A conservative recently complained to me that the Canadian style single payer healthcare system is not possible here, because America has a population of 329 million, whereas Canada has 37 million (we have ~9 times the population). What he and other conservatives--who frequently use this talking point--is that Canada has a GDP of $1.6 trillion and America has a GDP $19.4 trillion (we have ~12 times their output). Those numbers suggest we have more than enough wealth per capita to accomplish the same. How is America, the country with the *highest GDP in the history of the world*, unable to take care of its population, but Canada with their relatively tiny GDP can somehow provide for their whole population? The math doesn't make sense. We are completely capable of it...it's just that the politicians and corporations, who profit off each other with corruption have brainwashed us to believe it's pie-in-the-sky while they line their pockets. Meanwhile, the average working-class citizens get wiped out by the capitalist, free-market, scam health insurance system. Bernie was right then, and he's right now.
11
I hope one day Bernie will be seen as what he really is: a great American hero.
9
My late wife, who suffered two different rare types of terminal cancer, for 18 years, was treated marvellously well not only at the world's 5th best rated cancer hospital (Princess Margaret's in Toronto) but also at the world's second best (Rosswell Park, Buffalo), entirely without unreasonable wait times, and free, thanks to the Ontario Hospital Insurance Plan (no cost to us), and always by wonderful specialists. If our hospital system is not as close to being made in heaven, I don't know what is. Please don't make any hasty changes, and thank you, Canada.
10
I’ve worked in health care systems in other countries. Canada’s system is great as free in most provinces. It’s paid for by deduction from salary based on how much your salary is plus payment from your employer. It covers all doctor visits, hospital expenses, and even a set annual amount of physiotherapy and the like. Drug costs are low as the government negotiates to keep prices down and are paid by the individual to keep abuse low. Yes, you can buy extra insurance for drug cost and dental if you want and it’s also very inexpensive. I didn’t go to USA to work as I have preexisting condition so Insuance wouldn’t cover me. China has partially free government coverage for all and its very good except for too many people and abuse by corrupt doctors and hospitals. Doctors are trained well but too busy to provide good care and many are lazy to do a good job or just care about getting as much money for unnecessary drugs or surgery. So, people end up spending a lot of money. VIP people use backdoor to bypass lines and see better doctors. Government have super vip service for themselves.Thailand is best as they cheaply train doctors to a high level. It’s free. Much better than most of Asia. The doctors are excellent and caring and skilled. They train most for 4 years out of high school so easier to train more for simple departments. Nurses excellent. They punish corruption so more honest. People truly care. The private international hospitals are top and costs are very low for expat
5
Bernie Sanders is labeled "dogmatic" and "uncompromising" for his passion and hard work to bring us Medicare for All -- accessible and affordable health care.
Candidates like Biden who fight to protect the power and wealth of the insurance industry (major campaign donors) are simply labeled "centrists".
13
We are virtually at medical care for all. No Medicare for all but health care for all. Now we have Medicaid, Medicare, ACA, Military health (active and retired) Veterans health, and employer provided and other government provided care. Sure there are people that won't fit in any of the above but one of the programs can make adjustments and fit them in. The medicaid should be changed to include anybody who qualifies regardless of what a governor or legislature might otherwise want or not want.
The funding is there now. Lets leave it as is for a while - perhaps expand some of the benefits and reduce the reliance on insurance companies et al with no large bills for hospital care.
America can do it.
@Renate (who wonders, rightly, why when we spend tax payers money on military matters it is patriotic and when we spend it for the common social good it is Socialism (bad word!)
It is part of what we call the American Rhetoric. Some people call it brainwashing, some other use words that won't make it through the editor here.
Tax progressively people (a la Medicare taxes I paid for 30 years working as one of the top bankers in a top bank, not capped like FICA) for the purposes of Medicare for All. It is that simple. The cost/benefit analysis of premiums/deductibles/bills saved versus the extra (totally progressive with the 1 percent paying a lot in dollar terms) will show how feasible the whole thing is.
Call something socialist if you want to kill it. But the days of Red Scare are going to be over when Bernie becomes President of the United States. It is worth even believing in a Higher Power just to pray for that day to come in November of 2020.
12
Canada and virtually all other countries with public financing of healthcare also allow private insurance, too.
Neither Warren, the twin of Bernie, and Sanders, will permit private health insurance. Millions of Americans will lose their workplace mandated insurance for which they have paid.
These two people, Bernie who to this day refuses to become a Democrat though he insists he should have our party nominate him as our presidential candidate, nor Warren, who is a Socialist in all but name, will lose the election to Trump.
We need to get rid of Trump.
This means that any extreme left candidate like Warren or Sanders must be defeated or bring us down.
Americans want centrism, not Trump right wing policies or red fascism of Sanders/Warren.
3
@simon
What are you basing your theory on? The centrist lost to Trump in 2016. So no, we don't need a Neoliberal who runs like a progressive and governs like a moderate Republican. The Democrats have moved so far to the right that the Republicans had no choice but to elect Trump. No one loves their insurance, they love their doctors and all doctors take Medicare and Bernie's Medicare for All expands it to be better than any other countries single payer because we deserve the best! Thank you Bernie.
19
If Americans want centrists, we would have Clinton as a President, but we have Trump, who is not a centrist.
11
@simon sez
Disingenuous, lying or just ignorant?
Either way, spreading falsities isn't a good look.
If you are wrong on this...what else are you wrong about?!
SEC. 107. PROHIBITION AGAINST DUPLICATING COVERAGE
(b) CONSTRUCTION.—Nothing in this Act shall be construed as prohibiting the sale of health insurance coverage for any additional benefits not covered by this Act, including additional benefits that an employer may provide to employees or their dependents, or to former employees or their dependents.
Here ya go...education at a click of a button.
https://www.sanders.senate.gov/download/medicare-for-all-act-of-2019
6
Is it a conflict of interest for "reporter" Sydney Ember to criticize Sanders, a Socialist, without letting readers know that her husband and father-in-law work for Bain Capital - the same firm started by Mitt Romney?
Please be honest
Michael J Lorence , Esq
12
I guess, one problem of the United States is, that too much of tax money is spent for the biggest military industrial complex on earth. Social spending on the other hand is called socialism.
43
@Renate
It is part of what we call the American Rhetoric. Some people call it brainwashing, some other use words that won't make it through the editor here.
Tax progressively people (a la Medicare taxes I paid for 30 years working as one of the top bankers in a top bank, not capped like FICA) for the purposes of Medicare for All. It is that simple. The cost/benefit analysis of premiums/deductibles/bills saved versus the extra (totally progressive with the 1 percent paying a lot in dollar terms) will show how feasible the whole thing is.
Call something socialist if you want to kill it. But the days of Red Scare are going to be over when Bernie becomes President of the United States. It is worth even believing in a Higher Power just to pray for that day to come in November of 2020.
11
Re: '...he supported “public ownership of the drug companies and placing doctors on salaries.”'
This puts me off.
There is a difference between funding and delivery. Public funding will remove the unconscionable behaviors of private insurance companies, but there is no need to nationalize drug companies. And there is no need to block doctors from entrepreneurship.
A fellow compatriot wrote that America could have universal healthcare if it so wished. Making this happen, however, would involve Americans adapting a different mindset from what they entertain at present. The idea of universal healthcare emanates from a philosophical, political and social idea of a common greater good which, unfortunately, doesn't resonate especially well in American society. Even while it was briefly incubated during the New Deal Era, this notion has been subjected to an unremitting assault the past forty years.
Equating the idea of universal healthcare with socialism not only indicates that the necessary social and political prerequisite of embracing the idea of the greater common good will likely never be achieved in the USA, but reflects that discourse over healthcare in America is entirely philosophical and political. Sadly, this deflects attention away from empirical evidence demonstrating that America's healthcare system--which is primarily an insurance and pharmaceutical racket--is abjectly failing on all important objective measures. Yet this reality will continue so long as Americans accept the notion that healthcare and commerce mix, and that doctors are business folk first and foremost.
7
America owes a big debt of gratitude to Bernie for his steady drum beat about health care and the delivery system. The entire system is in disarray and isn't sustainable.
Medical bills are a leading cause of bankruptcy in this country. I'm very well acquainted with a retired couple who aren't quite old enough for Medicare and they have a very good insurance plan that costs right at $2,000/mo. That's for 2 people. That is outrageous!
I'm really liking Pete Buttigieg's plan of Medicare For All - Who Want It. He is strongly supportive of single payer for everyone, but thinks America would be more amenable at this time if it was an Option. I think he's right.
1
I had a 5 week wait to see the orthopaedic surgeon here in the Vancouver, BC area. He told me in the 1st 30 seconds I was moving close to the top of the list. 3 months later I had a new hip. 6 weeks after the hip operation my cardiologist sent me for angiogram. Turned out I had 3 blockages and a bad aortic valve. Open heart surgery was done 3 months later. Cost to me? $0.00. The key to our system is triage.
My girlfriend lives in L.A. she pays $500/month for healthcare. Her mother living here in BC pays $498/year.
4
Our current system is based upon kids having to go on TV and beg for donations to pay for their medical treatment and families forced to resort to GOFUNDME to beg for contributions to cover the cost of a catastrophic illness or injury. Nothing like this exists in the rest of the civilized world and we act like it's no big deal. We've created a medical monster.
9
The biggest problem I see with the Medicare for all program is the elimination of private insurance. What happens to that industry? All become unemployed?
I think a more palatable system is offering Medicare for all as a choice. Create competition. That raises all boats.
1
@C.E. Davis II. My biggest disappointment in Obamacare was failure to include "public option."
1
I don't understand this fear of change.
Some feared Obamacare.
Now some people fear losing Obamacare.
Ask your parents or grandparents how THEY like Medicare.. Ask if they'd rather go back to private insurance.
One of the best days of my life was turning age 65.. and that's saying somethin'!
8
This man must be our next president.
8
For decades Senator Sanders has contemplated and studied this issue in depth, and this story reveals its deep, personal roots. It points to how a President Sanders would turn what he's learned over a long lifetime of experience and reflection toward the good of our nation. Unlike the current WH occupant, the "personal" is not about personal gain....
8
To form an efficient, effective health care system (what the U.S. has now is a sick care system)everyone must be covered for pretty much everything as it is all connected. Diseases are contagious; improper dental care brings cardiac risk; lack of proper medicine leads to worsening of conditions; failure to take preventive care or early treatment leads to a far more expensive situation later on. An old saying: if you don't have your health you don't have anything. For the American people to truly feel secure they must have universal, coordinated health care.
9
Bloomberg has just reported that, under Trump, millions of Americans have lost health coverage: "The increase in the rate of uninsured, from 7.9% in 2017 to 8.5% last year, is particularly remarkable given the falling unemployment rate during that period, since most Americans get coverage through work." Given that the falling unemployment rate is due to the proliferation of part-time and contract jobs with no benefits, this isn't surprising.
9
@Ruth Knight
Luckily the poverty also the lowest it has been in years. Hopefully those folks can start providing for themselves. Great Trump economy.
@Ruth Knight Provision of health care should not be tied to a job. A lot of people who need health care cannot work, and a lot of employers do not provide coverage.
8
@idna
Agree completely.
4
Surely, if enough Americans really wanted universal health care, they could have universal health care--just as, if enough Americans really wanted serious gun control, they could have serious gun control. Despite the dysfunctional Electoral College, despite the gerrymandering, despite the vested-interests lobbying, surely enough democracy remains that your government would bow to the will of the majority. More civilised countries, those with universal health care and reasonable gun laws, wonder why Americans don't vote for candidates committed to a better society.
9
@Ruth Knight Your misunderstanding of how our political and electoral systems work might be amusing, if the matter at issue were a less serious one.
There are very few candidates committed to a better society. Our politicians are the best money can buy. If you don't have money from Big business, you can't win. Bernie won't take money from special interests or corporate donors...one of the very few ethical politicians in the USA. Until, we get money out of politics, pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, and weapons companies rule! These companies use lobbyists to write the laws. They just pretend it's a Democracy. We have exceedingly low voter turnout because people know the game is rigged. Bernie should have been the Democratic presidential candidate in 2016 but the system was rigged.
4
@Ruth Knight Completely agree with you -- healthcare is just one of many important issues on which we haven't seemed to be able to agree on the need to take action. Maybe too many people too busy watching reality TV on the couch or getting too worked up about rumored marauding immigrants and the need for "walls."
4
I dream of this in my lifetime.....Bernie Sanders has changed the entire conversation. He is authentic in every way. I hope he will be our next President. Imagine that.
13
I lived in Canada and they do have a good health care program. The majority of Americans would probably say money. However, there are a number of issues that need to be addressed: (1) The US is subsidizing the development of new drugs worldwide. This will increase the cost of drugs in Europe and other developed countries, otherwise the drug companies will slow down R&D (i.e., will the rest of the world pay their share?); (2) Unions, such as the UAW will resist. For example the UAW has gold plated medical benefits (i.e., almost zero deductible and copays), which they do not want to give away; (3) The NYT has written a number of great articles on why our medical cost are high. Universal coverage means (a) lower incomes for doctors, (b) lower revenues for hospitals, (c) lower revenues for drug companies and Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs). If we can politically solve the above, we can get universal medical coverage at a reasonable cost.
1
@Rod
Lower income for nurses, pharmacists, techs—not just doctors.
Good luck with that.
@Rodhttp://independentbloggersalliance.blogspot.com/2009/11/americans-filching-canadas-health.html or why my card now has photo ID. So many "pharmatour" buses where showing up at border cities to fill 'scripts they voided local inventories until it became illegal to fill foreign scripts. Then the insulin story got out. In 1921 Banting and Best at the University of Toronto discovered insulin and sold the patent to the school for $1.00 keep costs low for they felt their discovery belonged to the world. To-day insulin costs $35.00 Cdn vs $350.00 in the US. Insulin caravans started showing up in that you don't need a script to buy it in Ontario, one was led by Sanders. The resulting hype made it necessary to show Canadian citizenship to buy insulin now lest inventories were in peril again. Somehow the naysayers of care as a duty never discuss these things.
1
@Rod
Lower income for nurses, techs, pharmacists—not just doctors.
Good luck with that
Of course Bernie learned what a humane health care system looked like while studying what Canadians now consider a birthright. To NOT be held hostage by a stinking "for profit" system that has ruined so many lives and families in the U.S.! Of course the Mega-Corporate giants in the U.S. are going to kill any attempts to put people ahead of their $Billion Empires. And having bought G.O.P. politicians for decades now; they are going to kill the great "socialist" threat like a Canadian style humanitarian system no matter how many lies they have to use to defend the "sacred and very sick" system of pay through the nose health care that denies the most basic truth. Health care is a UNIVERSAL RIGHT...not some stinking privilege. Ask a Canadian what they think of U.S. health care. They will universally tell you it is SICK.
10
@Greg Hodges Being married to a Canadian, having Canadian friends and in-laws, and having enjoyed many trips to Canada, I am generally very fond of the folks up there. Not, however, when they spout opinions on our healthcare system, and whether they (and other foreigners) would choose to trade their own system(s) for ours - as if these were matters of some importance. They are not.
I note that today's Globe and Mail includes stories such as "As teachers report more violent incidents in schools, boards struggle to manage children with complex needs" and "Insolvencies among Canadian consumers are surging". Perhaps you have enough of your own problems to focus on those, rather than on American issues.
@Carl YaffeThe focus is by Americans trying to shadow something good. The G&M topic is about "special needs kids" and they are discussing a very specific malfunction in some children nothing new to any specials needs kids teachers. What do the US schools do about the same problem?
5
Make America Healthy Again.
6
I see that all of today's picks below are from Canada - and it's understandable as the article focuses favorably on their system.
One comment below says Canada is one of many countries where "Medicare for all" exists.
Yet, the writer does not mention any others because none exist.
Canada works because its population is so small - 90% of whom live within 100 miles of our border despite it being bigger than us. And until recently, the population was homogeneous.
And Canadians - living today - have largely known nothing else.
For a poster child of nationalized health care NOT working and a country that is definitely NOT great any more is NHS of britain.
Elections have been fought, won and lost over keeping this system alive - but it is still in ICU - if brit politicians themselves are to be believed.
I suggest that there are actually no countries in the world where nationalized health care really works including Scandinavia.
I lived there with a private insurance - the Danes could not be more jealous.
As to Sen. Sanders - I am not persuaded that a wannabe leader should offer solutions based on his personal life or experiences.
I think lessons he draws from his mothers death - tragic as it was - are really not for all.
This article doesn’t mention the fact that Bernie Sanders’ brother Larry has been an elected official in the UK and presumably has extensive experience with the NHS. Surely this must also have informed Bernie Sanders’ views on government run medical care.
My friends and relatives who have settled in the UK - one of whom has worked in the NHS, and all with dual US/UK nationality or residence- would not choose the US situation over what they have.
7
As soon as someone is for universal healthcare the media "narrative" becomes all about the bogeyman socialism, and taxes. The framing isn't that our healthcare system is unsustainable. That we pay double what other advanced countries pay per patient yet still have uninsured, underinsured and medical bankruptcy. Nope, it's "do we really want socialism?".
Then I tune into commercial TV or open a publication and -- lo and behold -- see the massive ad buys from health insurers, pill pushers and other healthcare profiteers. What a crock.
Well, I have a plan through the exchanges. I don't qualify for any subsidy. I make too much for that, but not enough for the co-pays, deductables etc. So I pay $550 a month to have a nice piece of plastic in my pocket. Bring on the socialism.
9
@Duncan
It's interesting that Americans seem to have little problem with paying taxes to fund infrastructure, most schools and universities, police and firefighters, and an enormous military, but somehow paying taxes to fund universal health care is supporting the reds under the bed.
7
Medicare for all is Bernie's dream he is pushing on gullible American people who think it will be worthwhile to disrupt the health care system that has evolved over the past 60 years. the picture above the article is worth a 1000 words and says it all about the organizational skills and filing system of Bernie Sanders. Bernie does not inspire confidence among thinkers who have nothing to gain or lose from Bernie's promotion of Medicare for All. Bernie this time around has 0 chance of getting the Democratic nomination. I would have considered voting for Bernie in 2016 if he ran as an independent which he claims he is when he feels like.
I have not just studied the Canadian Health care system (CHCS), I have experienced the CHCS first hand as a doctoral student in Canada when I was in best health of my life. It was an adequate HC system for a generally healthy person that I was and Dr. Beer with a beer belly was a well informed competent Dr who I could see by just dropping by his clinic nearby. I developed seasonal hay fever and he educated me on how all of sudden it showed up. He also suggested changes in diet when I had elevated cholesterol. I doubt whether I would have received the best HC in the world that I have subsequently received in the USA in a timely manner. A few years ago a relative in Toronto had a brain tumor and the waiting period was 6 months for its removal due to the triage system in Canada. The tumor was promptly removed overseas and she is alive and well.
2
@Girish Kotwal The US health care system needs to be disrupted.
1
@idnar In case you're not familiar with it, "disrupted," "disrupt," etc. are the "mots du jour" for folks want to express a need to "change" something.
I met Senator Sanders at a political rally last month in New Hampshire. I shook his hand and told him that I had had to leave the United States fifty years ago because I was unable to buy health insurance here. I am certain that my story was just one of thousands of similar complaints that he hears about America’s dysfunctional health care system.
11
To be clear, Canada's system is not like the UK form of truly socialized medicine. Doctors are independent and not government employees, and patients choose their doctors as they do in the US. But the hospitals are nearly all publicly owned and there is one one insurance company - the provincial health insurance plan - and they set the rates at which doctors are paid for specific procedures.
Americans (and Canadians) can and do nitpick, and sure there is always room for improvement (you get what you pay for, so how much to fund is a perennial question) but the system works extremely well.
