Health Care as a Human Right - Medicare For All
We say to the private health insurance
companies: whether you like it or not, the United States will join every
other major country on earth and guarantee healthcare to all people as a
right. All Americans are entitled to go to the doctor when they're sick
and not go bankrupt after staying in the hospital.
Details
Today, more than 30 million Americans still don’t have health insurance and even more are underinsured. Even for those with insurance, costs are so high that medical bills are the number one cause of bankruptcy in the United States. Incredibly, we spend significantly more of our national GDP on this inadequate health care system—far more per person than any other major country. And despite doing so, Americans have worse health outcomes and a higher infant mortality rate than countries that spend much less on health care. Our people deserve better.
We should be spending money on doctors, nurses, mental health specialists, dentists, and other professionals who provide services to people and improve their lives. We must invest in the development of new drugs and technologies that cure disease and alleviate pain—not wasting hundreds of billions of dollars a year on profiteering, huge executive compensation packages, and outrageous administrative costs.
The giant pharmaceutical and health insurance lobbies have spent billions of dollars over the past decades to ensure that their profits come before the health of the American people. We must defeat them, together. That means:
- Joining every other major country on Earth and guaranteeing health care to all people as a right, not a privilege, through a Medicare-for-all, single-payer program.
- Allow Medicare to negotiate with the big drug companies to lower prescription drug prices with the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Act.
- Allow patients, pharmacists, and wholesalers to buy low-cost prescription drugs from Canada and other industrialized countries with the Affordable and Safe Prescription Drug Importation Act.
- Cut prescription drug prices in half, with the Prescription Drug Price Relief Act, by pegging prices to the median drug price in five major countries: Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Japan.
