Faye's Core Issues
UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE
One of our nation’s top domestic issues is the healthcare crisis.
Not surprisingly it is the number one cause of personal bankruptcies, with Healthcare costs rising at a pace of three times inflation. Overall, our nation’s healthcare costs make up 16% of our GDP, which is about twice as much as all other “western nations”.
We spend $2.4 trillion per year, yet we have a pitiful performance in key health indicators such as infant mortality and longevity.
Our "Best in the World" Health Care System gets the job done in the most inefficient way possible. We spend the most and have the least to show for it. US health care is rationed according to your income - your ability to pay (or ability to get someone else to pay) for your health care.
Those who have the misfortune to get sick or injured increasingly find themselves needing to organize “charity” fundraisers to cover expenses not covered by insurance. And more and more of us are uninsured.
In 1993, the number of uninsured was 37 million. Today, that number has increased to 48 million.
As a Member of Congress, I will fight for universal healthcare. I strongly support a national healthcare program that calls for expanded Medicare for ALL.
How absurd is it that the richest industrial nation in the world is the only major country where our citizens go broke, bankrupt or die because they don't have a single-payer public program?
"Medicare for all" would save more than $350 billion per year by slashing bureaucracy, with enough new money to provide guaranteed comprehensive health benefits for all. (New England Journal of Medicine 2003).
By eliminating the for-profit insurance layer between doctor and patient, doctors can practice medicine the way it was intended to be: based on patient needs rather than financial or administrative concerns.
That's why more and more physicians are joining Physicians for a National Health Plan, which has chapters in each state including Florida: www.PNHP.org
Nurses too are organizing nationwide by joining California Nurses Association’s guaranteedhealthcare.org project.
A universal National Healthcare Program in the United States is long overdue.