8
To those who don't support Medicare for all because of private insurance, I would ask you to look back over the years at what percentage of your health care costs have been paid by your employer and what percentage by you. Year over year. Workers in America have turned back salary and benefits to their companies to transfer to shareholders. If you think your employer isn't coming for more from you, you have not been paying attention. As income inequality widens, fewer and fewer Americans will have adequate, affordable health care. Medicare for all would not be "taking away" insurance from workers. It would be replacing it. You will pay for it, no question. But you are paying now. The genius of the business model is they have convinced you you are getting healthcare for nothing. Just like they convinced you over the last several decades that unionization was bad for your wallet. And guess what, you bought that argument and gave away your benefits, your raises, and started to pay for your healthcare. The American corporation could, at any time, have said "we went too far" and started re-paying worker productivity. Instead they are laughing all the way to the bank at you. And you let them.
15
@Walking Man - this should also be a Times Pick - and I don't understand the dearth of replies, here. This comment says it all!
3
I’m an American living in the UK. The reason I’m living in the UK with my British wife is because of the cost of healthcare in the US. Healthcare in the US is nothing more then a profit making industry, the insurance companies are not interested in their clients health, they are only interested in becoming insanely rich. In the UK I had heart problems and spent 6 days in the hospital. The hospital stay, medical procedures, tests, and medications cost me a total of nothing, not a single pence. In the US it would have cost me hundreds or even thousands, and that’s with insurance coverage. I reached the age of 60 this year which means my monthly prescription cost is free. Before the age of 60 prescription prices are £9 a month. Doctor visits are free, medical tests are free, etc, etc. I hear people in the US say how bad the NHS is, how long it takes to get doctor appointments, how long you have to wait for surgeries, etc, etc. I can get doctor appointments within a week, or on the same day for urgent reasons. Surgeries may take a few months wait time, unless they’re emergency/urgently needed, then they’re done quickly. Medical care in the US is all about the money, insurance companies, drug companies, and politicians are only interested in the almighty dollar. Until people demand affordable healthcare for all, nothing is going to change. Healthcare should be based on people’s health, not on outrageous profits.
18
What's been going on in Canada is a fact. Sharing facts is not "dogmatic." Saying that the Sun turns around the Earth and persecuting people who disagree is dogmatic. Saying that the Earth turns on its axis when you have facts to back it up is telling the truth.
11
Medicare for All is a terrible name. First - nobody actually knows what it means. Second - Medicare is very expensive for retired seniors - so that is not what Burney means. Third - If you use confusing jargon, you actually lose people. It is time for a name that everyone can understand.
1
@John Brizdle I agree. I am on Medicare and my very basic costs for Medicare Part B premiums, Medigap premiums, and Rx plan premiums are at least $3,000 a year (which is a lot less than the $20,000 I paid for coverage before Medicare, but not 0), and that is before coinsurance & deductibles not covered by Medigap, services not covered by either Medicare or Medigap, etc. In recent years I have had annual out of pocket medical expenses run $10,000 to as much as $20,000, largely as a result of services not covered by Medicare (esp. dental).
Based on what I have read in some of these comments I have the impression that some people think Medicare is "free" healthcare, which it currently isn't. If Bernie is going to change that, fine, but he should do a better job communicating it (as should all the other candidates.
If the cost of bread was going up eleven time inflation for two decades and bakery owners had G4 Jets the government would take it over also.
7
Bernie is very correct in describing the old American system as being barbaric, thought I belive there is a better word ? I'm just too tired to conjure it up at present. As I type this, and yes I grew up in Vermont and in Burlington ironically, I am aware that Americans are so removed and isolated from other countries and societies, that they do not have any reference points to even think from.
That has all changed now and yet many are still fearful of meeting anyone from another country who speaks English with an accent, and secondarily do not speak a second or third language as is done in Europe.
America needs to "grow up" and mature and come home to one another and itself. We need to alter the 'nuts and bolts' of our society and make it a wonderful 'export' for the rest of the world to see and incorporate. And yes we can do as if we do not, we shall cease to exist. At present we have succeeded in creating a country in which Americans cannot afford to live and that is Feudal if not barbaric.
15
We who grew up with Bernie hardly remember Bernie's neighborhood as a "tenement" as Bernie now puts it.
Bernie's neighbor was a lawyer and his son, Sin Ganis, our boyhood friend, was elected president of the American Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. My neighbor on the same block was a Magistrate Judge. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg was a friend living in the same neighborhood. One block away lived Senator Chuck Schumer, now Senate Minority Leader and former U.S. Senator Norm Coleman.
In addition to Bernie there are a huge number of extraordinarily successful graduates of James Madison High School, Bernie's alma mater and only one short block from Bernie's childhood home.
Very much a middle class and upper middle class neighborhood, not a working class neighborhood at all as Bernie describes it.
Madison was the neighborhood high school totally without any kind of entrance exam.
Fully 9 of us Madison alumni actually earned Noble Prizes so far and still counting, which makes Bernie's high school absolutely unique in the world. No other neighborhood high school in the world has such illustrious alumni by a long shot.
Some tenement!!!!
My wife says Bernie has a political "log cabin complex."
Both of my high school sweethearts attended one of the most expensive colleges in the world, Vassar College, also attended by the Rockefellars.
Bernie's paint salesman father was highly unusual in that extremely successful and accomplished neighborhood.
1
I think it is very unfair to call Sanders position on health care "dogmatic." He has studied the matter for decades and knows what he is talking about.
16
One of the cutlines beneath a photo accompanying this article says that, by 1988, Sen. Sanders "was speaking about health care in the kind of dogmatic terms he uses today."
As if those such as Joe Biden or "Senior Advisors" from the Third Way are not dogmatic when they rotely defend the current, ridiculous non-system of patchwork care that is way too expensive, often puts insurance company profits over people's health, leaves millions uninsured and millions more underinsured. Your caption practically insinuates that because Sanders is "dogmatic," these others must somehow be thoughtful, nuanced, trenchant.
A lot of us would disagree with The Times' implication. In 1988, I'd say, Congressman Sanders was the visionary. As a statement about our lack of progress in 31 years, I think he still is.
18
Before everyone pushes Medicare for all, the NYT should visit and report on health care in Canada’s Atlantic provinces. In Nova Scotia 54,000 people are waiting for a primary care physician, who you need to see before any care can be distributed. It can take months to get an MRI as there are only a few machines for a little less than a million people. If you need a hip or Knee replacement, figure 18 months to 3 years.
Drug costs are not covered under the Canadian plan, so you need private insurance for that.
Also, Canadian health care in many cases is far from leading edge. If you have many types of cancer and are looking for a cure, people travel to the US, as the wait times and treatment in Canada tends to focus on making the Patient think they are working on curing them as Opposed to curing them.
3
@not the voice of reason There is no queues for care in the US. You know why? Because of the people who can't afford to pay up. They don't even make it to the queue.
Which you would know if you had bothered to read the article.
And please oh please show us the data that shows how backwards healthcare science is in Canada, or how much Canadians want to move away from their system towards the non-healthcare US insurance scam.
7
@not the voice of reason. I think in public health systems where there are limited resources you end up with situations as you have described. Not
only are decisions made on how many MRI machines there will be, but decisions have to be made on whether the most recent cutting edge treatments (for example, for cancer) will be offered and, if so, to whom. It can be heartbreaking for parents to be told a potentially life-saving treatment for their child isn't offered in, say, the UK and they need to prepare to say goodbye to the child. I know of one such family currently traveling to the US for treatment and having to try to raise funds for it online, as they get no coverage or reimbursement from their public system. It must be terrible to be a parent & have to make such a decision, no matter how committed you are to the limitations of Medicare for All or "national health."
Canadian healthcare does NOT cover everything, as the LARGE Blue Cross building outside Toronto, and visible from the QEW reminds Canadians every day. For example, it doesn't cover physical therapy, prescription drugs, and mental health services provided outside a hospital setting, not to mention long term care and dental. Many employers offer supplemental insurance for employees to cover the gaps. I hope Mr. Sanders learned of the serious gaps and problems during his brief time in Canada.
5
@Mrs. Cleaver
You can have a basic coverage for everyone AND private insurance for additional services.
5
@Make America GOOD
So when you see all the folks who can afford all the extras and jumping to the front of the line you won’t be screaming how unfair???? I doubt you will be quiet when you see the two tier system.
Why should I pay extra taxes to support your needs. I have my own family that I love to take care of—not you.
@Mrs. Cleaver
No, it's not perfect. It could certainly be better. Only one in four Canadians receives tax-funded help with prescription drugs, physio, etc. (though the feds are making noises about universal pharmacare). However, it's all relative, and the Canadian system is vastly superior to the American. I don't mind waiting a while for a knee replacement if it means my fellow citizens get the prompt care they need for more pressing problems.
4
The American health care private public hybrid system is the best in the world and employs the most competent Doctors and Nurses. The current Medicare for all above 65 is complex but adequate for all our senior citizens in which individuals have paid into the system. The entire employees serving the USA government which includes our defense services have health insurance paid for by the tax payers. For those who have very serious diseases that are costly to treat there is medicaid. The US government spends 1 billion dollars a day that is annually 365+ billion dollars. That still leaves millions without health care including the undocumented and the unemployed or poor.
Add to all of the above Affordable health care Act aka Obamacare was passed by congress in the first Obama term. It had penalties levied on those who choose not to carry any health insurance but still had health care for emergencies. So no one was dropping dead in the streets unable to access health care in emergencies. Trump admin. and the Republican congress improved Obamacare by restoring the freedoms of the economically challenged Americans who cannot afford any of the current insurance plans to not have any health insurance but instead depend on charitable private institutions to provide health care. That still leaves millions uninsured and public option of government managed health care could suit this tiny minority.
Medicare for all ages is nonsense and tinkering with Medicare would be catastrophic.
2
Our present medical system is nonsense. Tinkering with it would be the right thing to do and would be a relief to the vast majority of people in this country. All they have to do to realize this is to learn about it.
Educate yourself.
6
@Girish Kotwal: Obamacare had PENALTIES -- severe ones -- for people who could not afford lousy worthless insurance with sky-high deductibles. My own deductible is $9000 a year, so if I had to pay a $1000 fine -- it would still be worth it to avoid possible BANKRUPTCY caused by my INSURANCE.
Fining people who cannot afford a costly private industry product? that is unfair and unAmerican.
Obamacare is pure evil and it must die.
3
Love a good deep-dive on Bernie. With the amount of lies out there about what Medicare for All would cost it's clear the establishment apparatus does not want Americans getting access to affordable health care.
Bernie is absolutely right, in a country as developed as America health care is a universal right. Today, people are afraid to go to the doctor because of the bill they'll get at the end. America deserves better.
If the working class, the BACKBONE of society, would in unison rally behind a candidate like Bernie that actually has their best interests at heart and not just the interests of their corporate donors (looking at you, Joe "nothing will fundamentally change" Biden) there'd never be a Republican in office ever again. Real change IS possible.
24
@Matt
Yes, and if people wouldn't be afraid to go to the doctor in the first place, many more illnesses would be detected early, when it is still relatively CHEAP to treat them.
5
@Matt
Unfortunately, too many of the working class believe in the delusional and discredited American Dream ("I can get rich, and if you can't, that's your problem"), a belief exploited by the likes of Trump. He mocks them to their face, telling him he loves the poorly educated. They can hear him on the Access Hollywood tape laughing at their gullibility. They still voted for him. The American working class live lives of increasing insecurity and poverty, yet they'd rather blame the scapegoats promulgated by Trumpism than vote for a better life for everyone. I'm not sure what one does about that.
28
@Ruth Knight And is also why so many people like that support tax cuts for wealthy -- they think one day THEY will win lottery and will need low taxes as rich person. Yet all they do is suffer.
2
I am from the US but reside in Japan. I feel so much more at ease knowing I can go anytime I want to any doctor to get treated. It is amazing! I still have to pay something for each visit but it depends on my tax bracket. Even at the highest bracket, I pay around $50 for an MRI. A friend had to spend 5 or 6 nights in the hospital and his total bill including all medications was $700. When I go to visit my doctor I usually pay between 4 and 10 dollars plus medication. Meds cost me around $50 per month. I am 65 and have the typical amount of health issues for my age. I am at the top of the income bracket which means no one pays more than me and most pay significantly less.
26
As an American having lived in the US for 40 years and Toronto for the past 14 and knowing both systems well I would NOT want to revert myself or my family back to the US health care system. Also, it is a misnomer to say it is "free" in Canada as it is not, we pay for access to health care through taxes. Nothing is free and we need to stop characterizing it in this way as it gives false impressions. It is similar to car insurance, if you want to drive you need insurance, however, in a given year many don't have accidents and therefore don't need to access it. No different with Universal Health Care. It is really not that complicated.
27
As a born and raised Canadian (with a bunch of US relatives), I'm much more happy with our health care system than I think I'd be living in the US (even with a similar job - lawyer at a large firm).
However, I think better reporting is needed at explaining the full consequences in the US if they tried to move to a Canadian-style system given how much of the US economy is attached to the health care industry.
11
I just read that the war in Afghanistan cost us 2,400 American lives and $2 trillion. For what? Nothing. And yet, here are my ignorant fellow Americans, whining about how much a national healthcare system will cost while they shovel their ever-increasing premiums into the coffers of greedy private insurers.
Sanders for President.
35
I know quite a number of people who would not vote for Trump, but — if given a choice — also would not vote for Sanders because of his sometimes brusque demeanor. They all need to read this story. Here’s a person who could be sitting out his remaining days in comfort and yet he’s on the stump fighting to give us the healthcare this country deserves. He is someone to be admired.
37
Thank you Sydney Ember. You present the standard that should be met be any and all of those who wish to be selected as the Democratic Party choice for president to be.
The candidate must be so fully informed about the functioning of Universal Health Care in at least one world-leading country that he or she can see that there is no acceptable alternative for the future of American public health than UHC.
I have made that point in 100s of comments reporting my n = 1 experience with 23 straight years of Swedish UHC, always with the horror stories of my fellow Americans told in comments and elsewhere as a basis for comparison.
You make clear how a serious political figure can use the n = 1 experience - that of his mother and her family - as the trigger that pushed him over that nearby border to really learn about UHC by learning about Canadian UHC.
This story is so important to me that I now see that a Sanders-Warren ticket may be our best hope. No more about that here.
Thank you also Professor Mintz, will be looking you up at UVM where my two daughters learned so much.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
15
We cannot have Gun Control Laws, because the NRA says it would violate people's rights in the Second Amendment.
Medicare for All is great. But, those opposing it argue it is a Socialist idea.
If it is Medicare for All, will private insurance still function?
1
@citizen
You can have both. In Germany most people are on public health insurance, but there is also private insurance too.
1
There is a lot of democratic socialism in America. You are just not looking in the right places.
Washington State Ferries are totally socialised. They may be old and need a lick of paint, but one can get from the U.S. mainland to Whidbey Island (also in the U.S.) for far less than a private ferry. It is run by their Department of Transportation. Totally socialised by Washington State taxpayers. They offer a keen and affordable sail for families.
Wish we had that type of socialism here in British Columbia, where the cost to get from Vancouver Island to the mainland (Vancouver and the Interior) for this family of four, with vehicle, round trip can run a few hundred dollars. Seriously. As a result, many island families and some of our neighbours here have not been to the mainland in a fair bit.
As for waiting for a doctor in remote or rural areas, it appears there are many Americans in remote parts of the Dakotas, Alaska, or even your South that do not have access to a doctor, and one must wait for care and service that may not exist.
Here is Canada we have a national sales tax of 6%, part of which supports health care. We love our Canadian doctors and they are also not poor street urchins. Check out your golf courses in Rancho Mirage this coming winter if one needs proof. Their costs for malpractice insurance are also lower than American doctors. We know of no Canadian that would trade what we have for the American private 'pay for play' medical system.
23
As a public service to this discussion, I will shed some light on how Canada pays for their system. First, their national income tax system is similar to ours in brackets and rates, but there is no deduction for mortgage interest. Health care is paid for by the provincial income tax system which is considerably higher and more regressive than any US state system.
Here is a tax calculator. Pick a province, plug in a theoretical income level and see what you would pay.
https://www.ey.com/ca/en/services/tax/tax-calculators-2019-personal-tax
4
@KurfcoAnd there is no gift tax nor tax on the profit made from the sale of your home.
1
@Kurfco: taxes are simply higher in Canada. They always have been.
The sales taxes ALONE are 13-15% on purchases. (Foreign travelers can apply to get a refund when you cross back over the border.)
That falls most heavily on the poor and working classes. It is the most grossly unfair way to fund ANYTHING. (Taxes should be on INCOME or WEALTH.)
Living on the US northern border with Canada (Great Lakes)….i've often visited. I like Canada! the Canadians are very welcoming and nice people -- the land is beautiful and scenic.
But we always note how EXPENSIVE it all is. Gas is at least 30% higher and priced by the liter (about a quart!!!).
The only thing that helps is USUALLY (though not always) the exchange rate favors US dollars. In the 80s, it was a 40% difference in our favor -- making Canadian vacations crazy bargains. Not so much today.
Plus Canada has a very small military budget. The USA wastes trillions of dollars minding other countries business and killing people including its own citizens primarily for oil. If only our inflated military budget could be used for social programs rather than weapons of mass destruction, how much better off the entire world would be.
5
Bernie policies are all aimed at strengthening the middle class and the poor. His policies will make the USA a stronger country.
20
The problem is that Bernie and his followers think that Bernie's plan is like that of Canada and the other countries that have universal healthcare systems. The problem is that Bernie's plan goes way beyond other universal healthcare systems in the world, just like it goes way beyond Medicare. Other countries' systems and Medicare pay about 80% of healthcare costs. The remainder is paid by the patient and/or supplemental health insurance. Bernie's plan covers everyone for everything with no premiums, co-pays, deductibles or any other payments by the patient, and private insurance is eliminated in full.
4
As a career hospital employee, I can well remember the time back in the mid to later 1970’s when Ted Kennedy visited Ontario Canada and met with a number of hospital CEO’s and deans of medical schools on a fact finding mission on the Canadian , single payer, health care system. When his motorcade arrived at the main entrance of our hospital, he was treated like a rock star by the numerous staff assembled. It is sad to think that all of these years later there has been little to no progress made in providing all US citizens affordable single payer, evidence based care, considering that a fraction of the US military budget would cover the cost.
15
@Thomas. Even Richard Nixon supported some type oh health insurance for all Americans!
4
Canadians could see a doctor whenever they want to, that is, if they can get a doctor that has room in their practice. For those living in Canada, we see our young friends with children wait hours in the middle of winter outside in line to see a health care clinic doctor. Or they just go and wait for 3 hours or more in the Emergency Room. Yes, it is a great system, for those that can find a doctor.
2
I twice used emergency room in the US and both time waiting time was more than 4 hrs and bill was staggering . They charge 100$ for 5ml of liquid soap. Tell me again how wonderful the American system is.
19
@Kathy: that's because a significant chunk of their doctors are HERE IN THE US.
I've had several doctors from Canada, and I live in OHIO.
I've chatted with them, and they are all very clear that while they love Canada -- they are still Canadian citizens -- they can earn far more money in the US.
That's why they have long lines and we do not.
@yulia Don't even think of going to ER in Ontario--and it isn't just the waiting times, you can't see a specialist when you want. You must first see your family doctor, and then wait about a year to see a specialist. You have very little say in your choice of doctors, or in the treatments in a government sponsored plan. My two cents--strengths and weaknesses in both systems. Given my own situation, I will take the US health care system any old day over the one in Ontario.
Any of you Canadians want to switch to this system? How about anyone in the U.K. . Anyone Anywhere? ..I have never met a Canadian or English person who would switch... never.
