Medicare for All On November 9, 2009, the U. S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 3962 – The Affordable Health Care for America Act.  The Green Party of Arkansas opposes this bill, as do I. It’s main object is to insure the profits of the Health Insurance Industry, and it will not control costs.  Forcing citizens to purchase private insurance on pain of prosecution is wrong.  It is not like car insurance – you can do without your car if you have to – people do it all the time, but no one will have an option to refuse the mandated purchase of health insurance if this bill becomes law. The Green Party of Arkansas supports a not-for-profit single-payer health care system, National Health Insurance for the people of the United States. According to a recently released Harvard study, 45,000 Americans die each year because they did not have health insurance.  The previous estimate was 18,000.  The estimated number of people in Arkansas who die every year because they don’t have health insurance is 668, according to the new study, so a conservative estimate is that at least 300 Arkansans die every year because they don’t have health insurance. The solution to the problem is simple.   Provide National Health Insurance for everyone.  Medicare for all ages.  This is what every other advanced nation on earth has done, America can do it, it would work, and it would save American lives and the lives of Arkansans.  In Arkansas 23.6% of our citizens do not have health insurance, and they deserve better than to have their needs ignored. But what have the Senators and Congressmen from Arkansas done to help save the lives and financial security of their own constituents?  Nothing. Blanche Lincoln says that the single payer plan is “too expensive”.    Mike Ross takes credit for “stopping the single payer option”.   Mark Pryor says that he “just doesn’t think that America is ready for [national health insurance]” These are the same “public servants” who voted for the unnecessary, unprovoked, and illegal, attack on Iraq.   An “elective war” which has so far cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, more than 4,000 Americans, and which will eventually cost somewhere between 1 and 3 Trillion Dollars.   The lust for huge profits at public expense never ends.  Recently, the U S Senate, the same United States Senate that won’t fund healthcare, voted to fund 3 Billion dollars worth of military equipment that the Pentagon and the White House both say they don’t want and don’t need.  And that was just in one day, on a single vote.  For the massive and shameless hypocrisy of the “we can’t afford it” crowd, please see our paper on Military Spending. It’s not that we can’t as a nation afford healthcare – it’s that we’re being robbed by a system that is out of control. The cost of health insurance is estimated to be more than $13,000 dollars a year per family, and the costs are rising much faster than inflation, thus actually eroding our standard of living.  Our nation is experiencing an on-going, and rapidly worsening, health care crisis.  And we are also experiencing the effects of an on-going economic crisis as a result of the disastrous financial policies of the Bush years, which culminated in the melt- down of the housing and financial markets one year ago.  The truth is that these two crises have a common root cause.  They have both come about because of a false religion, the belief that the “magic of the marketplace” is sufficient to solve all problems.  The medical marketplace is not magic, and it is out of control.   The proper solution is not to force Americans to ensure the profits of the Medical Insurance industry by mandating that everyone not already insured at the currently ruinous rates be forced to buy private insurance – which Dennis Kucinich said “is the very source of the problem”, but to put in place a rational system of National Health Insurance for everyone. We need Medicare for all ©2009-2010 John Gray for U.S. Senate, all rights reserved. No portion of this website may be reproduced without the express written consent of John Gray. Web Designs by Xpressions, Graphics Specialists Contact the Candidate Privacy Policy