Sanders Amendment for Single-Payer Healthcare to Get Floor Vote This Week

So I'm told. Wish it were in the House. Wish they would force the Kucinich amendment back in to facilitate state single-payer. Wish they would just bust the monopolies. Wish they would at least just refrain from passing a bill to make things worse. But, hey, at least C-Span viewers will hear that there's another option for a few minutes.

Report from CNA:

Late last night Senator Sanders filed amendment 2837 which would replace the current healthcare bill with a single-payer system. He is joined by co-sponsors Senators Burris and Senator Brown. Now is the best time for you and your members to contact your Senators and tell them to support amendment 2837.

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Talking Points from Sanders:

SANDERS AMENDMENT TO CREATE A UNIVERSAL, SINGLE PAYER HEALTH INSURANCE SYSTEM

Summary: This amendment would establish a single payer health insurance system that would cover every person legally residing in the United States.  The single payer system would be regulated and funded by the federal government through a payroll tax and an income tax, but it would be administered by the states.  It would replace the coverage and revenue titles of the current bill, but it would leave in place most of the provisions in the quality, prevention, and workforce titles of the bill.  This amendment starts from the premise that health care is a human right, and that every citizen, rich or poor, should have access to health care, just as every citizen has access to the fire department, the police, or public schools.

Why is this Important?
The United States spends $7,129 per person on health care, which is almost double the amount spent by nearly any other industrialized country. Despite this fact, we still do not insure all of our citizens.
There are currently 46 million Americans without health insurance, 100 million Americans who cannot access dental care, and 60 million Americans who do not have access to primary care.
The United States ranks among the lowest of developed countries are far as health outcomes, according to both life expectancy and disease metrics.
One reason we spend our money so ineffectively is that there is tremendous waste in our system. Healthcare providers spend $210 billion on administrative costs, mostly to deal with insurance paperwork, and the ranks of administrative personnel have grown by 25 times the number of physicians in the past 30 years.
This waste and the high costs of insurance associated with it place a tremendous burden on American employers and makes it difficult for them to compete internationally.

Why Support the Sanders Single Payer Amendment?
Single payer systems have consistently shown lower administrative costs and higher quality health outcomes. For example, as compared to the United States’ per capita health spending of $7,129, Canada spends $3,895 and Austria spends $3,763 on health care costs. Both of these countries have higher quality health care outcomes than the United States.
By creating a single payer, Medicare-for-all type system, this amendment would provide every United States citizen with comprehensive health care and dental coverage in a cost-effective manner. It would save our country money, improve our health outcomes, and, at the same time, fulfill the administration’s promise of universal coverage.

Cost: This amendment pays for itself through progressive payroll and income taxes.

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History in a Number: Senate Amendment 2837
By Donna Smith

The idea of a Medicare for All type, single-payer healthcare system will be heard on the Senate floor. Late last evening, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont filed Senate Amendment No. 2837, and there are two additional original co-sponsors of this amendment, Senator Roland Burris of Illinois and Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio.

The idea that healthcare is a basic human right that could and should be delivered to each and every person in this nation is not a new one. Our President knows that; our Congress knows that. But this struggle to reform the broken, profit-driven system has carried us a very long way from the spot that would allow us to finally extend that basic human right to all.

We’ve drifted off to talking about excise taxes and insurance exchanges and bending the cost curves. Amendment 2837 brings us back to the basics.

What’s in a number? 45,000 people die every year in this nation without access to healthcare.

Medicare has its flaws, but overall it has provided seniors and the disabled with the best access to care that this nation could offer since the 1960s. But the rest of us have not been so lucky with our access to healthcare. Among those not covered by Medicare or the VA, the numbers of unnecessary deaths have soared; personal bankruptcies due to medical crisis have soared.

What is a number? Poverty among seniors has dropped more than 60 percent since the adoption of Medicare.

The healthcare reform effort has largely ignored the single-payer solution. Public financing and private delivery of healthcare through a Medicare for All type system would be an elegant, cost effective and proven way to fix much of what is broken while retaining that sense of personal choice over healthcare decisions that Americans value so highly. Yet, the discussion has been muted by the powerful profit-based insurance and health industry interests that stand to gain so very much by expanding and entrenching their hold over the U.S. healthcare system through this reform process.

What’s in a number? Millions of Americans file for personal bankruptcy – one every 12 seconds – because medical crisis hit them too hard. And of those bankrupt folks, two-thirds had health insurance.

We will not get to the point of granting healthcare to all during this legislative cycle. We just won’t. Our elected officials were less powerful than the profit-takers this time around. And we did not make our demands loud enough and clear enough. But we will find out in the Senate who stands for all of us and who stands for those who would profit from our continued suffering. And we will find that out by watching and listening as Senate Amendment 2837 is considered and debated – and voted upon.

The time draws short to weigh in clearly with your Senators. We know they will not get to the point of passing a single-payer system this time around. But we also know they can begin setting the benchmarks for what we should do going forward. And with a yes vote on this amendment, Senators send us the message that they heard us, that they will keep fighting with us until the day when this nation no longer leaves the weak, the sick and the poor behind in the delivery of its most basic human rights.

Call your Senators. Tell them you want them to vote for Senators Sanders, Burris and Brown’s amendment number 2837. Call today. Call now. Insist on a vote for moral and fiscal sanity.

What’s in a number? Everything. Senate Amendment No. 2837. Everyone in, nobody out.

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FULL TEXT OF AMENDMENT: PDF.