31
@Doctor Woo Yes, me. I will not tolerate the Ontario system after experiencing the one in Florida, which enables me to choose from a list of excellent doctors and gives me the power to choose treatments. I don't mind paying for my health care. I just want it to be good. In Ontario, we pay, but it isn't necessarily good.
1
Our next president.
23
I think the Netherlands has a system where everyone is guaranteed health coverage, but a person can pay for a higher tier of insurance to guarantee no waiting times. I realize it's a small, far less populated country than the United States, but I'm sure we could work this out...if people weren't being fooled into confusing basic health care with a loss of civil rights.
12
People don't understand that having health insurance is not the same as having access to health decent health care whenever and wherever it's needed without having to worry about the costs. We pay a lot of money for the aggravation of dealing with lost claims, co-pays, high deductibles, and very narrow networks with almost no chance of being able to go outside them and see the expert our own doctors might recommend unless we pay out of pocket. Given that most Americans cannot afford a $400 emergency of the non-medical nature, how can we afford a medical emergency that includes an ambulance, out of network doctors, and other surprises?
How many American adults no longer see their doctors on a regular basis? How many don't have doctors to see? How many are rationing medication? How many die or become sicker because they cannot afford to pay for their meds, the co-pays on everything, and lost pay? How many Americans are forgoing meals to pay for medical care? How many Americans can't find jobs because employers don't want to offer them health insurance due to their age or a chronic illness?
Medicare for all, if implemented properly, would eliminate most of these problems. The country is paying for the "extra" illnesses and unemployed people anyway. In fact that costs more than treating the illnesses.
Other countries treat health care as right. Why are we so backwards?
9/9/2019 11:53pm first submit.
25
All of the single payer systems use taxes to cover the costs of treatment. No one seems to be thinking that we already pay enormous sums for our care whether we get any or not. If you have healthcare through a company you’re probably paying some amount per month and your employer is paying the rest. My school district had a cap on what they paid every year and we were liable for the rest. Our cap was about $15,000 and depending upon the plan I chose the premium was zero to over $800 per month. If the tax on your medical insurance was say $7000 per year, your company should pay you everything above that and you will have a nice large raise above and beyond your health care premiums. This works especially well when the for profit model is removed. No reason for your Dr.’s to change, (insurance companies regularly change who is and isn’t “in network”), and everything including dental should be covered. No boogie man is under the bed.
14
I love our health care system in Canada, it's not perfect but it works very well for the vast majority of Canadians. As far as the US is concerned, Bernie's solution won't work there. We introduced Medicare in the '60's in a far simpler, more liberal, less technological and cheaper world. To put your economy through the massive upheaval that his plan would entail will fail to get the support it would need. Especially when most Americans apparently like their system (until they try a "socialist" single payer system!)
The obvious plan, to an outsider, is to have a public option to your present Medicare program. Instead of taking away the choice that you presently have, it gives you one more choice. Once people see the efficiency of a single payer system it would grow forcing the private insurance companies to compete. Maybe it would evolve into a mostly single payer system by choice, the advantages being self evident.
Your own VA, which is basically a single payer system, has been shown to be far more efficient than the private insurance industry, as well as medically proficient as the private sector. That's why the Republicans have been trying to privatize it, to make it as inefficient and profitable as the rest of America's healthcare system!
PS Bernie please stop encouraging Americans coming to Canada to get our cheaper medications! Solve your own problems!
9
@Michael Male In our "far more efficient" VA system, estimates of how many patients have died due to excessive waiting times range in the hundreds of thousands. That is probably the best example of why our government cannot be trusted to run our healthcare system, regardless of what may be true in Canada or other countries.
3
Somehow the eldery Americans don't mind Medicare at all. They don't say 'Oh, I just wait and see how it will work ' majority of them enrolled in it as soon as possible. Apparently, Americans know how the system work and do like it. I don't see need in transition with public option, when it is not very clear how to pay for it.
3
Well, the medical mistakes is third leading cause of deaths in the USA. Maybe, we should not trust American doctors to run healthcare?
1
Thank you for this positive profile of Bernie Sanders. Agree or disagree with his policy positions, you can't say he is in politics for the perks and the fame. You know that he will use his power as president to help people who work and struggle and suffer. You know he has a heart under that gruff exterior. You know where he stands. He know he's a fighter. We need a leader who is all of that.
27
I am from Montreal, Canada and have been acquainted with Bernie Sander’s career through the reception of Vermont public television since the early 80s.
He always struck me as someone who made sense on a lot of issues. What’s more, he is honest. Those two qualities alone are enough for good outcomes in any term he may be elected to serve.
America, do yourself a favour, give your citizens some decent health care. It will make the population less desperate. Soon everyone will appreciate the interdependence of all the citizenry. This will bring everyone closer together.
In Canada we are conservative on fiscal issues and social on health and education. This seems to please the most people.
But start off by batting a single. Get Trump out office first. The guy is a disaster!
20
The American system is like everything else American, all about the almighty buck. The people profiting off of the status quo are not letting go... to the detriment of your population - especially those that can't afford healthcare.
The Canadian system is not perfect - currently we suffer from a lack of doctors because after they get trained up in our tax payer subsidized universities, they take off to the US to make the big bucks...
10
@L Kostash: I live in Ohio, not far from two major teaching hospitals.
We have MANY Canadian doctors. My husband's last primary care physician was a woman from Canada. She readily admitted she came here because the money is vastly better in the USA.
If I go to the hospitals here for treatment….the parking lot is chockfull of Canadian license tags. (We are just across the pond from Canada.) They clearly are here for TREATMENT.
If Canada was so perfect….why is ANYONE here in the US for treatment? isn't it too expensive?
@Concerned Citizen Nonsense and you know it. http://independentbloggersalliance.blogspot.com/2009/11/americans-filching-canadas-health.html or why my card has photo ID
1
Considering that health care in the US is the highest federal expenditure after defense, it will be almost impossible for Bernie to get elected on a universal health coverage platform, especially if he can’t show us HOW he will pay for it, if elected. In all his readings and consulting with “experts” he probably didn’t ask that question. The Canadian system he admires so much might not work in the US simply because of the numbers of people to be covered. People who expect the highest quality of care, without rationing, and not tax increases. Bernie is to be admired for proposing an experiment, but an experiment nonetheless that he won’t be able to deliver.
3
I don't see any trouble. The US has more people to treat but it also has more people to pay. The system will be paid by taxes that will replace the premiums. The advantage of such system that this system will be there independently for whom you work is changes in your life. Now you can pay money to one insurance for 20 years and never see a doctor, but if you can not make premium one month you are not cover. All your money (and that is a lot of moneys) were just wasted.
7
@Son of A. Bierce
Wow, you act like you know what you are talking about but a simple search finds many options to pay for Medicare for All: https://www.sanders.senate.gov/download/options-to-finance-medicare-for-all?inline=file
Furthermore, it is the second highest federal expenditure because the for profit health care industry is profiting 100 Billion yearly while not covering 30M ppl a year. 100M total are affected negatively whether they are underinsured or go bankrupt or die because of no insurance.
2
As a Canadian living in the US, I feel somewhat ambivalent about all of these single-payer proposals. Honestly, I prefer my employer-sponsored healthcare to the free healthcare I had in Canada. My relatives have long waits to see doctors, can’t get a new GP when their old GP retires, and the line at the local clinic is 20 deep at 7am- and Canada’s entire population is smaller than that of California. And the tax rates to pay for that universal healthcare are quite high. That said, when one of my relatives got cancer, they were put to the front of the line, received excellent treatment, and came out alive...all for minimal costs (unless you count the significantly higher tax rates). So, I wouldn’t want to see a model based exactly on Canada’s in the US, but I would want to see a new model that retained the best parts of both the Canadian and US models. Just the two cents of a Canadian expat.
9
@Expat Canuck. Your experience echoes the many comments I heard from other Canadians. No single system is ideal, but a mixture of the US-Canadian systems could be better than either one alone. Sadly, that’s not what Bernie proposes.
2
@Expat Canuck
Then you should read Bernie's bill, it is much better than Canada and expands the US's most popular plan which is Medicare. If you lose your US job, get sick and can't work you won't have your coverage anymore, which is something millions of Americans deal with. Then there are 60+ million ppl w employer insurance who can't afford to use their health plan. 30M uninsured Americans, 30,000+ who die yearly due to no coverage or unaffordable medicine. 500,000 who list medical plan contributing to their bankruptcy. Just want to make sure you are seeing the big picture.
10
@Vinky There is, however, the slight problem that Bernie's bill is unaffordable and completely detached from reality.
1
When I was living in Montreal, I saw a man interviewed on Vermont local news about Bernie’s run for mayor of Burlington. He was asked about Sanders being a socialist and he replied “I don’t care what his religion is”.
15
I work in healthcare and have seen the dysfunction from both sides. America can do much better than what we have currently.
A meme floated repeatedly by the millionaire hosts on network and cable TV news is that Americans love their health coverage. The truth is that they do not. That somehow never gets reported.
25
It’s hard to report on the revolution from inside the castle.
10
Bernie is way ahead of American voters on national health care. Unfortunately, in America’s conservative paranoia about socialistic programs, people are driven away from anything that appears too left wing.
Here in France, the combination public and private health program is considered common place and rather conservative compared to some other government run health plans.
My fellow Americans don’t realize how backward they appear with their expensive health insurance system and national love of guns.
32
If Bernie Sanders was fired up by ‘Medicare for all’ in 1988, he has precious little to show for his last 31 ‘fired-up’ years. Why should the American people trust Bernie Sanders to do anything meaningful in a 4yr Presidential Term ?
5
Bernie has already set the current agenda every candidate has copied (or decided not to and take their chances). Revolutions are always only from the bottom up.
That’s how all revolutions have happened.
We, The People are just catching up to what we deserve and should be fighting for.
This is our battle.
This is how democracy works.
Not letting the top tell us who our leaders should be, like the DNC choosing Hillary for us, and assuming the lesser of two evils was the best approach. We all know how that worked out...
Let’s not do that again, shall we?
13
The only thing that concerns me is the cost of research into new drugs and devices. Things like CT scans and other life saving devices cost a lot to invent and develop. We need to make sure that there are incentives ( usually but not always $$$) so that people will take on the big tasks of developing these new technologies. Otherwise count me in for Medicare for all...
3
@RickF Our tax dollars fund the majority of R&D on pharma and then it goes to a private company, same w devices. People are always going to develop and invent. That won't be a problem. We will have a healthier workforce and better economy.
10
Look, as a Canuck I can say socialized medicine is great for most of us but it's not the dream everyone thinks it is. Yeah, you won't go bankrupt but you also won't have access to the same quality of health care you can get in the US. Not all doctors are created equal any more than anyone else.
Plenty of Canadians are referred to America when their Canadian counterparts can't get to the root of the problem or provide treatment fast enough. It's not uncommon for people to wait 6 to 12+ months to see a specialist. A problem that's unforgivable when time is of the essence. And we lack those specialists because we lack the budget for them.
I have issues, as do we all, for which I had to wait over 6 months to see a specialist and that was on an emergency recommendation. I was told flat out I could see a specialist in the US next week if I had the money to pay for it - I did not. And even with the government footing the bill - which they fight tooth and nail against - you still have to wait in order for it to be cheaper unless it's matter of life and death.
Make no mistake. Socialized medicine is the bomb for all the small stuff. For the important stuff, enh, not so much. Maybe in more progressive socialized democracies it is, but certainly not Canada.
5
@Cootsu but in the US if you don't have the money you won't be getting treatment even after you've waited 6 months. Your logic fails me. Sorry you are having to wait for care. Both my husband and I have had sudden health issues this last year and we have had excellent care both in terms of quality and promptness.
12
@not my ancestors--but most of us in the US do have the insurance and the money, and that is why the US can boast of the excellence in health care that it does have. it isn't just for the uber-rich, but it is for the majority. People are actually happy with the Affordable Care Act. The solution to the remaining problems is to extend it to cover everyone, not to go single payer government mandated. I have a vanilla plan and it is superior to anything I've seen in Ontario--an MRI in a week, as many specialists as I want with no waiting time--these things are unthinkable in Ontario.
1
@Darwin15
Before you start bragging about the affordable care act why don’t you do some research on how many Americans die every year because they can’t afford the ACA? 30 million people are uninsured in the US and over 60 million can’t afford to use the employer insurance that they have. 500,000 at least link huge medical bills to going bankrupt every year. So please don’t tell me that the ACA is superior to single payer or the Canadian healthcare program. Whatever problems the Canadian System has is caused by its government spending and following in the footsteps of American neoliberalism and putting money over their constituents.
4
Thank you my Canadian friends for reminding me about the life part of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" we have espoused since 1776.
11
I think Sanders was the most honest of the democratic candidates in 2016.
I was impressed when he stood firm on gun control, not pandering to urban voters and having a realistic understanding that many people like guns, most of those people are law abiding, and that mental health and instant background checks were crucial issues.
He has been ideologically consistent, which is even more appealing concerning our country's current predicament.
21
I am 100% Medicare for All but the more I ponder about it, the more I wonder how the right will try to destroy it with horror stories. One thing that concerns me is that newer hospitals in the US are not built for a Medicare for All system. They are almost spa like providing giant private rooms, encouraging family members to stay the night, and are built for private insurance to pay for their expensive upkeep. My dream is to see Medicare for All in the US someday- I just hope it can be implemented in a way where we dont see unintended consequences being used as cannon fodder for the right to destroy it.
12
We have not yet begun to fight!
Don’t give up! Join us! XO
9
@Drew "Horror stories" like the facts that we can't afford Medicare for All, and that it will create dangerously long waiting scenarios for some people (as the VA system already does)? Please recognize that your dream is some people's nightmare.
If we can afford most expensive mediocre health system, we definitely can afford the Medicare for all. And if we can not organize it, we always can invite specialists from Canada to help us to organize the system more efficiently.
2
America is built on individualism (our Constitution lays that out). Canada is built on the collective. Two profoundly different world views. Hard to impose one on another without completely shifting our economic system. It seems, to get buy-in for a Canadian-style system (which I totally agree with), we need to shift away from profit and more towards whats best for everyone. That is what Bernie and Liz stand for, IMHO.
13
@Beth WaitkusAmerica was built on slavery....
1
The VA is not quite "free". You are means tested, have to show W2 or tax info, and you pay based on that, which can be very little, but it is not free. Unless you have 100% Disability like myself, and then you also get Dental free. And because there are only so many Doctors, wait times can be a month to see one. For an emergency there is VA ER, of course.
5
Question for Bernie’s babies and bullies
Are you still saying there was no difference between Trump and Clinton?
2
@Brad Oh please Brad. Get over it. The majority of Bernie's supporters in the primary, 78%, voted for Queen Hillary. That is over 10M. If you want to whine, go after the 8M Obama voters who voted for Trump.
10
Are you still saying the DNC choosing instead of the voters, and lesser of two evils blackmail was the best campaign approach?
8
@Brad Please tell where Sanders EVER said that? Remember Bernie went to WI twice to campaign for Clinton and she could not be bothered to go ONCE assuming she would win.
2
I'm a disabled worker and have never been able to afford healthcare on my wages even working 60 hours a week. I want to be clear, no other public servant will get this done. We need Bernie in the White House in 2020. I'm sorry for you Warren fans but she is for "Access to Healthcare" not Medicare for All even though she co signed the bill (look at her website if you don't believe me). She is cozying up to the establishment and taking counsel from "We will never have Medicare for all" Hillary Clinton. So no, moving politicians left in a climate still led by big donors, lobbyists and citizens united is not an option. This is Bernie's time, his policies and his presidency. Volunteer, Donate and Vote! Go to his website and look up your state to see if there are any requirements, you may need to be registered as a Democrat or be registered 6 month prior, yes even Dems suppress the vote to keep the outsiders out. Let's do this for our country, our future generations, the Earth and the World! #usnotme #Bernie2020
28
What is your view of the Texas Medicaid Buy-In Program? Is it not applicable to your situation?
@Lynn in DC
No, Texas did not expand Medicaid under ACA along w 13 other red states.
1
The American health care system is a farce. We spend twice as much as a nation than other advanced countries for twice as bad results. Why anyone puts up with it is beyond belief. But, then again, we elected Donald Trump, so maybe it’s not all that surprising. Sen. Sanders is to be commended for his zeal on this subject. Let’s hope the country wakes up and adopts a fair and effective system.
23
I can understand.
I went to Australia and began to understand how socialism and universal health care worked. Only I stayed.
Americans who are told universal health care is a drain are being lied to.
34
Thank you.
Some of us have figured it out.
I hope enough of us do.
Thank you for speaking up.
9
@EC Americans who are told we can have another country's system here are being lied to. It's a delusion.
1
No, we can do it the best way for us.
But not doing it is not only unconscionable, it is eminently unacceptable.
6
62 year old artist here. A serious obstacle to a professional career is health insurance. No way can I afford it, therefore, at 62, or 52, or 42 or... Anyone in my boat cannot strike out on their own.
I want medicare for all. I want social democracy.
I'm not afraid of "socialism". We already have it. It's called Federal and State government.
Bernie! Warren! Either! Both even Better!
21
@Slipping Glimpser Federal and State Government is not "socialism", it's "dysfunction". If you want Medicare, lobby your Congressional rep. Don't try to impose it on those of us who don't want it.
1
@Slipping Glimpser
Look, I am all for what you're saying but you need to look closer at Warren, she and Bernie may be friends but they are not interchangeable. These are Bernie's lifelong policies that she is adapting in the past year. She was a Republican until she was 47 like during Reagan's "welfare queen" reform, trickle down economy and Iran contras. She stated in the debate she is for M4A but when asked details she says she supports "Access to Healthcare" that is not M4A. She has no health care plan on her website. She is taking council w Hillary "We will never have medicare for all" Clinton. Warren will not work like Bernie to pass her half measure "I have a plan for that" versions of his career long policies. I like her but she is no alternative to Bernie.
4
@Slipping Glimpser: so in short, you want socialist "freebies' so you don't have to work for a living.
Listen, I like art too! but I never expected to LIVE OFF doing fine art for my own pleasure.
Also: Canada and California are roughly the same population size.
Which one is more creative? which more innovates more? which one started the internet revolution? FAANG? which one is richer?
Are there more innovative artists in CANADA -- or California? more movies? more TV shows? more fine arts, music, theatre, film, museums, etc.?
All that free health care did not make CANADA more creative or wealthy than California -- did it?
The idea of adapting Canada's healthcare system - even aside from its many current problems - or that of any other country to the United States is a futile pipe dream. No other country has our political and electoral systems, and our government, standing in the way. We can learn from others, but there is no possibility of replicating them.
The only place Bernie Sanders is trying to lead us to is the land of delusion, however well intended the effort may be. Enough Americans of all political stripes recognize this, fortunately, that he has no chance of being elected as president. The only job Bernie should be pouring his energies into at this point is the one for which he is best suited - that of zayde (grandfather).
1
Yeah, just give up. Medicare for all is not for you. It’s just for everyone else.
12
@Carl Yaffe
President Bernie Sanders 2020!
A Future To Believe In!
9
@Norm Vinson Some Canadians may find this hard to believe - especially those who blind themselves to the problems in their own system - but not everyone down here wants it.
3
As a Canadian who pays taxes to subsidize my healthcare, I can tell you it’s not nearly what I paid over the course of a year to cover my own healthcare when I lived in the US. On top of that, just imagine removing the anxiety of healthcare from the entire population of your country!!! It’s life changing and culture changing on a massive scale.
36
@BW I've spoken to enough Canadians (friends and in-laws) with medical concerns to know that "removing the anxiety of healthcare from the entire population of your country" is a wild exaggeration. If it's removed your personal anxiety, that's great, but not the universal situation.
