality.
6.) Medical research is already hampered in this country because of who is funding it -
63.7% of funding for research comes from the private sector - not the government.
Here's a hint: the private sector has absolutely not interest in making people better.
Who are the "private sector?" Pharmaceutical companies.
That's right, the people who stand to profit most from your illness are the ones pulling the strings of research.
We pay more money for pharmaceutical products (prescription drugs) than any other nation in the entire world. We also have the highest incidence of chronic illnesses, preventable diseases, and weight-related illnesses in the entire world. We have the worst health habits of any country in the entire world. We have the fattest people in the entire world.
It is not size-ist to say that we are the fattest, least healthy industrialized nation in the entire world; it is factual. My apologies to anyone who feels discriminated against because they cannot fit in a booth at a restaurant, and so much use not one, but two chairs (yes...I have seen this in person; it's disgusting).
We spend more money on research and development than any other country in the entire world, and for all that research and development, we cannot seem to come up with adequate treatments to solve the crises which nearly every other country has managed to address.
7.) The sad truth is that many countries with single-payer healthcare are moving toward more privatized models...in no small part because of the same idiots who fight against those programs in the United States.
It should come as no shock that the nations who are moving away (albeit slowly) from single-payer systems are the same ones who have...wait for it...CONSERVATIVE governments currently in power.
These are the people whose Ayn Rand-ian vision of human civilization trump reality, facts, and science. For these people, actual facts, figures, and statistics mean nothing - the talking points and propaganda trumps all logic.
Our nation is not recovering from our financial crisis, and even worse times are to come. Those who would tell you otherwise are lying to you, and sadly, those lies are being issued from the same party that claims to be progressive; the same party who, when they had the chance, chose to reform insurance instead of reforming ACTUAL healthcare in an effort to appease the TeaTards and Conservatives...and they did so unsuccessfully.
If we want to deal with the upcoming healthcare-induced fiscal crisis, we need to address the problem by actively calling out the lies of those who would profit from the misery, suffering, and sickness of all but the richest in our nation. We must not only call them out, we must actively attack these lies at their source, drag the lies out in public, and draw and quarter them.
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