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Universal Healthcare Legislation
Do you support Medicare for All or similar legislation that provides universal health care to all US citizens?
BACKGROUND
- The United States spends more per capita on healthcare and has worse health outcomes than any other developed nation on earth;
- Two-thirds of all the bankruptcies today in the United States are due to medical costs and 80% of those filing for bankruptcy had some kind of health insurance; One-third of all GoFundMe campaigns in the US are created to pay for medical expenses, a stunning 250,000 campaigns;
- Americans abroad can become ‘healthcare refugees or exiles’ unable to return to live in the US due to pre-existing conditions that make them or their family members ‘un-insurable’ or too expensive to insure in the US;
- Medicare is not currently portable to Americans living abroad, which creates a hardship for Americans whose health is endangered by living in countries with inadequate healthcare systems and who cannot afford to live in the US and cannot afford to travel to the US for health care;
- The Affordable Care Act (ACA or “Obamacare”) made vastly significant progress towards improving Americans’ access to health care and has led to improved health outcomes but has been weakened and threatened by partisan attacks and increasing insurance premiums;
- Universal health care would significantly help relieve financial hardship among the most marginalized and minority groups.
REFERENCES
- National Academy of Sciences, 2013: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK154480/
- Public Citizen, 2019: https://www.citizen.org/medicare-all-prevents-medical-bankruptcies
- Time, Jan 2019: http://time.com/5516037/gofundme-medical-bills-one-third-ceo/
- Public Citizen “The Case for Medicare for All”, Feb 2019, pp. 11-12: https://www.citizen.org/sites/default/files/the_case_for_medicare-for-all_-_february.pdf