1
Anxiety of the health care bills is definitely universal.
3
1987-88 was when I first became aware of Bernie, mainly from his interviews and speeches on C-SPAN and public radio. I loved what he was saying about healthcare and thought we’d get single-payer when Jesse Jackson ran.
At the time, I was dating (and subsequently married) a Swedish man, who didn’t understand my frustrations with healthcare here. He just assumed we got insurance through our taxes. Boy, was he surprised when he learned “The American Way!”
It’s clear that Sanders is the most informed and passionate on this topic, and I share his zeal. At 54, Medicare can’t come soon enough.
I do wish the media would stop pressing Bernie to discuss his mother and other private issues. Poverty and money struggles bring shame, and being saddled with medical debts makes one feel helpless and vulnerable. When my sister became permanently disabled, I had (and still have) so much guilt over not being able to do more. That’s not anything I’d be able to publicly discuss without crying, and I see no reason why we have to demand it of a candidate.
30
I support affordable health care, near universal access ( not sure about illegal immigration), affordability, and avoiding medical bankruptcy. But there are alternative paths to Bernie Sanders forcing everyone off of their current insurance, including current Medicare recipients, who will adjust to a new taxation scheme( and new services as well).
1. Without drug cost reform, health care will still be too expensive in the US.
2. Allow us to buy true catastrophic health care policies like we used to have. Require every insurance company to offer a true catastrophic policy ( you pay about $300/yr and are never responsible for anything over 25K in a year ever).
3. Institute a Medicare for all premium based option, competing with private insurers.
4. Ensure Medicaid pays docs/hopsitals the same as Medicare.
There are a couple of issues with Sanders ideas. The tax rate in Denmark is 60% when you hit 76,000 / year in American dollars. We need to know the new tax rates.
Canada's health insurance does not include a prescription drug plan. That is a separate requirement. I like how it works BTW, but most people in the US do not understand this.
Only about 50% of American Households have a federal income tax liability each year. Does Bernie expect the top 50% of income earners to pay for the bottom 50% who do not owe federal income tax?
These are three issues before we move onto problems associated with a government taking over 20% of the private sector economy.
4
He covers that in his plan!
9
@Mark
Do yourself a favor and read Bernie's Medicare for All. It is the best practices of many countries' single payer and universal plans with the most that Medicare has to offer. Health insurances have one priority- to not cover as much as they can. People love their doctors, not their insurance. They lose it when they get fired, switch jobs or get too sick to work plus they are paying for it through their wages. Let's cut out the middleman and $100s of billions in waste.
4
@Vinky
Most countries with single payer set ups have a private option. The Sanders plan does not allow for this. This should be discussed thoroughly. The VA system is single payer for instance. England's health care system has serious challenges as well. Let us look carefully before we leap.
Canadian Medicare sounds good on paper and may have been ok in 1987 when Bernie Sanders visited Canada, but right now it is a broken system. Wait times for surgery are very long. Socialism and so-called “free” stuff creates shortages.
5
@Lester B
Electives are but needs aren't. I know a guy who waited years to get a hip repair only because he wouldn't loose the weight to be a good candidate. Recently a mother complained her son could not get a kidney transplant but failed to mention the boy was a heavy drinker and would not stay off the stuff, hence the delay. The Fraser Institute claimed 1000's were fleeing to the US but it was never confirmed in that it was an extrapolation based on false premises. The gun lobby chasing the relaxing the gun laws is their pet as well. I noted that Eli Lilly and other big pharma, insurance cartels, the NRA and the Koch brothers all contribute to this Canadian "think tank".
18
Lol. So obvious. Real Canadians never describe their health care system as "socialist", or "free", for that matter. When was the last time you heard an American refer to publicly funded roads as "socialist"?
18
Thank you to all of our Canadian neighbors chiming in.
24
The debate about health care reform in the US is ill-served by proposing that the sole alternative to American market-based health insurance and care is what Canada has.
There are many alternatives other than Canada - in fact, there is a huge difference between the Canadian health care model and that of almost every other advanced country. Canadian provinces, which run health care, exercise a monopoly over primary care insurance. That means that treatment by your GP, hospital care, catastrophic injury treatment and emergency care, and related tests and specialist care, are all dealt with exclusively in the public system and paid for by public insurance (other services, such as prescription drugs, physiotherapy, dentistry, etc are covered by private insurance, usually provided by employers or unions).
In European countries and most other countries with universal health insurance, by contrast, primary health insurance coverage plans are hybrids of public and private coverage. You can buy optional primary health insurance to supplement public primary coverage. In Canada, you can't.
Switzerland is another outlier. Swiss health insurance is mandated, 100% private coverage. Everybody is entitled to coverage, which is provided solely by private insurers - like Obamacare. Low-income citizens are provided with subsidies to buy insurance. This system works very well, though the cost of coverage is higher than public single-payer.
Lots of ways to get to universal coverage.
6
@Bob Diesel
Medical tests are almost always NOT dealt with in the public system, but outsourced to private firms.
X-rays, colonoscopies, physical therapy, ultrasounds and blood tests are mostly done by private firms. Unless you have the procedure done in an actual hospital, it's done by a private firm. Many hospitals even outsource their blood work to private firms, not to mention stuff like sterilization of equipment and surgery kits.
1
@Bob Diesel Well we are fortunate that Bernie and his staff has studied many models and spoken to Drs and economists all over the world. In the US's very lopsided capitalist "corporate socialism" economy we have to get rid of the current private health insurance companies who have ruined our healthcare system by all- out greed/denying coverage in order to make it affordable for everyone. The downside of our corrupt system negatively affects at least 100 million people annually. Its unacceptable.
2
It is not as Obamacare, there are big differences. The health insurance in Switzerland are not employer-based, non-profit, and heavily regulated by the Government. And yes, their health insurance is most expensive after the US.
1
p.s. As one stated below, thank you NYTimes for this wonderful article.
9
My uncle had insurance but was dropped by them (he paid his bills, they determined he didn't take his medication regularly enough though). He was so mad he never went to another doctor in his life. His short life. He died of a massive heart attack a year or two later. I blame the health insurance industry. There are so many barriers to justice in healthcare it is ridiculous. Thank you, Bernie, for leading the fight.
20
So sorry for your and your family’s great loss.
Not one more premature death from the greed of an industry based on denying the healthcare Americans need and deserve, like the rest of the civilized world.
8
The rich don’t want all Americans to have insurance . The NYT’s had a article recently they feel the Americans will get to needy. When we get the Dems in start making the GOP rich start paying their fair share of taxes and we will have plenty of money for Medicare for all. Plus no more wars like the GOP love to be in.
13
Anyone who reads the article's content and most of the 450 comments, and, does not think this is a strange and statistically insignificant sample, should be happy to see that Bernie is loved by so many for a good reason. A simple reason at that.
He is a Mensch. He wants to improve the luck of others. With all my rationality, Harvard Math doctorate, my Yale and Harvard educated family, and my wealth acquired by acting on my educated rationality, the best way to express my feelings about Bernie is that I love him.
May we all see the day that he leads this nation out of darkness into greatness; not just for itself but for everyone else as well. Amen!
36
@Blunt
"May we all see the day that he leads this nation out of darkness into greatness; not just for itself but for everyone else as well. Amen!"
I second your Amen, and thank you for your honesty.
17
Thank you.
9
You are Bernie are responsible for trump
1
Sometimes it takes America some time to get around to something. Ending slavey, women's emancipation, voting rights, clean air, and so on and so forth.
It's just a matter of time before America gets around to providing its people with universal healthcare. As such, if Trump wants to be a hero for the ages he should implement the inevitable now, universal health care. Save some lives.
Make a name for himself. Get elected to a second term in a shoo-in. Call it TrumpCare. We get the same top-notch health care that he gets. Donald, do it.
10
@MIKEinNYC
If I wasn't an atheist, I would liken the idea of Trump doing this to the devil asking God for forgiveness and a place alongside Him in Heaven.
5
I am an MD who trained at McGill for 6 years. I trained in Canada because I wanted to bring back universal insurance back to the USA.
I was undoubtedly the first to testify in NY State and perhaps elsewhere on single payer in January 1988. Canadian style universal health insurance with global budgeting is a sensible solution.
I voted for Bernie Sanders in 2016.
The challenge is to get past the necessary political transformation and implementation. This will require consensus, planning, ideas, and strategies.
Parts of our health care system are already essentially single payer: the NIH, the VA Health Care System, the US Public Health Service, the FDA, the Indian Health Service.
Any implementation plan would have to be NONdisruptive. One place to begin is with medical education: we have multiple tiers of medical schools: allopathic: rich private, poor private, state, Federal, now even for profit, but also private and public osteopathic; not to mention Caribbean medical schools which cater to our market, are chartered and subsidized by the US Gov. We even have a med school we support in Israel: the Sackler School of Medicine.
This educates physicians of a highly variable quality; a Princeton NBER study even showed that one's medical school determines one's lifelong opioid prescriptions habits. That is not sustainable. Higher quality and lower cost of medical education with a single payer strategy is how we must first move towards universal insurance.
38
Thank you for your choice of how to spend your life’s energy making the world s better place.
6
Quote: “It was kind of mind blowing to realize that the country 50 miles away from where I live — that people could go to the doctor whenever they wanted and not have to take out their wallet,....”
If this is the extent of what Bernie Sanders understands about Canada's health care system, G.d help him and G.d help America should he be elected.
It's true that life-threatening illnesses in Canada will be treated promptly and the victims will not face personal bankruptcy in the process. To go from there and say there is anything like a satisfactorily functioning system in Canada is dreaming in technicolor. Firstly, there is not one system there - they are under provincial jurisdiction. Conditions vary from province to province. Secondly, it is generally false that people can go to the doctor whenever they want, because there are severe shortages of GPs and specialists and wait times can be long. Thirdly, it is generally false that no one needs to take out their wallets. There is no free lunch in Canada either. Taxes and public health-insurance premiums finance the care.
One can't begin to get serious about public sector health care without facing vexing issues about cost control, service levels and taxes. This is the sobering reality that honest politicians should be talking about.
9
@Mark from Canada: I think you are over-reacting. I think what Bernie meant was that in Canada people are not prevented from even trying to go to the doctor, from even seeking out treatment, by obstacles like the cost. He didn't say that Canada has the best possible system and we should emulate it in every way, nor did he get in to the differences among provinces. And yes, he plans to pay for his system through taxes - but fair taxation on those who can afford it.
He - and we here in the US - are reading to get serious and deal with the sobering reaiities of Medicare for All, which are far better than the horrifying realities of what we have now.
18
You are dead wrong, and you have no idea what you are talking about.
I can go see my GP every day if I want, and he will be happy to see me, no wallet needed !
21
@Mark
Perfection doesn't exist, not on this planet, and Bernie Sanders is not suggesting that the Canadian system is perfect.
He is suggesting we emulate much of it, and as I know from relatives living in Canada for the last 50 plus years, not one of them has anything but high praise for the Canadian healthcare system, and as Arthur from Toronto commented, none of them have had to pay any medical costs other than whatever was funded through taxation.
16
Bernie Sanders as president, even though wanting Medicare for All as so many Americans do, will compromise for elective Single Payer if necessary. He will not, as his detractors demand, eliminate MFA from his platform beforehand.
The capitulation awarded the corporate & professional profiteers in our "health care" system under disguise of fear of those "covered" by their employers rebelling have led to many being labeled Russian bots if not nodding toward one of the less engaged candidates in the Demo primary in regard to this issue. Stay strong, Bernie.
16
I get my care from the VA. I know there have been complaints and problems with the VA but I write some of it off with failure to properly fund and support it. The benefit I see would be one of the benefits of Medicare for all. I get checked regularly for known conditions to make sure they are under control. On a regular endoscopy for Barretts. While in they noticed a redness on my airway. They went back in within 2 weeks and went down my airway and discovered a growth next to my vocal cords. After a couple of months of repeated tests they said it was cancer and they had caught it very early and it had not traveled. 7 weeks of radiation and I am now recuperating. I think a Medicare for all would have the same ability to catch things like this. This would mean an overall improvement in the nations health because people wouldn't be waiting until it was too late. This would mean a savings over the long run simply because people would be healthier.
19
Bernie is right. Healthcare should be a human right. Time to send another $30.00 to his campaign.
Sincerely,
A person who has free lifetime healthcare from my union job
32
American patients are looking control all the time. Their employer decide to switch insurance, the doctor decided he doesn't accept this insurance any more. You lost job, and so forth, and all that while paying a highest price for health care.
18
Two fundamental flaws with our current system:
1. It’s ridiculously expensive. We are fools to take twice as much out of our economy as do our economic competitors.
2. Nobody except veterans, members of Congress and seniors on Medicare actually have healthcare protection. Employer provided insurance? A mirage. Anybody can lose their job because of illness or accident or because of employer caprice or crisis. “Insurance” is gone in a heartbeat.
Bernie has it right. I'm suspicious of the loyalties of any Democratic candidate who shies away from tackling the problem head-on.
27
I cannot see any scenario where current Medicare beneficiaries are not given substantial economic incentives to support the new arrangement. Those are the only ones who have to be given enough if monopsonistic healthcare price control system such as Medicare-for-all has any chance of being enacted.
The first reaction from many current Medicare beneficiaries to the idea of Medicare-for-all, might be related to the issue of others getting immediately what they have paid into for many years while they did not get any benefits. At minimum, current Medicare beneficiaries would chafe at the idea of having to pay new taxes to pay for Medicare-for-all, and not getting anything for those taxes, other than the Medicare already have now.
To put it bluntly, current Medicare beneficiaries will have to be bought-off. One fair way to garner the support of current Medicare beneficiaries would be to grant them a special deduction that could be applied to their adjusted gross income for Federal income tax purposes. The special deduction could be the total amount paid for Medicare tax by both themselves in all years that they were not receiving Medicare benefits.
The 55 million current Medicare beneficiaries are the most powerful voting block in America. The question is whether the proponents of a Medicare-for-all type system would be savvy enough to make it worthwhile for many of the 55 million current Medicare beneficiaries to support it…”
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4111577
4
@Lance Brofman My husband is on Medicare. No vision, dental, or prescription coverage. Bernie's plan calls for these areas to be covered.
Think of it as an investment. We pool our resources for so many things not all of us use. Education being a prime example.
11
@Sue Salvesen In theory, Medicaid-for-all would bring comprehensive coverage to all and would lower costs if the lower Medicaid payments to providers was retained. The opposition from healthcare providers to Medicaid-for-all would be even more intense than to Medicare-for-all, if payments to providers we at the Medicaid. In theory payments to providers in a Medicare or Medicaid for all system could be maintained at current market levels. However, notwithstanding the 2% administrative costs paying providers market levels rather than the monopsonistically derived much lower levels that the other counties allow, would not reduce health care costs significantly below that of twice the per capita costs in the other countries..."
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4111577
@Lance Brofman
And Bernie's M4A includes long term care in your home not a nursing home and ppl won't have to be to be financially depleted enough to be on Medicaid anymore.
2
“Dogma”? “Fixated”?
I congratulate Sydney Ember on producing one of the few, if not the only, mostly unbiased articles about Sanders that Sydney has ever produced.
Only in two of the captions under photos (including the to photo) does Sydney use totally inappropriate wording (as frequently found in Sydney’s other articles: “dogma” and “fixated” are obviously optional, disparaging terms.
As a ex-WSJ reporter myself, and sometime NYT Op-Ed writer — but trained in the American journalistic principles now long gone — I think we all should be appalled that a reporter and editors of our premier newspaper can make such an obvious, Journalism-101, politically harmful error.
I know the faux-neutral definitions of “dogma” and “fixated,” and it may well be true that Sanders has strong views that he’s held for a long time, as well as a longstanding interest in Canada. But we all know these two terms have blatantly disparaging connotations.
25
GoFundMe is not a civilized way to take care of our citizens.
25
It is true that, “people can go to the doctor whenever they want and not have to take out their wallet”. It is also true that, in many places in Canada, one cannot find a doctor that is willing to take on new patients, that frequently a ‘doctor’s’ visit is actually handled by a nurse practitioner and not a physician, that with the exception of emergencies the waiting list for routine lab tests, imaging, and other procedures can be long and require the patient to appear at ungodly hours at facilities far distant from their homes. “Medicare for all” is far from perfect.
6
@Lewis Sternberg
That is why Bernie has made sure that his Medicare for All plan is much better than Canada's and anything else offered in the US. You should read the bill before comparing it to your current health care.
4
The citizens of the U.S. decided a couple years ago that we would be better off with Trump as president than Bernie.
We chose poorly.
18
@Larry Dickman
Let us hope they chose Trump again or we are in deep trouble as a country.
@Larry Dickman - The choice was not between Bernie and Trump. It was between Hillary and Trump, and she won by 3 million votes.
Trump is an accidental president.
4
That’s not quite accurate.
We did chose Bernie.
The DNC chose Hillary, who called half the country a Basket of Deplorables.
No wonder she lost to the worst candidate in the history of our country.
9
The rich get richer. The poor get poorer. In every aspect. Do healthcare costs impact the rich? No. They will pay whatever and not feel a thing. There was another story in NYT today where small homeowners are slapped with fines for minor building code infractions. Unable to pay the initial fine in one case the fines added up over time and totaled $400,000. More than the value of the house itself. How about the IRS. Does the IRS go after the big fish? Rarely. Why? Because the big fish they can get the big lawyers and fight. So they go after small fry. Because it is easy. They would rather get the $200 easy than not get any of the $200,000.
9
When it comes to health care Sanders has a point. It's about time that we, the most prosperous nation on earth, catch up to other countries to provide everyone with health care. There is nothing socialist about it.
The ACA, ("ObamaCare"), stinks. The non-existent Republican plan will stink if if it ever materializes.
Here is MikeCare. It almost doesn't stink.
You know how the government pays to provide us with universal necessities like cops, education, libraries, road construction and repair, fire departments, snow removal, defense, garbage removal and the like? That's what we need in regard to medical care to make sure that everyone in the country, regardless of wealth or income, is covered.
Just like with the other services medical services should be paid for using the taxes which we pay. You go to whatever doctor you want, pay a deductible to discourage frivolous medical visits, and the medical providers get paid according to a reasonable government schedule that is tailored to region. Medical providers who do not want to accept what the government is paying can do so by posting a notice in their offices to that effect. You either pay the difference or go elsewhere. In any event you get the best possible care which is what we all deserve.
What is the argument in favor of letting people get sick and die just because they are financially distressed? Are they not Americans, citizens of the wealthiest nation the world has ever seen?
Welcome to the 21st Century!
12
Check the business studies at the Wharton School. Canada’s great for well care and routine problems. Seriously ill, you’re coming to the US for help.
4
@Bob Yeah, like those who are desperately hungry dine at Sardi's.
6
It is time we gave Bernie his due. He has more than earned it.
Now go vote for him. All of you.
24
It’s nice to see Sydney Ember take a break from the hit pieces she normally writes about Bernie.
16
It concerns me that there might be misunderstanding by American about all the ramifications of ‘health care for all’.
Commercial insurance companies define their coverage and those options not covered. Americans can evaluate what company provides benefits that meet their needs. Employers can assess the demographics of their employees and purchase the insurance product to be offered as a benefit to their employees and as potential employees, we should be able to review a benefit package before deciding on accepting a job offer. American with out insurance who don’t qualify financially for State assistance programs must pay privately. Many companies such as Kaiser, Providence here in Oregon offer private pay policies and yes, they are expensive. The ACA was intended as help for those folks who did not have benefits through employment. Under a Medical Benefits for All scenario such as Canada’s or England, patients loose some control of where care is given, how long one must wait for care, and, the shocker, some services have an eligibility cut off at a certain age, criteria to quality for certain types of treatment may be stricter then America’s accepted standards (Chronic Kidney Failure requiring dialysis comes to mind) In other words ‘rewards versus cost for care’ may not be what we as Americans are used to. And this is a huge determining factor when allocating funds in a care for all scenario.
