There’s never been a better time for us to end private health insurance than right now

The coronavirus crisis will lead to health insurance premium increases by up to 40 percent next year. We can’t afford that. Instead of seeing premiums skyrocket or bailing out private health companies, we need to seize this moment to abolish private insurance and create a single, national insurance plan.

by Tim Higginbotham 

Part 3 - Don’t Bail Out an Industry That Shouldn’t Exist

We’ve already tried bailouts. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was essentially a bailout in that it heavily subsidized insurance companies in order to get them to take measures that otherwise would not be sufficiently profitable. In fact, the government continues to pump hundreds of billions of public dollars each year into the industry to protect its profits.

It’s a broken approach no matter the scale. But what’s coming will be massive — it will make the ACA subsidies look incredibly meager. We cannot allow such a historic bailout of an industry that should not exist in the first place.

The logical fix to the problems of our health care system has always been to implement a single, national insurer. Instead of profit, we need to prioritize public health and well-being. Even when we’re not facing such a monumental crisis, our current system causes millions to suffer, physically and financially.

But this crisis has brought us to a unique crossroads. With our health care providers crying out for the help they need, with millions finding themselves suddenly uninsured, and with the insurance industry proving itself fundamentally incapable of protecting public health, we have the opportunity to choose a better way.

It’s long past time for single-payer health care. We’ve been demanding it for more than a century — people have fought their entire lives and died without ever seeing it become a reality. But we’ve never had a moment quite like this, where the flaws and shortcomings of our long-standing multi-payer system are so abundantly clear.

So let’s make our demand even clearer: instead of bailing out the industry that murders and bankrupts us and our families, let’s erase the industry altogether and take health coverage into public hands through a Medicare for All, single-payer program.

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Source, links:

https://jacobinmag.com/2020/04/coronavirus-medicare-for-all-m4a-single-payer-health-insurance

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