Why single-payer/Medicare for all would save money and help the capitalist system. One, if no business or corporation, like the auto plants did not have to pay health insurance, they could sell their vehicles overseas cheaper. If all the people had health insurance, a person could start a business and not worry about having to provide health insurance for themselves, their families and their employees, which would put more people to work and their jobs could be backfilled by another worker. People who could retire, but must keep working until Medicare covers them could now retire without worrying about their healthcare. They could retire and open a job up for someone new.
Countries with universal healthcare are: Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Brunei, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Solvenia (where Trump's current wife is from), South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, and United Kingdom.
Of these first world countries, the U.S. does not offer universal healthcare to its citizens. Instead, the politicians and their media pundits encourage people’s ignorance against them to foster the philosophical debate between socialism and self-reliance and ignore the people who are dying, like the New York couple who jumped to their deaths because they couldn’t afford healthcare and had mounting medical bills, according to their suicide notes.
Now consider this. The U.S. has a 10-year diplomatic and military agreement with Israel to give the country $38 billion. Israel has universal healthcare and we don’t because we can’t afford to give our citizens the same benefits Israel can—courtesy of the U.S. tax payers.
Another factor is the huge cost of workers’ compensation. This would no longer be needed and would stop people from committing fraud in compensation cases, and the people, who work in workers’ compensation, could be moved to Universal Healthcare/Medicare offices or retire, which would save more money.
The cost of healthcare in the U.S. and drugs would go down for now it would be a non-profit health system. People would start getting preventive healthcare, which will save more money by people not getting sick as often. Workers could change jobs to better themselves or go back to school or even to move without the fear of losing their healthcare.
The Affordable Care Act has shown that government healthcare does work if it is nonprofit. This is the time to do this. The people are ready. The country needs this in order to prosper. But we need the help of all unions, all non-unions, all bosses because we should not put this fight on just the nurses. The Democratic Party must make tis a top priority along with a minimum wage of $15 and free education. If they do this, they will have a cakewalk come election time.
If the Democrats don’t do this, there could be eight years of Trump and Republicans union busting, no healthcare, no climate change and probably a new war that starts with a nuclear bomb.
Yes, they are coming for us. Workers need to have one another’s backs because no one else will. Neither the broader labor movement nor the Democratic party are prepared to meet the urgency of this moment. So it’s going to fall upon the rest of us to mount a real resistance against Trump’s authoritarian takeover. We’re going to have to get our hands dirty. I don’t care if you have a good, well-paying union job and you are in the middle class now—if you see a worker being dragged out of his workplace regardless of how skilled the job and potentially taken to another country, you should be ready to be there for that worker. When I.C.E. shows up, gather around and shame them into leaving. It has worked in other places. America is sleep walking into authoritarianism, and if there’s anyone out there who is a member of a labor union that is safe—at this point— and doesn’t think this applies to them. Understand that they just haven’t gotten to you yet. They’re coming for all of us. There are ...
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