5
"By the time Mr. Sanders was mounting his 1988 congressional run, he was speaking about health care in the kind of dogmatic terms he uses today, and he was broadening his vision beyond Vermont."
The use of the term "dogmatic" is kind of interesting. I mean, uncompromising is probably a better way to put it in my opinion, especially in regards to healthcare. Anything less than 100 percent coverage for all people is unacceptable. Yes, insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry will suffer, but they deserve to suffer for the pain that they have caused. Revenge will be sweet.
16
Is it really "flourishing" ??? Based on ... what? Wait times for necessary procedures are 113% longer than 20 years ago and well behind ours. 112-days for cataract surgery? My wait was 10. Infant mortality is second worst among industrialized nations (ahead of only the USA), technology is behind the US, they are starting to see a shortage of doctors, etc. And don't forget none of this is "free" (Sanders always gets that wrong) but Canadians pay higher taxes to do so. Not the rich... the middle class. Canada does keep healthcare at 10% of GDP vs 16% for the USA, but it does come at a price.
8
President Obama wanted a single-payer system. He gave up on it when he saw it had no chance of being enacted. He then modeled the Affordable Care Act on Mitt Romney’s successful Massachusetts plan.
The Democrats were able to pass it with their sixty vote majority in the Senate and without attracting a single Republican vote.
Bernie’s plan, just like any other plan for “universal health care,” will be dead on arrival.
The focus should be on improving the Affordable Care Act.
Government is, or should be, the art of the possible.
2
With Bernie, it will be possible because hundreds of millions of us know .we. are the ones who will support him making it happen.
7
@Allen
When did Obama realize single payer wouldn't pass? When the Health insurance companies who donated millions to him and other Democrats told him it wouldn't? He had the majority in both house and a massive grassroots base that elected him at hat time. He chose to not fight for it. Romneycare is a right wing health care plan and a total compromise that was then rewritten by the healthcare industry to benefit them (and it does by billions yearly) while the GOP filled it with horrible Amendments. Thank the Lord Bernie pushed through the 11Billion in funding for National Community Healthcare Centers that treat 24M ppl yearly. The ACA should have included the public option but Neoliberal grifter Ron Immanuel booted that option just like he stomped out the grass roots groups that would have kept Obama from losing 1000+ Dem seats over his Presidency. Obamacare leaves 30M uninsured, 60M+ underinsured, 30,000 dead yearly for no coverage and 500,000 bankrupt linked to high medical bills. Only 11M ppl actually get healthcare through the ACA, the majority get it through expanded Medicaid which 14 states did not expand. So please spare us that we need to keep propping up the ACA, a health care system destined to fail which was sold as a pathway to single payer 10 years ago.
3
Thank you, Bernie, and to NYT for reporting this.
I've lived in three single-payer socialized medicine countries.
Even as an illegal resident in two of the three, I was treated way better and had no fees at all.
Not only is our American system ruined by greedy for-profit health insurance companies trying their best to NOT pay for necessary medical care while charging massive premiums and putting ludicrous deductions and co-pays onto us, but our doctors and hospitals are in on the scam too.
If all these other countries can afford it, we can too. Take the billions we spend on war and death weapons and spend it on Medicare for All.
And yes, Americans need to get rid of their addiction to obesity and lack of exercise, and take responsibility for doing everything possible to not need health care!
13
"Dogmatic," eh? When every other industrialized country has universal care? At this stage both the paper and its friends at the helm of the Democratic Party are farther right than Richard Nixon (for example), who wanted to institute universal care in the 70s.
23
There are 2 necessary but not sufficient conditions for medicare for all to work in the US. 1. The middlemen need to be eliminated for all practical purposes. 2. Doctors’ incomes need to be reduced substantially to, say, the Canadian or West European levels. Are we ready for these?
10
3. Salaries will need to be adjusted when healthcare is no longer a benefit being provided by corporations.
3
Doctors' income might be a bit less if they are high-paid specialists, but the sweetener would be forgiveness of medical school debt and changes that would mean the high debt wdn't happen in future. Doctors wdn't feel so driven by money if they were not saddled with so much debt,
1
You missed the biggest:
Americans need to learn the meaning of no. No, that gets isn’t necessary even though you want it. No, that treatment is not cost effective even if it is your only remote chance. No, we’re not going to pay you to be disabled when you’re really just lazy. No, we’re not letting everybody come into the country. Etc etc etc.
3
Whoa, whoa, slow down! I LIVED in Kingston, Ontario when this plan was activated. There weren't enough hospital rooms to accomodate the crush of people needing treatment and patients died in the waiting room! THIS is why Medicare For All WILL NOT WORK. It will be catastrophic! We don't have the hospital rooms!
4
@Jambalaya
Easy enough to add hospital rooms and to educate and staff more doctors.
6
I didn't notice the mass die-out in Canada. They must somehow figure out how to fix the problem We just should ask them
3
Finally! A mostly positive article on Senator Sanders in the NYT.
This is what we want. Thank you.
20
Bernie Sanders is "fixated on health care," writes Sydney Ember. There's disparagement in her tone. That's ridiculously insulting. Every American who can afford health insurance has at least one embittering story to tell. I had back surgery last year and was promised a generous number of physical therapy sessions by my insurance provider.. But the the number crunchers at the company changed their minds in the middle of my p.t. and I was left holding the bag for the bill. My experience was unpleasant, but it wasn't life threatening. This country has proven that medicine for profit is wickedly impersonal. Money counts more than saving people's lives. Simply put: that's despicable. Bravo to Bernie for being compassionate and humane.
17
@Barbara Elovic
Thank you for sharing your experiences. I also had back surgery last year, and the insurance company doled out PT sessions. But, even worse, they didn't pay the provider for four of the pre-authorized sessions! I only found out that the claims the PT practice submitted to the insurer were denied after the claims were "out of date," i.e., too late to do anything about it. Even before this happened, the PT practice was seriously considering dropping patients with my insurance because reimbursement for sessions, even when it did get reimbursed, was so low.
The insurer was pretty creative in coming up with different "reasons" to deny the claims, as follows:
Because the insurer changed all the patient ID numbers in the middle of the year on July 1st, even though the PT practice used the new, correct ID number when it submitted the claim, because the DATE OF SERVICE was in April--i.e., before the ID numbers changed in July--the claim was denied because the PT practice didn't use the old ID number from April;
Another "reason" for a denial: "Wrong vendor address," which didn't make any sense because the PT practice address had not changed;
Finally, by December, when the PT practice had "corrected" all the insurer's invented "reasons" for the denials and resubmitted the claims, the insurer then denied the claims because they were supposedly "out of date" (i.e., too much time had gone by since the PT dates of service)!
8
@Barbara Elovic
Thank you for sharing your experiences.I also had back surgery last year and the insurance company doled out PT sessions. But even worse, they didn't pay the provider for four pre-authorized sessions it had agreed to! Even before this, the PT practice had been seriously considering dropping patients with my insurance because reimbursement for sessions, even when they did get reimbursed, was far less than rates other insurers reimbursed for PT.
The insurer came up with multiple "reasons" to deny the claims:
Wrong patient ID number because the insurer changed all ID's as of July 1st so my new ID didn't match the "date of service" in April when I still had the old ID; wrong "vendor address" even though the PT practice's address hadn't changed; finally, by the time the provider "corrected" the claims as required by the insurer, they were all denied because it had taken too long and the claims were now "out of date."
Even though I'm not responsible for payment, the claims have gone to a collection agency. The insurer has also wrongly denied thousands of dollars in other claims this year to me and two other family members. So now I have to complain to the NYS Attorney General and NYS Financial Services (previously NYS Dept of Insurance).
As so many have noted, the insurance industry's business model is deny, deny, deny; earn interest on postponed reimbursements; and wear down customers knowing a certain number will give up fighting for their money.
5
@IowaCityIA
The insurers keep scheming up news ways to increase their profits at the expense of patients and sometimes caregivers. Physical therapists, in my experience, are the most compassionate care providers. They don't have enough clout to go up against the corporate insurers. It's truly disgusting. Meanwhile, the coffers of the insurances companies grow larger and we the patients suffer the consequences.
1
Today I saw my doctor for the second time in two weeks about a painful bout of gout. I also had an x-ray to rule out arthritis before a final diagnosis was made. Cost of me? Nothing. A day doesn't go by that I'm not grateful for the Canadian health care system.
19
@BorisRoberts is it necessary to disrespect Canadian elders? Gout and arthritis are not caused by drinking. Why not try to be kind?
7
@BorisRobert even teetotalers get gout
3
I'm not opposed to single-prayer system, and Pres Obama's attempted improvement to US healthcare system (we can debate the structural merits of Obamacare but at least he had the fortitude to take on the issue) was one of his best initiatives IMO. That said, are we sure "the Canadian model" is what we should be patterning our system after? The population of Canada is about %10 of the US. Before we get started, we need to understand if Canada's system can scale up to our needs, from a population perspective. Careful consideration should be given to this criterion.
4
Hey Mike, would you rather it stayed like it is? I've got the highest level of insurance available, and yet I nearly went bankrupt when I got sick a few years ago. And I still owe them money and get new bills constantly. It couldn't possibly be worse, except if we just GAVE illegal aliens free medical, while the rest of us struggle with the highest rate of medical related bankruptcy in out history.
7
@Mike SCanada has the 2nd largest land mass and about the lowest population density on earth but you'd be surprised at he extend the system goes just getting care to people.
4
@Mike S
Hey there, so why don't you actually read the bill before you make assumptions about it? It isn't just based on Canada but numerous single payer and universal health care plans worldwide after much research w doctors and economists. ACA was based on Romneycare, a Republican and a total compromise that was then rewritten by the healthcare industry to benefit them (and it does by billions yearly) while the GOP filled it with horrible Amendments. Thank the Lord Bernie pushed through the 11Billion in funding for National Community Healthcare Centers that treat 24M ppl yearly. The ACA should have included the public option but Neoliberal grifter Ron Immanuel booted that option just like he stomped out the grass roots groups that would have kept Obama from losing 1000+ Dem seats over his Presidency. Obamacare leaves 30M uninsured, 60M+ underinsured, 30,000 dead yearly for no coverage and 500,000 bankrupt linked to high medical bills. Only 11M ppl actually get healthcare through the ACA, the majority get it through expanded Medicaid which 14 states did not expand. The ACA was sold as a pathway to single payer 10 years ago. It's time.
2
There are always other sides and other benefits to every issue we face. That exists in the case of insurance companies versus public healthcare also. One of the photos in this article shows Senator Sanders holding up a bottle of insulin - an actually low-cost "drug" in comparison to advanced diabetes drugs. The reason for the quotes around "drug" earlier is that the image shown is that of some version of "Human Type N" insulin, the product of refinement of secretions from sheeps' pancreases used for most of a century as the first injectable a diabetes patient is prescribed to ease, not cure, the effects of diabetes. It is not actually a drug as it is a "natural" substance one could actually obtain (unprocessed, of course) by eating a sheep's raw pancreas, less effective and more gross to be sure. Today, there are far more effective man-made drugs that provide far more effective treatment and, sometimes, cures for diabetes. These drugs are far more expensive than normal insulin. The costs of development were paid for by the private insurance companies, drug industry funding, and some government endowments. You need good insurance to afford them and still pay hefty co-pays. Medicare parts A and B don't pay for any drugs at pharmacies. TRICARE, the military's private-insurance-managed dodge for its promise to provide lifetime healthcare for retired and disabled vets, tries to eliminate these expensive drugs from its "formulary." As I said, you need private insurance to survive.
1
The idea of Government managed and financed health care is great, we can imagine a situation where we do not have to negotiate and fear denial of coverage. I hope for the same, but here are a few things that will happen.
A single payer system alone will not work, we will need hospitals managed by our government as well, that means also doctors employed by them. This is needed to control costs and if we try to do that without socializing hospitals a lot of them will close starting in rural and then urban areas.
The hospital determines the kind of treatment you receive, and you will have no say. Much like the current VA mess, it will come to funding and they might make decisions based on their costs and not the best care for you alone.
There will be a huge bureaucracy of unionized nurses, receptionists, pharmacists who will be protected by their unions, any sub standard care you receive you will have to live with.
Even in the current system we do no have enough doctors, in both urban and in rural areas. Part of the success of Canadian medicine is control over doctor's wages, we will have to find a balance where there is incentive enough for new doctors, or we do what UK does which imports doctors from Egypt and India.
4
@John
It's isn't government run, all care is delivered only by private enterprise who run the system. The caregivers submit their fees to a single source for payment in full without the admin. costs the US medical system incurs. The hospital and insurance entities are not profit centres thus also helping to keep the costs low. Dental, pharm and optical is not covered but pharma is held in check and the best way to describe optical is that if you have eye surgery, the surgery and hospital are covered by the glasses aren't and this is where the private insurance has a place. FYI "The statistics are from several sources, including immigration patterns and medical recruiters. The CEO of CanAM Physician Recruiting, which is based in Halifax, told the National Post this week that, “Canada is the number one spot in the world for doctors to come and work, live and play. Talking to physicians in the United States, they’re shocked how much more money they can make in Canada"
8
@stewart @John and read Bernie's plan it is much better than Canada's and and covers eyes, hearing, dental and long term in home care.
I have lived and worked in both the US and Canada, so I have enjoyed the opportunity to extensively use and understand both the Canadian and US health insurance systems. The Canadian system is dramatically better in every way.
37
Thank you for speaking up.
Americans have been brainwashed for decades into think this barbaric system is the only way.
It’s probably frightening for a lot of Americans to think change could be good because that’s what they’re told to think.
I want every American to wake up one day soon, in a Bernie presidency and ask...” What’s that good feeling?” “Oh! It’s the feeling that I can go to the doctor and not lose my house!”
15
1. You have to stick your hand in your wallet to pay for healthcare under both private and single payer. There is a timing difference in that cash transfer depending on your private coverage (i.e. low vs. high deductible). Under the private system you can choose when that cash transfer takes place and choose what coverage you are willing to pay for yourself.
2. Canadians that can, purchase private supplements because the public system does not suffice.
3. Canadian salaries are significantly lower than those in US for similar jobs and take home pay is even lower.
6
Ok a few things. I live in Canada. My sister is a doctor in the States (not an economic emigrée but followed a spouse). She approved this message
1) I've paid taxes all my life. I am lucky. I am in a higher tax bracket. Therefore I pay more for health care since it is part of the costs of government. I am twice lucky. I've not been sick. So I am HAPPY that the money goes to those who are. But IF I get sick or lose my wealth or both I will still get good health care. And I believe my fellow citizens feel the same way.
2) In Canada,there is no line in my retirement budget planning for health care. Imagine that. Just plan the rest.
3) Americans with money possibly have the best health care in the world.And if not , they can fly or pay to where there is. There will always be two-tier system in that sense.But you need to care for all the rest.
4) If you had universal health care, you would unburden your companies, lower your costs and produce goods cheaper for export, like the rest of the developed world does.It's a win-win for you.
Of course this is your call. Not mine. And if you're like me you hate foreigners butting in to your political discussions.I just don't view this as political I guess.
35
@jean richer will corporation also raise salaries to compensate for the benefits they are no longer providing and the increased income tax burden of their employees?
1
To the Americans complaining about how they will be 'taxed' to pay for healthcare for all:
My brother lives and works in California and with his family pays a substantial amount for health insurance. His employer only covers a small amount. We make nearly the same amount of money and after paying our taxes I pay only a couple per cent more than him. But for that my healthcare and that for my own family is all but covered. Once he is done paying for his taxes AND health insurance, he pays more than I do. Far more in fact if he has to use the 'insurance' he pays for.
And more than all of that - you live in the wealthiest nation on earth, there is absolutely no reason the money cannot be found to pay for healthcare in America no matter the upfront costs. The only thing missing is the will to do so.
335
@Canadian Roy How good of a track record does Canada have of spending the tax dollars where they were originally intended to go? One of the main problems here in the U.S. is that our government has a terrible track record of keeping the money where it is earmarked for. https://www.transparency.org/cpi2018 shows countries by corruptness. Canada has the 9th least corrupt government. The U.S. is the 22nd least corrupt.
13
@Canadian Roy The devil is in the details of the comparison and it's much more complicated than this. The quality and coverage of insurance plans in the US is highly variable, and good plans can be very good, covering all kinds of things provincial health plans in Canada do not cover. (But the bad plans are really bad as well!) Canadian provincial plans cover roughly 65% of total health costs, the remaining 35% being up to individuals and private insurance providers. Unless you factor all that into the comparison, it isn't valid. The main advantages in Canada are that no one with life-threatening illness will go untreated and they won't be bankrupted in the process; as well, every resident in every province is at least covered for basic health care, even though access to service can be frustrating.
17
@Canadian Roy
I read an article about two years ago, I think, in the NYT. It cited military chiefs as saying the US could keep all its adversaries in check with just three or four hundred nukes.
It's easy to pay for Medicare for all. We don't need all of the 2500 operational nukes we have. And I submit that we don't need nearly as many overseas bases, and we could probably ditch an aircraft carrier battle group or two.
We'd still have enough power left over to make 'em lose control of their bowels at the mere threat.
18
If you are going to give health care at a reasonable cost to poor people and those over 65, give it to everybody. Cost quickly climb exponentially if you need a specialist. Insurance against cost is a false consciousness because the game is rigged so high. You only have to pay 30%, but that 30 can kill you. Especially troubling is when people are victims of accidents or crimes. They have to rely on public sympathy to help pay their medical bills. They tried to save a young woman who was a victim of a school shooting. She didn’t make it, but someone had to pay $100,000 for the efforts to save her life.
73
@Jeff Stockwell
Yes, gun control is a health issue!
Car safety too, but those are accidents. Mass shootings are planned.
5
There is more to health care than medical care. A cancer diagnosis brings more than enough of its own terrors. Here in Ontario, worrying about how to pay for treatment is not one of them. You cannot exaggerate the effects of knowing that the health care system is always there for you regardless of your means or affliction. It is an incredible asset, and I have no doubt that it has a placebo effect. The rock sold confidence that we, an ordinary middle class family, had in our health care system has never wavered. For twenty years, my wife lived with cancer; 15 after a stage 4 diagnosis. She received the very best and most prompt care and treatment at no cost to us beyond the premiums that we all pay here. Just as importantly, she benefitted from wonderful expertise, delivered with such kindness and such basic, genuine decency that we were often left in tears. We met many, many patients who received the same remarkable care. It can be done. It is done here all the time. No, it is not ‘socialistic’ - it is common sense. Failings and flaws, definitely. But the greatest good for the greatest number? Absolutely.
279
@John Brady
It is socialistic, and common sense, and it's good on both counts.
20
@John Brady
Same here in Quebec. Breast cancer. ALS.
BTW, one of my children, a physician and dual citizen, has zero interest in going to the US to practice, finds the American system distasteful and ethically questionable.
35
A presidential candidate who doesn’t jump at the opportunity to brag about how hard he had it, who supported universal healthcare when other candidates were voting for Reagan and working with segregationists, and who has been ahead of the curve on literally every ‘progressive issue’. I hope that we don’t pass up this once in a lifetime chance for political change.
198
Bernie beats Trump, hands down. The media acts like the others have a chance. The arena emptied after Bernie spoke and the entire arena went wild for the most beloved politician in the country, maybe the world.
Bernie has set the agenda. Bernie is who we need and millions of us across this country will fight for him because this isn’t about him. He fights for all of us.
