Lucas,
We can save lives.
That's what our refusal to stop pushing for a single-payer, Medicare-for-All health care system comes down to.
As a society, we can allow the private, for-profit insurance regime to continue dictating who gets help and who doesn't — who lives and who dies.
We can allow thousands of our fellow Americans to die preventable deaths every year for no better reason than being unable to afford exorbitant insurance costs.
We can waste billions of dollars annually on the bureaucracy and profits of giant insurance and pharmaceutical corporations.
Or ...
We can choose a better way — where everyone is covered, costs are contained, and care is based on what's best for patients not profits.
Contribute to Public Citizen today and help make single-payer Medicare-for-All a reality.
Thank you.
Robert
P.S. If you missed my earlier message about Public Citizen's commitment to single-payer, Medicare-for-All reform, keep reading.
Lucas,
The problem with our nation's health care system — the preoccupations of pundits and politicians nothwithstanding — is not a broken website.
This is the problem:
- We spend more on health care per person, by far, than any other developed country.
- Yet millions and millions of our citizens are left without insurance, leading to 45,000 preventable deaths every year.
- And those who can afford the outrageous cost extracted by the private, for-profit insurance industry often receive inadequate care or are denied care altogether.
I'll say that again:
A fellow American dies every 12 minutes because this country — practically alone among industrialized nations — still permits the for-profit health insurance industry to decide who can or cannot see a doctor and to commodify a fundamental human right.
Our citizens need — and morality demands — a single-payer, Medicare-for-All system.
Please make a donation today so that Public Citizen can keep fighting for a single-payer, Medicare-for-All system.
The current controversies over the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) will be resolved.
But this elemental truth will remain:
Helping people when they are sick or injured should not be an industry, like manufacturing lint rollers or windshields.
It is a disgrace that a country as strong as ours lags so far behind the rest of the world on such a basic need for its people.
Of all the systems that have been tried or proposed, only one will cover everyone and provide the world-class care we all deserve: single-payer Medicare-for-All.
Don't get me wrong, this is a tough campaign.
But nobody has as much experience winning difficult battles as Public Citizen.
Here's how we're going to win this one:
1. We will derail attempts to cut Medicare.
We'll explain to members of Congress the truth about Medicare's cost-effectiveness — and aggressively demonstrate the overwhelming demand from the public to "Leave Medicare alone!"
2. We will show how single-payer systems work at the state level.
A recent Public Citizen report — A Road Map to "Single-Payer": How States Can Escape the Clutches of the Private Health Insurance System — shows how states can implement single-payer within the framework of the Affordable Care Act to obtain universal coverage, administrative efficiency and cost control.
We distributed our report to state lawmakers throughout the country and are working with local activists in a number of states.
3. We will build support in Congress.
Individual states can take the lead, but our ultimate goal is a national Medicare-for-All system.
Public Citizen is working with allies in the House and Senate — respected leaders like Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative John Conyers (sponsor of H.R. 676, the Expanded & Improved Medicare For All Act) — to boost legislative momentum for single-payer reform.
I hope you will contribute whatever you can to help move this campaign forward.
Medicare-for-All will not only ensure every American's basic right to health care, saving 45,000 lives every year.
It will also save our country $350 billion or more — annually.
That's how much of the money we spend each year is lost to the health insurance industry's bloated bureaucracy and obscene profits.
Think about it.
45,000 lives saved every year.
$350 billion saved every year.
Medicare-for-All is a no-brainer.
That's why the majority of Americans, and a majority of doctors, already support Medicare-for-All.
But in Washington, D.C., it's not a no-brainer — because the private health insurance and pharmaceutical companies are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying and campaign contributions to preserve their hundreds of billions in profits.
So, when our politicians should be figuring out how to improve and expand Medicare, instead we see corporate puppets like Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor trying to undermine the program's existing commitment to seniors.
And they might succeed, if we don't mobilize.
Can you chip in $5 or more right now to help Public Citizen defend Medicare and make it available to all Americans?
There is nothing the for-profit health insurance regime fears more than single-payer Medicare-for-All.
And they're counting on two things to kill it: those hundreds of millions they spend on lobbying and campaign contributions; and their hope that even people like us who understand the benefits of Medicare-for-All will give up on it as "unrealistic."
Well, Public Citizen knows something about fighting for, and winning, what's right — even when progress seems improbable. It's what we've been doing since we started up in 1971.
Single-payer Medicare-for-All is not going to happen tomorrow.
But it is going to happen.
Because it's the only way our society can progress out of this dark chapter in our national story where we allow 120 of our fellow citizens to die every day so that the for-profit insurance industry can perpetuate its profiteering.
Help make it happen sooner rather than later. Contribute today.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Robert Weissman
President, Public Citizen