Paying too much money to see a doctor getting charged crazy amounts just for
routine procedures and trying to figure out exactly what is covered by your
insurance. Why is the health care system in the U.S. so broken. Most countries in
the world have some form of universal health care sometimes called
single-payer, because everybody pays into it everybody benefits from it - sort of
like public schools or public transportation. Basically you take away
private insurers and the government runs the insurance program and so the
government is the single payer. In the U.S., the idea of universal healthcare
has always been a non-starter, especially on the federal level but it's quickly
picking up steam among young Americans. A recent poll showed forty five percent of
people between 18 and 29 support single-payer, and 66 percent of young
Democrats. More and more people are realizing that that we can't stay on
this trajectory. Millennial generation is the highest level of uninsured in the
country. Not only do we not have access to employer plans on an increasing level,
we also don't have the money that our parents generation had in terms of real
wage growth. As enthusiasm around the idea continues to grow, some states aren't
waiting for Congress. But when New York California and Vermont tried to enact
their own versions of universal health care in the last few years, their efforts failed.
But there's one state where some think it just might work: Maryland.
And there's one candidate for governor who's betting on it: if we want
to unlock opportunity in our states we've got to fix the health care system.
There's no state that's ever been in a better position than us to make
single-payer happen. Why might Maryland be different?
Well most notably, the state tends to be left-leaning, with twice as many
registered Democrats as Republicans. Maryland also has the highest median
income in the U.S., which means more people with money who can pay into the
system. Canada started with one province standing up and saying that we will do it.
Maryland can be that state here. We have the will, we've already shown that
if we move in this direction we can save hundreds of millions of dollars.
Ben Jealous isn't alone in embracing single-payer
for his election campaign. Gubernatorial candidates in Iowa, California,
Massachusetts, and Michigan, among others, are all running on a medicare-for-all
type platform. Why is this gaining traction? Because of the pain in our
society, and we've hit a place where health care's become so expensive and
is exerting so much pressure, not just on working families but on small
businesses, that something's gotta give. But single payer advocates
aren't so sure this could actually happen in Maryland. Or that trying to
solve this on the state level is necessarily even the right approach. You
can really only do it at the national level, because there's so many national
laws and policies that get in the way. That even if you passed a
bill that looked something like single payer, you would then find
yourself trying to get waivers from the federal government. Until recently,
campaigning on a single-payer health care platform might have been political
suicide. But things are changing. Bernie Sanders' "Medicare for All" plan last
year garnered 15 Senate co-sponsors, including some potential presidential
contenders. Just two years earlier he couldn't even find one. I think it's
notable that every Democrat who wants to be president who's in the U.S. Senate has
signed on to Bernie Sanders bill. There's a big battle that's gonna be played
out in the Democratic Party over health care. The country has been activated,
I mean, we all watched what happened when Trump tried to get rid of the Affordable Care
Act and there were thousands of people down in Washington, some people sitting
in, you saw disabled people being carried out of you know the Senate and House buildings. We're
working just as hard and in some cases harder for longer hours, but we're
getting less. We see that money is being generated in this country, it's just
going into the pockets of the super wealthy
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