We can not afford another Trump term by any metric. Bernie beats Trump. Don’t listen to the media. Go to meet him and take a selfie and ask him all your questions in person.
XOXO
52
@Jon
I agree but fortunately for us this was a *twice* in a lifetime opportunity.
3
@Jon
I totally agree. I am for Bernie because he has been working for the average American all his life. It's not just words! His record backs up his views. A politician with integrity.
I do, however, think that Elizabeth Warren would be great as well, and she is a bit better at packaging the message.
Can't "Medicare for all" mean "Medicare as an option for everyone"? Then, I think you could get a lot of mainstream people on board. Let the people who want to keep private insurance keep it, as long as they are willing to pay into the public system. Overall, the costs for the middle class will be minimum (assuming the wealthy contribute). It works in Germany.
9
Universal healthcare and education is what will make America Great Again... it will make people more healthy and more productive, your military will be stronger and smarter, it will make guns owners shot their guns for fun only, it will make the environment better and make everyone richer and no it will NOT turn Americans into socialists... you can have capitalism full-on while these 2 programs are funded by taxes.
Exemples in the world where this is working are too many to mention.. Canada is one, they are many others
132
@Pascal Thank you for joining two of Bernie's primary issues for us here in the U.S. as we head to the crucial Dem primaries soon now! Thanks to this article many more will now know of his long research into and commitment to "health care as a human right, not a privilege."
His equally thorough plans for better educational opportunities for all are not as well known yet, but he, his team and his volunteers continue to march on to change that. One thrust is for tuition-free public colleges and universities, which the opposition loves to call "free college" in an unsuccessful attempt to make his plan seem too radical. He also is focused on the equally crucial needs for better pre-school thru-12, trade and apprenticeship opportunities and how all of that ties into better child care, too.
2
At $1462 a month in premiums and deductibles, something must change, and it only be fair we all be in one pool to help offset the cost of those without. I shouldn’t be the only one in the pool asked to pick up what large corporations refuse to provide to their low income employees. This is nonsense and goes against the values of every religion I have ever known.
112
@rebecca1048 And against almost if not all other advanced countries programs.
25
@rebecca1048...It is not widely understood that the reason for the widely disparate healthcare costs between the USA and the other developed countries stems from the fact that demand for healthcare is inelastic.
...Medical prices are controlled in various ways in the rest of the developed world. In Japan, the land of $100 melons and tiny $10,000 per month apartments, all medical care prices are listed in a book, thicker than the Manhattan telephone directory. The prices set in the book are usually less than a third of those in the USA. Japan spends less than a third per capita on medical care than America. However, the Japanese are greater consumers of medical care than Americans. They visit doctors and hospitals more often, have much more diagnostic tests such as MRIs. They also have better health outcomes as measured by all metrics such as life expectancy. They also wait less for treatment than Americans do as Japanese doctors work much longer hours for their much lower incomes.
Japan's explicit price controls are roughly emulated in other countries via the use monopsonistic systems. Monopsony, meaning "single buyer" is the flip side of monopoly. A monopolist sets prices above free market equilibrium. A monopsonist sets prices below free market equilibrium. It does not matter if there is an actual single payer or many buyers (or payers) whose prices are set by the government or by insurance companies in collusion with each other
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4111577
2
I will say this about the Canadian healthcare system, I would rather have a system where there are waiting times for some procedures but no one pays out of pocket, versus a system in the US where there are no waiting times but millions of citizens can not take advantage because they have no insurance or they go bankrupt paying for the procedures.
499
That is called rational thinking not obscured by false propaganda and brain washing called the American Rhetoric. We are trying to catch up with our more civilized neighbor thanks to Bernie who is truly next door to you.
139
@doug Mac Donald I'd love to know where in this country there are "no waiting times", as I have never once gone to the doctor (in any country) without waiting.
103
@doug mac donald
Waiting time? How about waiting between 5 to 10 hours in hospital emergencies, how about being on a gurney in said emergency ward, as there are no beds available.
How about emergencies refusing patients, as happened in Gatineau, Quebec this week.
How about waiting 2 years for a colonoscopy, for an MRI.
How about not having a doctor at all. I know, I was on a waiting list for years and years before I got one. And now? She is on a one year maternity leave
Canadians should be honest.
14
What a good person! Finally an article saying decent things about Bernie. Bernie cares about people. He will find a way to get this done and articulated his methods. When did America become the nothing is possible country? This has to change.
18
The world Health Organization ranks The United States as 37th out of 196 countries,in delivery of healthcare services
We are flanked by Costa Rica and Slovenia.
There is one category that we are #1 in, most expensive.
18
Given his poor record of legislative accomplishments during years of public service (for which he deserves praise), I have serious doubts about his ability to to accomplish 'Medicare for All' or anything like it. The tactics misleading tactics that forces opposed to such a health care transformation can keep fearful voters fearful of losing their current insurance, terrible as it is.
Misinformation is raging through society and critical thinking skills are all but non-existent among too many citizens.
Canada also has some of the highest levels of entrepreneurship in the developed world. We would do well to remind U.S. conservatives and moderates that universal, single-payer health insurance would be a boon for businesses, especially small business owners.
16
I’m 61, I’ve raised a family in the Canadian health care system, dealt with ageing parents and their illnesses within the system. I’ve always had my own family physician, the same one from my age 25 to age 58, now I have a new family physician since my former one retired. I found her very quickly after my old one retired. I expect I will have this family physician until I die as she’s quite a young woman. I can phone her office in the morning, see her that day.
Within my immediate family, including my ageing parents and my husband’s ageing parents, we’ve had our share of health issues over the last decades: the odd broken limb, Caesarean sections, pneumonia, cancer, heart disease, amputations due to complications from diabetes, heart valve replacements. Not anything you wouldn’t expect. Just the stuff that happens to families living long lives. We’ve never had to wait for any treatment, nor have we ever received anything less than the best of care.
Where Ontario could improve is providing quick and reasonably priced addiction treatment. A young person in our family experiencing addiction struggled to find consistent low cost care.
We buy additional private insurance for prescriptions, dental and vision care, and for travellers insurance when we visit the United States so we aren’t bankrupted by your medical system if we get sick or have an accident.
40
How did it come to be that Americans are so different from Canadians, Europeans, Australians, New Zealanders etc - who live in nations that provide some type of universal health care for their citizens?
The only answer I can come up with is that the United States has been fighting wars and building empire and funding the military-industrial complex for the last 60 years while these other countries have been focusing on improving their citizen's lives.
63
Supposed exceptionalism. The go it alone cowboy. That kind of stuff.
9
America is unique among Western nations in so many ways from la k of health insurance to the retention capital punishment to virtually rigged elections by means of gerrymandering and vote suppression,to obstructionist Senate leaders, to gun madness. America is also unique in having a very large black population who are for the most part the descendants of slaves. America's uniqueness in so many areas seems very likely a result of racism and a system which makes it possible for a racist minority to totally dominate the American political culture.
4
@the quiet one surprisingly a fundamental difference between theUS and these other countries is a much higher level of religious beliefs in the US. Whether this causes the problem or is a response is unclear.
2
I don't trust Bernie to change healthcare anymore than Hillary or Barack. Their over reaching desire to change our healthcare has absolutely zero to do with the health and well being of Americans. If Bernie and his ilk truly cared, affordable health CARE would be the topic of conversation. The insurance companies are the ones that screwed up healthcare to begin with.
4
@S W Slover And it is the insurance companies that Medicare for All will get rid of.
21
@S W Slover: Please check out Canada's single-payer system and see what part insurance companies play in healthcare in Canada.
3
@Walt - Then we will have to deal with a bankrupt Medicare system for which the only answer will be to raise taxes.
I'm a doctor who primarily cares for folks with no insurance or have Medi Cal/Medicare. On a rare occurrence when I see a patient with private insurance, oh boy, I pray that they are uncomplicated. Having to deal with private insurance companies is a burden and takes valuable time out of caring for my patients.
Bernie has been talking about Medicare for All for decades. It's sensible and the next step needed to fix our current system, which is pretty terrible.
Please, for the sake of our kids, grandkids, and our country, vote for sensible people like Bernie. Follow the money folks! If your preferred candidate is taking big checks from big pharma, big health care, etc, then reconsider your choice.
Bernie 2020. God bless us and save us...
60
@PM
I hear you!
14
"dogmatic terms" (as in the front page caption)? This program is what most people want. People who cling to their employer-based plans seem to have no brains. Medicare for All is what? Medicare for All! Duh! Employer-based plans are so vulnerable. They may usually not even cover what is needed (I'm a survivor of that situation); someone may have bad luck (what's that? or too bad for you!) and lose a job and benefits; and then there's having a job with sufficient benefits, hating the job but unable to leave and lose those benefits (great for company morale!). Sure, wouldn't it be great not to vote for Sanders and his Medicare for All to keep your current employer-based coverage under those prevailing conditions? (I haven't even mentioned all those supposedly crazy but crazily happy people with their coverage in Canada and across the globe. Anything wrong with them?) I just shake my head and then go out and work for voter registration (non-partisan), increasing the voter turnout, and then privately contribute to Sanders' campaign. Even if a majority of people finally just go out and vote, it should help turn things around.
20
The American government spends enormous sums of money to defend us from real and imagined enemies. Why can't it be so generous in protecting us from diseases that weaken and kill us? Many American families have experienced what Sanders experienced when his mother was ill. The current medical system is impossible to understand and expensive. It places a heavy psychological burden on people throughout their lives because they fear they won't be able to pay their medical bills. It stifles creativity by discouraging people from starting new businesses or finding new jobs because they fear they will lose their employer-provided health insurance. It's hard to understand why Americans continue to tolerate this system. Maybe enough Americans will finally say enough is enough.
17
Because they just don’t care.
5
People seem to have no problem giving up their private insurance once Medicare kicks in at 65, so you can call stop that canard.
26
Except that no one does who can afford not to, something like 80 percent who have private supplemental insurance.
2
Unsustainable. There is now way on God's Green Earth that medicare can cover us all. You want a tax base that is off the charts? You want Socialism? You want clumsy care from a doctor with 29 minutes of experience? You want to wait in line for an appt.? We like having our own MD at our fingertips thank you very much...The Govt needs to respectfully Mind it's own business!! imho
4
@david wright
And yet every other Western nation (and dozens of others) all make it happen - for less per capita. So what is America's excuse beyond excuses?
26
Quote: “You want Socialism?”
That’s not the way to write it. For full effect, write: “You want … ‘Socialism’ !!!”
Yes, I do. It’s called looking after people. My people. Your people. Your society. In sickness and in health. Give it a shot. And I don’t mean an assault-rifle shot.
31
@david wright
Exactly—I have terrific private insurance and doctors. The government should not be in the business of funding any healthcare.
2
In Quebec, we have medication insurance. If you are not covered by a private plan offered by your employer, you pay a maximum of $636 per year for 80% of the cost of prescription medication.
I wonder if a insurance salesperson would have a hard time selling that program south of the border.
It’s a no brainer of course. Only problem, everybody has to buy it.
It’s like car insurance, you can’t drive if you’re not insured.
Can the state force you to contribute to an insurance program?
Up here, we answer yes.
Same thing for universal health insurance.
It’s a better system for 90% of the people in a developed country.
18
Canada certainly doesn't have a single payer health system. I've read that Canadian governments actually pay about 80% of total costs. I'm a Canadian senior with an excellent additional plan, for which I pay about $200/month. I've also read that US governments pay about 50% of the total cost. I believe the US would benefit from a similar blended system which provides government-funded basic care for all but allows for private top-ups.
5
Glad to hear Bernie's been on top of this issue since the late 80's.
So, what has he been doing in Congress for nearly 3 decades to promote his policies?
I can't think of any...
4
Really?
You can’t think of anything?
Every single one of the policies being promoted by every Democratic candidate is Bernie’s.
He has set the conversation, everyone is stumbling to catch up by copying him.
Lots of people now have $15/hour, a livable wage, already, he makes trips to Canada to help Americans get insulin and other lifesaving drugs, and he has written the Green New Deal, which will be instituted if life on earth is going to survive in a couple decades.
29
@Lilly Lots of talk but no meaningful legislation passed during his 30+ year tenure. He’s just been collecting a government paycheck and becoming a millionaire. More feasible and implementable policies are needed. This just plays to the progressive, free stuff electorate.
Just feeding his ego as he winds down his “public service.”
What gets me about his plan is the glibness of dealing with this most complex of issues. He ignores that Medicare is cheap only like in airlines, most of the people are paying the full freight. The so the very name "...For Al" ignores that Medicare if for all, could not be at the current per service price.
No he can take on not only doctors, but Chiropractors, physical therapists, oculists and have worked out a deal with optometrists. And then there's "mental health." Every state has different rules on who are legitimate therapists, and who can prescribe certain pharmaceuticals.
Being on Medicare I could join a medicare advantage organization. They provide more extensive services, but not as nuanced. An example is a friend whose marriage if falling apart, Kaiser, the major such supplier only provides individual therapy, not marriage counseling So, when a good couple therapist might save his marriage, the orientation of individual therapy does not take such a perspective.
This is only one of the examples of the infinite complexities that would have to be resolved in a single omnibus bill. ACA was 2600 pages, and as it's sponsor said, you have to pass it to see how it works--- and this was based on preserving the medical establish pretty much as it is.
Sorry, Sander's doesn't begin to acknowledge the complexity of tearing down our system to create a new one, even if it is ideally preferable.
3
@Call Me Al Hmmm, have you considered that for profit healthcare it is "complex by design" and that Bernie has considered that? Have you read the bill? It is expanded to include everything (dental, hearing, eye exams, glasses and even long term care in your home not in a nursing home) and will be introduced over 4 years into a system that is already well known and used by millions- Medicare. Because it will have to go through through the process of being passed and will likely have to be compromised. Yet unlike Romneycare/Obamacare/ ACA it isn't a compromise from the very beginning of the negotiations and then ripped to shreds so it benefits the healthcare industry much much more than the patients leaving 30M uninsured!! So we will actually end up with a superior program that covers everyone. I love that Bernie is constantly underestimated...
5
Be brave and fight for what’s right.
Don’t be afraid.
There are hundreds of millions of us who get it.
4
@Call Me Al
Gee I wonder how all the first world countries can figure it out except us. It’s only impossible for small minds.
4
The problem with healthcare in the U.S. will not be solved by moving to a Canadian model. One of the primary issues we face is not which entity pays for our healthcare (Medicare, Medicaid, commercial insurance, etc) but rather a fee-for-service model that rewards the provision of more care by paying by-the-procedure. A physician who does 5 surgeries per week will make more than one who does 3. Canada's system is also based on a fee-for-service model and is not sustainable either. Also, the profit motive in healthcare is not limited to commercial insurers: Physicians are greedy and very profit-driven as a profession. They are over-compensated and are largely responsible for the mess we are in regarding our healthcare system. Bernie, Warren, and the others love to talk about the "profit motive" of the insurers, but never seen to mention the profit motive of physicians. Too, there are entire specialties of healthcare that barely exist in Canada. Outpatient mental health services like psychotherapy for depression is not covered at all by the provincial health plans. Try to find pediatric psychiatrist or brain injury specialist in the Maritimes. Hospitals in Ontario look like American VA hospitals of the 1960s. This rush to be like Canada, without addressing the deep problem of fee-for-service medicine, without addressing the over-compensation of physicians, without addressing the massive flaws of the Canadian system, is just naive.
5
I think you and the people who keep complicating something that can be solved relatively easily and paid for are naive at best and malevolent at worst (the latter word applies to the GOP in general even though Mitt Romney was a pioneer of sorts in Massachusetts).
13
@Tintin As a Canadian citizen living in the province of Alberta I think perhaps you should travel throughout the entirety of my country before you make the invalid statements in your comments about our hospitals, treatment and especially psychiatric treatment. I am bipolar and had a "Cadillac" health insurance plan through my employer when living in NYC from 1995 to 2007. Every one of my hospitalizations in that time period ended not because I was better, but because that Cadillac plan would not pay for it any longer. As for how advanced you think health care is in your country compared to Canada my chronic bipolar depression is much improved living here in Alberta where I have undergone four regimens over a period of 12 of ECT outpatient treatment. Not once, was ECT ever suggested to me while I was living in the USA.
16
@J. David Burch I have spent much of my life in Canada and have family there still. The healthcare system was terrible for them whenever they experienced complex conditions, particularly conditions necessitating multi-disciplinary team-based care (as opposed to a single physician writing a prescription or doing a minor surgery). I am a Canadian Permanent Resident. The poor quality of the healthcare system is one of the reasons I don't live there. I am not a Republican critic. I'm a liberal Democrat who knows poor health systems when I see them.
4
Bernie has always been an staunch supporter, both vocally and politically, of Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC). They offer many of the things Bernie has espoused for years: open to all comers regardless of income, sliding fee scales even for the homeless, primary care with an emphasis on improving patients' health through best practices. The largest in Vermont, the Community Health Centers of Burlington, also offers medically assisted therapy (MAT) for those with opioid addiction.
16
I'm in my mid 50s. I make $60,000/yr. I pay $5,500/yr for health insurance, my employer pays a like amount. I cannot afford to use the insurance--I've learned the hard way. "Don't worry, a physical is free," I'm told. Then the bill for $800 arrives. "Oh, that's for lab work," as if that makes a smidge of difference to me. And, no matter what, they won't tell me the cost of care upfront so that I can make informed choices. Can't afford the colonoscopy my doctor recommends. Pretty much, all health care--preventative and everything else--is getting put off until I reach Medicare age.
My mom's health is failing. When I can barely support myself, I face a cruel choice: Abandon my job/career to care for her, knowing full well the difficulty of finding work at my age when she dies, or cast her adrift, crossing fingers that, somehow, it will all work out.
This is no way to run a country. It is a disgusting, cruel way to run a country.
If Sanders or anyone else can get Medicare for everyone, they have my vote. I can't fathom anyone who would support what we have now. The poor need not be concerned because they have Medicaid. The elderly need not be concerned because they have Medicare. The rich need not be concerned because, well, they're rich. But everyone else is screwed. And that's a lot of people.
63
@August West DId you know that the annual exam touted under Medicare -- the "annual wellness check" -- is nearly impossible to get in New York City because many doctors, including those that "accept" Medicare, refuse the reimbursement and instead require one to pay a $300 or $400 "consultation" fee?. This includes the internal medicine/geriatric practices at the most prominent teaching hospitals.
7
I have to pay $20,000/year from at total of $60,000/ year income and that’s with ObamaCare and they don’t cover anything except my one year physical with my PCP.
Having lived in Japan, where you don’t give a second thought to going to the doctor, this system is clearly an extraction of resources at the point of maximum vulnerability.
It takes an awful lot of sophisticated brainwashing to make Americans believe their healthcare system works in almost any way at all.
I can’t wait for Bernie to be president.
20
@ellienyc
Heck, I'd almost pay that if it was a straight-up transaction that resulted in me getting a prescription for asthma meds. I have to go once a year to get refills, and every time, it's the same dance: You need a physical/colonoscopy/something else I can't afford. I say no, I can't afford it, please just refill my prescription, the doctor does it and my insurance company forks out $300 for a 15-minute office visit and the band plays on.
A total joke. But, it's real money. And don't get me started on the cost of asthma medication.
4
I am a liberal, but it is the height of hubris to think that he can take away insurance from 180 million people, because he thinks that he knows best. There are many complexities involved in medical care, and a huge replacement will do nothing but cause anxiety, HARM, and confusion. We have decent, but imperfect private insurance coverage, decent, but imperfect Medicare coverage, and the same goes for the VA system, Medicaid, Tricare and more. Improvements can and should be made, but a wholesale change is just WRONG. I shutter to think that this is the best that the Dems can come up with.
