Is the US on single payer yet?

[Thav]

I got a call saying I still owe $stupid on my son's birth. I said, "That doesn't sound right at all. Was this filed through insurance?" I got the response, "No. It said one of the payers was medicare, were you on medicare at the time?" I replied. "What? No, we were on the insurance plan that the hospital provides to its employees because my wife works there."

On top of everything I have to do, I now have to run around and fix someone else's screw up.

Seriously, can we have single payer yet, so I don't have to pay 30% of my income for medical bills? Pretty please?

[Loudly]

1. Unless Democrats campaign on Medicare for All, 2014 isn't going to be pretty. n/t

[JEB]

2. Try dealing with bullshit insurance bureaucracy when you are sick.

Single payer is such an obvious improvement for individuals and American society. Also, I think it would be a huge economic stimulus.

[riverbendviewgal]

3. sorry for you all

My son and husband were treated for GBM brain tumour and non Hodgkins lymphoma. Surgeries, rad, chemo, home nurse visits, stem cell trans plant. Meds. Cost was zero for us.. they were 24 and 53.

[DissidentVoice]

5. You don't live in a corporatofascist nation either.

We do.

[murphyj87]

6. You live in the Corporate States of America

In the Corporate States of America, even people with so called "good" insurance can't the health care and medical treatment they need. A Gallup Poll shows that only 20% of Americans with insurance are satisfied with the access, quality, and medical outcomes that the insurance company bureaucrat who stands between Americans and a doctor will let them have.

By contrast, a recent Nanos Poll (considered the fairest most non political poll in Canada) shows that 94% of Canadians say that the health care that they get in Canada is better than the insurance run health care that Americans are forced to use (if an insurance company bureaucrat will let them) in the Corporate States of America.

According to website of the American National Institutes of Health, of 38 studies comparing medical outcome in Canada and the US for cancer, heart disease, potentially deadly chronic illnesses (diabetes, hypertension, etc.), and all types of surgery, of the 38 studies which showed one nation to be superior to the other, 71% of the studies showed that Canadians had better medical outcomes in Canada than Americans could have in the US

[riverbendviewgal]

8. Nice to see you can see the picture

Canada does need more doctors but I can truly say,, even living in a rural area I can see a nurse practioner the same day I call. Often they can help me or direct me for immediate doctor or specialist.

It is nice to walk in and not get a bill. Just show my health card. I Am thankful to live in Canada.

I saw my doctor a couple years ago for my eye and was sent to an eye surgeon the same day and got the surgery on an out patient basis in the hospital. I had a detached retina.

[OwnedByCats]

7. Same in the UK

My husband had Hodgkin's Lymphoma twice. Tests, hospital visits, chemo, semen storage (in case of infertility), stem cell transplant, check ups with hematologist after, medication - outside of our NHS contribution which is really affordable, it cost us nothing.

In the US, we would have gone bankrupt as the bills would have gone well into six figures unless we had some really good insurance and at that time, we wouldn't have. It's inexcusable that the US doesn't do what Canada and the UK do. Completely horrible.

[murphyj87]

9. Blood Forming Stem Cells Discovered in Canada

You probably realize that stem cells for bone marrow transplant, etc. were discovered in Canada, not in the US.

1961 Discovery of blood-forming stem cells enabling bone marrow transplants. (University Health Network — Toronto, Ontario)

[OwnedByCats]

10. What does this have to do with

health care in the UK and Canada being affordable for all, as opposed to the US where you go bankrupt? I never said stem cells were discovered in the US. I didn't even mention how they were discovered.

[murphyj87]

11. Because Americans think they discovered and invented everything

and Americans take credit for things that were discovered or invented in Britain, Canada, Sweden, an all kinds of other nations.

Americans need to be reminded at every opportunity that the pacemaker, the artificial knee joint, insulin, lung transplants, surgical treatment for drug resistant epilepsy, radiation treatment for cancer, as well as hundreds of other things were begun in Canada, and not the US, and Britain and Sweden particularly, as well as many other nations who actually invented or discovered that Americans take credit for should remind them too.

[OwnedByCats]

12. You obviously have me mistaken for somebody

who thinks America created everything, invented everything, is the greatest place in the world and has all the bloody answers. I got news for you. I didn't always live in America. I have seen what other countries do differently and I know full well a whole other world exists outside of America. There are advances and inventions created all over the world. Don't lump me in with your perceived notion of what "Americans" think. Some do, I'll grant you. However, why you felt the need to remind me, someone who was praising other countries for their health care because ours well and truly sucks, I will never understand. I never even hinted to who actually came up with stem cell treatment, I didn't realize I had to give a complete history lesson on the procedure to mention it in passing.

If you see someone praising America for something they clearly did not do, then you should correct them. Feeling the need to "remind" Americans at "every opportunity" (even when the opportunity is clearly inappropriate) they didn't invent everything in the world, is broad brush bullshit, assuming we all think alike. We don't! Good grief

[DissidentVoice]

4. My wife was just diagnosed with breast cancer

I feel for you. Really. We're already having to fight with her insurer.

I am a disabled veteran and have Medicare...it is worlds better than any private insurance I have EVER had.

No, we cannot have single payer, to our eternal shame.

Do you want to know why?

Because the Democratic Party of today does not have the cojones to stand up and FIGHT for it. They say "the political will for it isn't there," meaning that they haven't got the guts to stand up to the GOP smear machine and the "Blue Dogs," who should be Republicans anyway.

They make noble-seeming gestures to get Republicans on board like the ACA leaving Big Insurance in charge, and it still does not cover everyone.

They are scared of the Limbaugh/Fux Noise smear machine and don't want to be labelled as "socialists."

No, they will not run on single-payer in 2014...if ever.

The only way we are going to get single-payer is to revolt.

By that I mean refusing to pay medical bills and exorbitant insurance costs to make the non-system collapse...I've already started on that.