3
@Tom Hey Tom, Its 158M and a large portion are way underinsured and can't afford to actually use their healthcare. If they lose their job or quit- there goes their healthcare. If they get sick and lose their job- bye bye healthcare. If they have to quit to take care of a sick child, partner or parent- adios healthcare. They are taking a loss in wages to fund this employer healthcare. And let's look at this morally- over 30,000 ppl a year die due to lack of coverage and exspensive medicine. 30M are uninsured, 60M atleast are underinsured, 500,000 go bankrupt in conjunction w medical debt and seniors are booted from nursing homes if they lose their medicaid coverage. Our Federal programs are being privatized (medicare advantage is garbage). Please read the Medicare for All plan before you have opinions on it.
4
Dear Sydney - you couldn't help yourself, and in an others fine article you had to describe Bernie as "dogmatic" and misleadingly suggest that a new benefit was taking away private insurance.
The poll question should be: would you prefer to retain your current doctors and hospitals and choices and same level of services and yet not pay thousands of dollars in insurance premiums, deductibles, and co-pays?
(with the program funded by a highly progressive tax structure, with poor paying nothing, middle class far less than current insurance expenditures and the large burden on the top 10% - wealth, capital gains, and income taxes.)
16
Thank you for correcting the record.
5
@Bill Wolfe
Why should other people pay for your health insurance? Who do think you are?
You are not entitled to another person’s income. The fact that you cannot support your own needs is not my problem.
2
I hope you take the time to look around.
It’s not hard to see that nothing you have was accomplished on your own.
1
The US health care and housing systems virtually killed my mother, yes before her time. She had diabetes and suffered a stroke. She was unable to work, but could function, but not fully. That forced her to give up the small suburban house she owned, lose health insurance, and move into urban public housing and receive medicaid (the family lacked resources to fund all this). She was disoriented by all this and lacked adequate support, even with my sister living nearby and providing lots of care. Her health deteriorated due to lack of health care and medication. She was hospitalized and needed surgery to amputate her foot. The public hospital surgery went OK, but not the post surgery monitoring. She suffered a deadly blood clot in her leg, which should have been prevented had she been adequately monitored.
Health care and housing are human rights!
24
@Bill Wolfe I am sorry to hear about your mother. My experience with the final illnesses of both my father and, 25 yrs later, my mother, is that post-op/illness care, especially for the elderly, is declining and getting worse, unless you have substantial private resources. It's easy to get a triple bypass or hip replacement under Medicare, but what happens afterwards can be a nightmare.
6
As a former Obamacare subscriber (now on Medicare), I can tell you that Obamacare not a perfect solution because the pool is too small, and premiums for all but the poor are still too high, with care limited to various medical "networks". I was glad to have it when I got a serious illness, and it was better than nothing.
The USA can well afford to shift some of its spending priorities to health care, along with reform of the tax system. especially for corporations which pay zip. Individuals would have to pay more also, and we ought to be raising the $$ limit on the SS tax. But this is infinitely more preferable than people going bankrupt and losing their homes because of medical bills. Isn't it? Smaller businesses would be freed from the burden of HC benefit payments, and employees would no longer be stuck in jobs they hate but won't leave b/c of not wanting to lose medical insurance. I don't really see a downside to MfA.
13
Princeton is a hotbed of polling. I have spoken to many pollsters. They point out that asking people if they are happy with their present private insurance is bad polling. People will say they are happy with their insurance or their car so long as they do not get seriously ill or the car breaks down. The correct way to see how well private insurance or your car is working is to ask if you have had any problems. The Commonwealth Fund had a survey in which they ask people on private insurance and people on Medicare just this question. They found that people had 3 times as many problems with private insurance both in the area of coverage & in the area of payment.
Furthermore, adding just negative info to a question is bound to lower approval. Suppose instead of asking:
"Do you support Medicare for all if it means giving up your private insurance?"
you asked:
"Do you support Medicare for all if it means giving up your private insurance, & it would cover everyone, & it would cut the cost of health care for the average person in half?"
13
Mr. Sanders missed a crucial point when he visited Canada. It may be subtle but important. The Canadian people are active and take pride in managing their personal health. On average they are more fit and healthy then Americans. Especially, in Toronto where fast food restaurants are not on every corner. They walk much more then Americans. We need to focus on changing lifestyles. Healthy people will not overburden insurance policies or drive up cost to extremes. Currently, many Americans think their personal habits are protected by the Constitution of the US. In other words many US Citizens think they have the right to be obese, get addicted, collect high powered guns, buy cars capable of doing 180 MPH, and pollute the planet. Americans are not Canadians!
5
I’m Canadian and sick of Sanders lying to the American public about our healthcare system. Let me tell every American once and for all. Canada has universal healthcare but it also has a robust PRIVATE insurance industry that allows people to buy into it if they want quicker and more personal treatment and to avoid the long waits (yes there are long waits for non emergency treatment). Don’t let Bernie tell you there’s no way you can have a private health insurance industry and universal coverage. It’s just not true.
8
Calling M. Sanders a liar is a pretty strong statement...And I'm assuming it's coming from a private insurance supporter. I myself believe that's it's all for one and one for all. I believe that people who use private clinics or services are a "me myself and I" type of personality. And as you've said, the waiting period is for non-urgent treatment. No system is perfect for everyone, but ours is pretty darn close.
12
@Mat. You are wrong on this. Under the Canada Health Act, private provision of hospital and physician services is prohibited. Canadians are not buying quicker and more personal medical care, through private insurance. it is true that dental care and drug coverage remains largely privately insured, but hopefully this too will be brought to an end soon.
11
I never knew the details of Bernie's mother's illness and death. This confirms so much of what I understand to be Sander's strong convictions and deep concern for his fellow citizens. Sanders is head and shoulders above other politicians.
22
Medicare for all. Does that mean recipients will pay for 25-35 years and get no benefits, like those who currently did? Does that mean the recipients will continue to pay until they die just like current recipients do? Does that mean everyone will need a supplemental private plan just like current recipients do? Or is “Medicare for all” just a catchy bumper sticker phrase?
Where is all the money coming from? Who is going to pay? Hint—the 1% are not going to pay. How much will middle class and working class taxes go up? Tell us the truth. Be specific.
2
@William. Under a public system, if you are lucky you will pay through taxes for provision of the public services and never have need for a doctor or medical care (unlikely). How does this differ for paying for private health care and, if healthy, "getting no benefits"?
7
In order to have proper universal health care, the people of the United States need to realize that it means getting rid of a system where the few make huge profits from the many. People are making profits from the private insurance industry, from hospital care, from treatments and, of course, there is always Big Pharma.
Medicare in Canada means our universal health care is paid for by taxes. You go to a hospital and you get treated for cancer, knee replacement, open heart surgery.... and when you leave, you don’t get a bill. That is paid for by taxes.
Some people have additional private health care benefits because of their jobs that pays most of prescriptions, physio, private rooms instead of four-person wards, etc. But take away the profit and there is enough money for universal health care.
It works and we haven’t lost any freedoms yet.
190
@William:
please, read up on "how they do it" in places like Germany, France, Australia, Canada......somehow they make it work.
By the way, as a retired RN, I am now on medicare, and don't know WHAT you're talking about when you say:
"Does that mean recipients will pay for 25-35 years and get no benefits, like those who currently did?"
Frankly, yes, we need to increase taxes on the 1%, get them back to where they were in the prosperous 1950's-1960's....and if needed, take from the frightening huge amount of tax money give to the military-industrial complex.
4
I left the USA last year after more than a decade living there. There are quite a few things I miss but the health system sure isn’t one of them. If one was to dream up the absolute worst system you’d dream up the American current reality. Insurance linked to your job, myriad co pays, confused haphazard billing, almost zero preventative medicine and the expense of it all at both the individual and overall level. And after all this the care is substandard (on average) and outcomes, charitably, no better than anywhere else.
14
The best way to get to Medicare for all is to offer it as a healthcare insurance option. Given its lower cost and effectiveness most people will switch to it voluntarily.
5
@W.A. Spitzer. Its cost is lower because it doesn’t even cover a physical. Pap smears are allowed every three years.
3
@W.A. Spitzer I think the insurance company monopolies now would have the sense of seeing how it would drive customers away (properly, IMO!) and fight it with even more than they would with just going for Medicare for All. Just go for Medicare for All, with how much it would benefit everyone, employer-based covered or not, period. Arguing about how employer-based coverage is so vulnerable would be a good starting point for building support.
3
@Jackson This is due to the privatization of Medicare and Medicaid and by design by the GOP starting w Medicare Advantage under Dubuyah. Before you can compare what you have now to Bernie's Medicare for all, you need to read the bill. It is very much expanded and includes everything we need to be healthy and functioning in society.
1
Of course Canada's health care system has weaknesses and blind spots, and many of these have to do with prioritizing and triaging. I was waitlisted for a year for a hip replacement because it is considered "elective surgery"; as my quality of life tanked, it didn't feel very elective. But it's done, I'm grateful, and even though I have to pay for most of my physiotherapy, I am still amazed at the efficiency and quality of the whole process.
When I was growing up and in university, our system was explained to me as being about the need for "preventative medicine." The whole picture isn't only about wait times and emergency care; it's about the longterm savings for a country when the whole population receives covered access to regular, targeted health care: pap smears, mammograms, cholesterol, pre- and post-natal, vitamin B12 and D checks among so many others for young and old. I'm a healthier--and less burdensome--human because I've been raised to be pro-active about my health under doctors' care.
38
@Hazel Motes It's just plain sane. I know it's anecdotal, but I must believe friends in Ottawa when they told me if they chose to come here to have some procedure done sooner, the province would reimburse them. It may involve a particular need, but there it is. And they would never trade systems with us--very telling the difference between theirs and ours!
5
The US is the locomotive which drives research, development of new techniques and accountability for health services. Our beloved friends up north benefit from a symbiosis where the US is the host organism. As my Canadian colleagues say: “We have a great healthcare system as long as you don’t need it”
Advocating adoption of a system based upon a country with a GDP the size of Texas, without an affluent neighbor to run to for urgent or special future needs seems flawed.
8
@Larry....They pay 40% less for healthcare than we do. If we could only do half as well as they do we would save $600 billion dollars a year. That is a savings of $1800 per person every year.
6
@Larry Simplistic, IMO. I just replied to a Canadian commenting: I know it's anecdotal, but I must believe friends in Ottawa when they told me if they chose to come here to have some procedure done sooner, the province would reimburse them. It may involve a particular need, but there it is. And they would never trade systems with us--very telling the difference between theirs and ours! Also, unless someone's been living under a rock, there is all kinds of rationing of health care--by non-authorization of procedures and even self-rationing to save expense--here and now.
2
@Larry - Typical of American critics of Canadian health care, you ignore the enormous amount of medical research that goes on in Canada, and the booming Canadian biomedical sector.
You ignore the many successful Canadian medical supply and pharmaceutical companies and startups.
Your view that Canada is essentially a parasite that feeds off the American health care "host organism" is quite ill-informed. In fact, relatively few Canadians travel to the US for health care. We are not a nation of desperate, waitlisted patients staring enviously over the border at happy, (if expensively) healthy Americans.
You ignore the huge medical tourism industry in your country and the millions of Americans who travel to Mexico (and farther, to places like Indonesia and Thailand) for primary care. Some even come to Canada - in my city, there, are several private surgical hospitals that perform operations (orthopedic, thorasic, even cardiac) to paying patients, including many Americans, who like the low exchange rate.
Mostly you ignore the real parasite in the picture, the vast American medical insurance industry, a huge, costly, high-overhead bureaucracy that exists only to deny care wherever possible and adds zero value to the health of its clients. Canadian single-payer health insurance, by contrast, is a model of cost-efficiency and ease of access. Few, if any Canadians ever have to deal with an insurance bureaucrat at all. We just go to our doctors, who are trusted to treat us.
20
After I watched Michael Moore's Sicko, I was convinced that America needs a healthcare system.
We spend less on healthcare than you do despite the fact that you don't have universal coverage.
11
I lived in Canada , the U.K. experienced Universal Health Care , it was not perfect but it delivered pretty good outcomes for all at relatively low cost . Most of all it delivered for all peace of mind , the ultimate security .
I have also experienced very good employer provided health care and Medicare also pretty good but at a cost far above Canada and the U.K. , $10800 per capita in the USA compared to $4800 in the U.K.
This cost is unsustainable and is sapping the disposable income of individuals , the ability of our Companies to compete globally and the ability of the Federal Government to sustain current programs.
Universal Health Care is a laudable goal but it is not a winnable proposition in 2020 , I serve a Company with 10000 employees all enjoy employer paid for Health Care. They are not going to vote for UHC.
Better we start evolving to UHC by reducing costs, eg prescription drug prices to U.K. and Canadian price levels.
Introducing a Public option for uninsured at subsidized levels.
Forming a panel of experts ( no lobbyists) to evaluate the best way forward to Universal Health Care .
To get to this point Democrats have to win all branches of Government in 2020
9
Bernie openly endorsed population control & is pushing MCFA. MCFA would be like the DMV, pick a number & wait. Better yet you’re over 65 and not valuable to the country, so no medical care for you. Next.
3
@JOSEPH Bernie is over 65.
6
@Marc A
Somehow the rationing by age in Great Britain is never discussed here in the USA and just how much stress has been put on the British economy by it.
3
The British NHS is being drained of resources through “austerity”, which is another word for theft of the public purse.
3
Will Congress get in bed with the rest of us? Will they give up their health plan and the Capital Doctor and health facility? Or is this plan only for working stiffs? Will they gut Medicare till it becomes prison level care? How will they pay for it?
1
Our Canadian taxes are higher than American taxes and elective surgery is often slower, but I have never heard anyone say that they would prefer American - style health care. Most employers also provide auxiliary coverage (private room, dental care, home care products, etc.), so insurance companies have not disappeared. Per capita health care costs are much lower here, largely because of less paperwork though a single payer/biller system. We, of course, can also cross the border and pay American prices. We can even buy insurance for that or for Florida vacations, if we are affluent enough to take such vacations.
32
@TMcK
Most employers do not in fact provide auxiliary coverage. Those are deducted from worker's paychecks. It's not like with retirement benefits where the employer matches the worker's contribution.
Besides this, only 40% of the workforce in Ontario has any kind of employer-provided health plan. The remaining 60% of the workforce do not have auxiliary plans because they are too expensive for them. Few people can afford $300+/month plan when they do not even have $200 to cover emergency savings.
Keep in mind that over 10% of the workforce are minimum wage workers who do not have any benefits because they are always kept just under full-time hours.
And let's not forget that unlike the US, there is no Canadian law that prevents insurance companies from denying coverage to patients with pre-existing conditions, or making them so expensive as to be unattainable. See for example this guy who wanted to buy life insurance, but couldn't because of his mild depression. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/ontario-man-says-life-insurance-application-denied-due-to-anxiety-disorder-1.5238719.
2
@TMcK Supplemental private insurance is common in other countries with "national health" -- UK, France, Italy, et al.
@TMcK The other person replying aside, I've actually heard Canadians say they'd never trade systems with us. Anecdotal, but I think supported by survey evidence, too. The conclusion speaks for itself.
7
I always thought i wanted to keep my private insurance until mid August of this year. It took 6 months of back pain, 3 spine doctors and 15 PT sessions and 4 additional weeks with a 3rd party provider, to get an MRI approved. Then several bills for a total of approx $1,000 because my insurance won’t cover all that. I am supposed to be one of those lucky people who have a good job, private insurance, and perseverance to fight the insurance companies. Yet, $1,000 plus $500 deductible is a lot of money and if a public health option would save me not only the money but also the time spent trying to get a diagnosis, i would take it. No, i don’t need free everything and i am not a fan of Sanders but something needs to change in healthcare because without health, people can’t work, can’t make a living, can’t be consumers.
12
@DREU💤 If you'd had Medicare you likely would have gotten half as many PT sessions and no MRI.
1
@DREU💤 The other person replying is indeed referring to the current Medicare, likely without paying for a supplement to it. The Medicare for All is very different and comprehensive. You (and as it happened, to me, too) are one of the people who find out their wonderful employer-based coverage is not so great. I needed a a common neurosurgical procedure that was not performed by physicians at the hospital where I would get completely full coverage, so in order to get it at another hospital in town from a physician I'd been consulting for years, I had to pay "out of pocket" -- $1200. It was a lot of money for me. So much for the touted employer-based benefits. These are the surprises that people wouldn't face from my understanding of Medicare for All. Yes, I'm for Sanders.
4
@akhenaten2 I pay for a Medicare supplement, but these policies only supplement what Medicare covers,-- if Medicare won't pay anything then they won't either. So if Medicare says 5 or 6 PT sessions are enough, the Medigap policy pays 20% of those and nothing on any additional sessions you want. If you want more than 5 or 6 sessions, you pay the whole thing out of pocket. Likewise if your Medicare-accepting doctor won't order an MRI, saying Medicare won't likely cover it in your case, then you need to go to a non-Medicare doc to get an Rx and pay for the whole MRI out of pocket. The Medigap policy only pays if Medicare pays.
I look forward to the more comprehensive Medicare proposed by Sen Sanders. No premiums, no deductibles, no coinsurance, no Medigap premiums, no having to pay for root canals and dental implants anymore -- I'll save thousands of dollars a year.
7
Senator Bernie Sanders has done more for this country just by running in 2016 than the winner has done for anyone in his entire life.
It is my view that the effort to prevent the people from giving themselves universal coverage is a criminal endeavor as is much of the adversarial health care we are delivered if we are so lucky as to be able to get some.
49
@magicisnotreal Yes. Adversarial being shoved into a humanitarian service is as crazy-making as it has become to show. I wonder if there are sadists behind the current plan who get a lot of pleasure (as well as money) out of the current conflict.
2
@akhenaten2
The Myth is that "adversity builds character"
The truth is that all wounds and stressors, (to include poor education) especially early in life make being a well adjusted thoughtful adult who can maintain numerous trains of thought and follow complex machinations, two things necessary to be able to counter the things that set us against one another and ourselves nearly impossible.
BTW if you are strong or have character after some adversity, the fact is you had that quality before the adversity.
3
The average American family of four pays twenty to twenty five thousand dollars a year in health insurance costs.
Their deductibles are so high as to render their policies catastrophic safety nets and not useable for health care needs.
So when you hear republicans say Democrats want huge tax increases to pay for socialized medical care, ask yourself, will it be less than twenty five thousand ? Will I be able to use this insurance?
Yes and yes.
48
@King Philip,
Let's Be clear only Bernie's plan is the expanded Medicare for All. Nor even Warren who cosigned the bill but has since moved away by saying "Access to healthcare" which is not the same. Every other candidate has their own very much declined plan for healthcare.
1
Whether he ever actually reaches the White House or not, Bernie has already accomplished a greater feat than most politicians in recent memory: he has changed the mindset of Americans about an entrenched system, and made us question why it is the way it is.
Bernie says to us, very plainly: no one should die because they can't afford healthcare.
And most of us regular people, even Republicans, say: you know, what? That's true.
We can argue about how it should happen. We can argue about whether Bernie is the right person to implement it. But he has, with his authenticity, his consistency, and his straightforward rhetoric, shown us that healthcare for profit is an abomination, and that this country must find a way to make healthcare a right for all. This is no small achievement.
67
So he took a few trips to Canada and this makes him an expert on healthcare? Maybe he could explain why so many Canadians with complex medical problems go to the Cleveland and Mayo Clinics. Maybe not. Maybe he could assure me why my Medicare would not have diminished benefits after adding 180 million people to the Medicare roles. Maybe not. The expression that if it ain't broke, don't fix it is apt. Obamacare needs fixing. We all know that but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. His mother's premature death was tragic and surely affected him. I can understand that but impoverished people get treated at hospitals like NY/Presbyterian just like monarchs. Just go there and look around. I have.
5
@alan brown Yes Mr Brown some Canadians do go to the US for health care procedures - especially if the expert in the field happens to work in the US. But---- most Canadians will choose a physician in Canada and for those who do go south of the border many have PRIVATE insurance. Yes, Canadians do carry private insurance in addition to their government plan. Usually they have it because their employers provide it. When we lived in Canada we always had both - because my husband's jobs offered it. It covered dental, prescriptions, private rooms in hospital and other incidentals not covered by the standard provincial plan. It was a sound system and US residents have no idea how lucky Canadians are.
23
@alan brown
The problem with that argument is that Obamacare can't be fixed. It was designed to self-destruct. Everyone knew that premiums were affordable only because of subsidies, and states were not going to keep funding those subsidies indefinitely.
7
@alan brown.... "Maybe he could explain why so many Canadians with complex medical problems go to the Cleveland and Mayo Clinics."...It would be helpful if maybe you supplied some verified numbers.
6
One can look up a major Montreal newspaper from a couple of weeks ago. 12 people died recently as they were waiting for heart surgery.
Thousands of Quebecers don’t have a doctor, and have been on a waiting list for years.
Many specialists work part time for the public sector, and part time privately. So you can see why the waiting lists for certain exams, operations, tests take forever.
Another consequence is the lack of doctors and nurses. The latter being exhausted as they are forced to work overtime.
Now, in the US, there wouldn’t be enough healthcare professionals to attend to everyone (including the illegals Democrats vowed would be covered). Also, taxes would increase to a point that your head would be spinning so much, you would need to see a doctor.
8
@Danielle Davidson
You know, I bet the dearth of medical professionals in Canada would disappear once the criminal pay rates medical professionals are paid in the US dries up.
Nevertheless people in Canada do not have to choose to eat or pay a bill or get lifesaving preventative health care regardless of the problems with scheduling. That alone is worth it.
10
@Danielle Davidson...."12 people died recently as they were waiting for heart surgery."...On average Canadians live longer than we do, so what is your point?
1
@magicisnotreal
Doctors and other medical providers don’t make hardly what they are worth. They should be making more. If Canada paid better maybe there would be more doctors and nurses.
You are correct they don’t have to chose between food or bills.
They just die waiting for surgery.
2
The epicenter of our healthcare crisis started right here in Nashville. In short corporations like HCA (Healthcare Corporation of America went out and bought all the public hospitals in order to privatize them for profit. Players like Rick Scott, Bill Frist, and Phil Bredessen from both parties created billion dollar fortunes for themselves. We used to have public hospitals, public infirmaries, and Charity hospitals, the doctors worked out of, not for. Now, nearly all hospitals are privately held.
Imagine what education would look like if public schools were merely bought and paid for. Public education would disappear, as did public hospitals....
18
Kudos to Bernie Sanders.
The U.S. may not get Medicare for All immediately, but it will happen.
Bernie deserves the credit for being the first mover in 2016.
63
Here's what I don't get -- let's grant for a moment Bernie has the best vision of healthcare -- why is that a reason to make him president? I'd be much more impressed if he had moved the national closer to single-payer during his past years in the Senate. Dianne Feinstein got us the assault weapons ban. What has Bernie done?
6
I was born in Europe, grew up in Germany and Austria and I never knew what it meant to be without health insurance until I fell in love with my knight-in-shining-armor, who happened to be American.
I remember it so well. More than 30 years ago I was astounded when I learned about the American Un-health system. We were newlyweds, money was an issue. Not being able to go to the doctor when I wanted to, made me feel like living in a 3rd world country. Having health insurance, but not being able to afford the high co-pay and having to deal with co-pays for prescription medication, literally floored me.
Eyeglasses, dental work, dental visits, my once daily normal faded away, and I was stuck living the unhealthy way so many Americans do.
Today we have health insurance, but it doesn't cover much. Specialists are a privilege of the rich. Alternative treatments are not covered, to begin with.
It's not that hard. Take a certain percentage out of everybody's paycheck and give everybody health insurance, including dental care and eye care.
Set a limit. Whoever makes more than 60K or 80K a year, let them have the privilege to join a private insurance company, if they feel like it. It's not that complicated!
92
@Bri
Welcome to the life of a person in a colony.
The basis of this nation from the start was free labor. First indentured volunteers then slaves. The wealthy who profit by it have done their best to keep as many of the people ignorant and trapped in poverty as they can ever since.
37
@magicisnotreal
Oh yea, and most of those people trapped in poverty think they are middle class.
16
@magicisnotreal bravo, exactly correct! When the rich here in America ran out of third world countries to colonize, they turned inward and colonized America! Healthcare run for profit is just one of the many ways they achieve that.
20
The only person who will get my vote. Not because I am a socialist, but because a single-payer Medicare for All will help me seek medical aid when I am unemployed (which happens very often, unfortunately). (No, please don't tell me "other" candidates offer the same...)
29
@Har dream on. Single issue candidates don't get elected. All or nothing thinking got us Trump.
1
@Mahalo
Well, I will dream on. But please don't show of your ignorance by calling Sanders a single-issue candidate. "All or nothing thinking got us Trump": Hah, I thought Russia, Comey, FBI, Jill Stein, Sarandon... got us Trump?
6
@Mahalo Bernie is running on ALL the issues that matter, and there are at least 10 of them. And he’s got the best solutions for all of them!
16
If we strengthened the ACA, required universal coverage, access and standards we could add a public option to the mix. If it was better and cheaper than a private option the private options would go out of business. If it wasn't the private insurance system would flourish in a health system that provides universal coverage. It's possible some people would prefer the public option and others the private option in which case we would choices that included both private and public options.
Why is Bernie afraid of the public having a choice? He sounds a lot like Republicans who claim a public option is unfair competition to the private system.
I want universal coverage and good access to quality health care. I don't trust either Bernie Sanders or United Health care to provide it.
Hillary Clinton was correct when she said the ACA needed to require people to get coverage. The Democrats were correct to ask for a public option. They caved on both and the Republicans who won the day on the ACA couldn't accept victory gracefully. That doesn't mean we can't fix it without going to a single payer system. I live in AZ, Indian health services is single payer. It's a national disgrace.
3
``[H]is uncompromising position also threatens to alienate voters who are pleased with the Affordable Care Act, or who do not want to give up their private insurance.''
Please show me one person in this country who is both unconnected to the insurance industry and happy with the private insurance s/he has.
12
Actually, I'm very happy with my health insurance. I'm not rich, but my husband and I chose employment that provided good coverage. We also always have taken the highest coverage possible -- even though that meant spending money on the premiums and giving up "nice to haves." All of this "free stuff" is concerning. There's really nothing that's "free."
6
@Traveler Right: nothing is free. But if you get the insurance companies out of the business of gouging us, prices come down. Those of us with insurance---paying astronomical premiums and ridiculous copays---currently subsidize the ER care that the uninsured must use. That's a huge waste of money.
10
@Traveler
Interesting. Pretty much every family I know who consider themselves healthy enough chose plans with deductibles and out of pockets while saving some money on the premiums. Wouldn’t getting more coverage you may not need in the year be a waste of resources?
My thoughts....
Sanders/Warren or Warren/Sanders would be an unbeatable combo.
Americans need to get out in record numbers and vote for policies that help this country and stop voting for republicans who hurt our country. If you can't see this, you need to have your eyes checked.
17
According to the OECD, the US Government spends 18% of its total GDP on Health Care. The US Government spends 8.5% on Medicare, Medicaid and other health programs.
The Canadian Government spends less than% of its GDP on a program that covers everyone.
If the US was as efficient as Canada, it could implement a version of Medicare for All AND NOT RAISE TAXES.
The US Healthcare system is unbelievably inefficient.
https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/
14
@Bill Dan
The lower GDP figure in Canada is because not everything is in fact covered. Dental, eye care, medications are not covered. Same with the costs associated with chronic conditions, like diabetes, cancer, physical therapy, etc.
Many medical procedures are sent to private clinics where the patient pays out of pocket. For 8.5% of GDP, you get free healthcare only for procedures performed in a hospital.
3
@Viv
In the article cited, the US spends more than twice as much per person as Canada. This includes both private and public spending on all services and products categorized as healthcare. In other words, the figures are comparable.
Just a correction - dental, eye care, medications etc are in fact covered for low income/seniors/children - though the details of coverage may vary across provinces.
2
@IG
No, actually it doesn't include both private and public spending. Canadians do not provide statistics on how much is actually privately spent on healthcare because there is no reporting body to collect that information.
Sorry, but it's not a trivial thing to just say "coverage may vary". People have died because coverage from one province is not the same as coverage in another province. This isn't a joke.
Kids have died of preventable meningitis in Nova Scotia because the province did not want to pay for an updated vaccine that covers all strains (and is standard in most other provinces). https://globalnews.ca/news/1798020/nova-scotia-to-vaccinate-against-meningitis-strain-that-killed-sackville-teen/.
If you get cancer, there is no guarantee that the treatment you receive in one province will be the same as in any other province. Costs dictate what will be covered, and what substitutes need to be made to save money. The financial hardship of of Canadians with cancer is well documented despite the propaganda that nobody goes broke if they get sick. Yes in fact plenty do.
https://www.cancer.ca/~/media/cancer.ca/MB/get%20involved/take%20action/financial%20hardship%20of%20cancer%20in%20canada/aliteraturereview-MB.pdf?la=en
https://globalnews.ca/news/1661680/16x9-some-canadian-patients-struggling-to-pay-for-cancer-treatments/
https://nationalpost.com/features/cancer-in-canada
1
Sure, in theory, one can imagine this, and such notions have been raised in the US going back to President Truman, but even by its own terms Sanders' Medicare for All plan requires a large battery of tax increases, including top marginal rates above 70 percent, increased payroll taxes for both employees and employers, confiscatory inheritance tax rates, wealth taxes, increased self-employment taxes, and so on. All of this on top of violently disrupting the private health insurance markets, a not-inconsiderable portion of GDP, and its workers. It's a non-starter politically and, moreover, a boon to Trump's reelection campaign.
4
@Frunobulax
Perhaps the main issue with the US system is that "consumers" (and that's everyone) are "price takers", simply paying whatever the providers demand. If "Medicare for All" does the same, it will be prohibitively expensive.
My understanding of the various forms of "single payer" systems is that the national "insurer" has negotiating power, which keeps prices down; "Medicare for All" will have to do the same.
3
As much as some statistics can be confusing, in this table the OECD shows that average tax rates in Canada and the US are essentially the same across the wage scale. Our health care costs are embedded in what we pay, but not in those of US taxpayers who are not covered under Medicare or Medicare.
https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=TABLE_I6
2
The article refers to Senator Sanders' position on healthcare as "dogmatic". As even a cursory investigation of the issue will show, there is a massive body of evidence, based on the experiences of other countries, that single-payer healthcare is cheaper and more effective than the current U.S. system. The Senator's position is based on facts, not dogma.
41
As a Canadian, currently residing in the United States, who has family on both sides of the border and who has had family have similar medical procedures done on both sides of the border I just want to say that Americans should demand better. You deserve better.
The medical system in the States is one big sales game. If you have good insurance they sell you all kinds of procedures, tests etc. whether you actually need them or not. If you don’t have good insurance you’re on your own. Here in NYC I have had the pleasure of listening to doctors talk to admin staff in coffee shops and restaurants not about how to improve health but on how to get more money out of the insurance company to get wealthier. I don’t trust anything that is recommended here by a doctor anymore. It is sad. On the other side my insurance company tells me every year my rates are going up without any real justification. If the Canadian government did the same thing there would be riots in the street. Let’s not get into the paperwork associated with this system. I can only imagine what that expense looks like!
When you have public health care, health emergencies don’t become outrageous family fiscal crisis at the same time. You don’t have to choose to save mom or keep the house.
64
@Stephanie Thanks Stephanie for telling it like it is. I too have lived on both sides of the border and have family on both sides. None of my Canadian family would opt to live in the US and have to put up with this dysfunctional, failing system. 38 years ago my husband was offered a great job in NYC but I was a few months pregnant. He turned down the job as we would not have been able to afford the medical bills. We stayed in Canada and waited a few years until a better job opportunity arose. Now we wonder why we dragged our kids to a failing country.
17
I can see naysayers to Canadian Health Care system here.
Well, Canada's federal election is weeks away and just started campaigning.
If Trudeau or any party leaders promises to undo the current health care by the government, he/she will have zero chance to win.
Healthcare for All is essential to majority of Canadians but
wealthy elites.
17
@uji10jo
In Canada - the 'elites' - or as we call them: you know the folks that actually pay the taxes - can pay high Federal tax and even a special medical tax surcharge and still not have a personal Dr.
1
Bernie is the real deal. Accept no substitutes.
16
2016 U.S. healthcare annual spending PER CAPITA was $9,892; the UK 4,192; Canada 4,753. Using a round number of 300M people, we are already spending almost 3 Trillion per year (not 30T as stated elsewhere). Cut that in half if our healthcare system was as efficient as that in the UK or Canada, & still every one of our 300M could have health coverage. And no one in the UK or Canada is clamoring to trade their healthcare system for ours.
If Bernie’s MFA will truly be a system like Canada’s, then go for it! BUT, an expansion of existing Medicare is not satisfactory since you still need to buy private insurance for adequate coverage & you can still go broke due to medical bills.
However, excluding private insurance from the start is a bad political decision. Taking a benefit away & forcing people into an unknown plan simply is not going to fly with many voters. There is no reason that a national health plan cannot co-exist with private healthcare insurance; most westernized nations have both. There is no harm in letting people choose. If some people prefer private insurance & want to pay for it, so be it. Better to make the national plan so good & affordable that people will choose to participate in it for precisely those reasons. This is true “letting the market decide” and competition. No matter how much you dislike the private insurance industry, in this case one-size fits all is not a good approach and not worth losing an election over.
3
Sanders and Trump? A recent NYT article on voters preferring politicians who sow chaos found that Trump voters scored highest and Sanders voters scored second highest. And chaos it would be were Sanders to succeed in doing away with what we have now. He has deeply misled voters about the transformation that he wants, glibly promising to take money from defense and other areas of the federal budget. As if it would be so easy to do and done in a timely way. As if the US is comparable to countries like Canada and UK. And what of those who prefer to keep employer-supplied health insurance? Beware of politicians who promise upheaval in order to benefit everyone. Upheaval is what Sanders craves as he yells and waves his arms. Upheaval leads to chaos. Our medical care system needs many sensible changes, not upheaval.
3
Congrats. This is the first good piece I’ve ever seen the NYT do on Bernard.
22
Another Canadian here.
I am alive today and still live in my own house because Canadian health care is part of a safety net that works. The comments saying that we have wait lists, rationed care, or super-high taxes don’t reflect reality.
We rely on medical professionals to triage access, not consumers.
If I go to a busy ER with a sprained finger, I’ll get treated, but it will probably mean a long wait because true emergencies are treated first: I should have taken my sprained finger to my family doctor or a walk-in clinic. But if I show up with a heart attack, I will be treated immediately.
There are no fees or deductibles. “Extra billing” by doctors or hospitals isn’t allowed in Ontario. I’ll have to pay for the ambulance if I use it as a taxi to get to the hospital with my sprained finger, but even the cost of a fully-staffed air-ambulance in a real emergency is fully covered.
It’s true that some provincial plans, like in Ontario, don’t pay for dental, glasses and medications most of the time (there are exceptions) but children, the poor, the disabled and the elderly are fully covered. Necessary high-cost items like CPAP machines etc are also partially covered for everyone in Ontario.
Our safety net, including health care, is important. I hope Canadians remember that when they vote next month.
140
@Margaret
You do have long wait times, restricted coverage and taxes that are close to 30% higher.
Covered americans can get an MRI within a week - you will need months and months.
There is no free lunch here - you get a good deal when your neighbors pay for your health care - like in Canada - but when you are the one doing the paying - not so much
3
@Margaret
Very similar to Nova Scotia's public coverage. My tax rate in NS is about 40% combined federal and provincial on a less than $100K income. That doesn't include the 15% sales tax we pay on most every purchase. And I pay $200 per month for a private plan to cover vision, dental and prescriptions. Now if I could only find a doctor, I'll be all set . . . (10% of Nova Scotians do not have a family doctor). I don't know which system is better because I've so far been healthy - but don't ever let anyone tell you Canadian health care is "free" or without problems.
2
@SteveRR
Imagine lecturing a Canadian about their own healthcare system when you are clearly clueless about the subject yourself. Yes taxes are higher, but they are offset by the fact that they don't have to pay exorbitant sums of money on premiums, deductibles and co-pays (otherwise known as private taxes).
Also, as an American with insurance, I can attest we can wait plenty long for proper service when we urgently need it. And then we get billed an arm and a leg for the privilege.
11
There is not a single candidate you can trust to fight for Medicare for All other than this man, Bernie Sanders, who has been on the side of the poor and oppressed his entire working life.
Not Liz Warren, who doesn't even have the issue on her web site, who has said she will take donations from the pharmaceutical industry and insurance industry in the general election if she is the candidate, and who was a Reagan republican before she was a Democrat.
Not Joe Biden, who regularly attends high dollar fundraising events with pharma execs and insiders and openly refuses to support single payer.
Not Kamala Harris, who used co-sponsoring Medicare for All to grow her email list and solicit donations, then backed down on it in a private fundraiser for rich donors at the Hamptons.
It's Bernie Sanders alone who has always taken the lead on this and who will always be the only one you can trust. I was just knocking on doors for him yesterday and the poor and working people in my city know it just as well as I do.
39
@cerebralscrub bravo, Bernie is the real thing- the other Dems are untrustworthy pretenders.
7
@cerebralscrub A "huge" Thank you from here on our east coast to you on our west coast! I agree with absolutely all of your reasoning and so appreciate your activism. It is going to take a lot of NotMe.Us for Bernie to get the nomination. As a student, I did a little work for civil rights. As a single parent of two, a little work for Make Work Work for Women.
As a volunteer now at 81, I mostly just post grateful encouragement to other Bernie supporters re Medicare4All (!), correct errors in posts by non-Bernies, and advocate for another of his crucial platform planks, increasing the federal minimum wage for the 1st time in a decade. He's been advocating for a fair, just $15 minimum--a decent, living wage-- since before 2016. Now, with 30 co-sponsors, his bill passed the House earlier summer. Evenso, McConnell (R-KY) has not permitted it to come to the Senate floor. There needs to be a national uprising, coast-to-coast, about that, too.
This is a true story. I am not a Republican. A friend of mine from Alberta, Canada, lives on Long Island. She needed some quick, emergency surgery for a female problem. She was on the phone for hours with Canadian health care people trying to get it covered (surgery was at Southampton Hospital). She thought she had it done, got the surgery, and now, months later, Canadian Healthcare agency said it was not an emergency, and they did not pay. Cost her plenty
5
I want evidence that Canadians are fed up with Universal Coverage and have been envious of American Healthcare all along. I want evidence of higher death rates among children or adults. I want something more than anecdotal accounts of bad outcomes from “not a republican”. I’ll be waiting.
40
@Bryan this has less to do with Canadian health care than your friend's out of country insurance plan. If she were in Canada, she would not have been charged. If she had purchased good travel medical insurance, she would not have been charged.
35
@Bryan, I suspect your friend was mistaken or misled. If she LIVES on Long Island and left Alberta more than 3 months before needing emergency care she was no longer a resident of Alberta and thus not no longer eligible for medicare coverage. I'm surprised there was any discussion of them covering her bills. Also, the provincial medicare plans pay only a token amount for out-of-Canada emergencies. My province, Ontario, caps that at just C$400/day.* And coverage for emergency care is negotiated directly between the plan and the foreign hospital with no involvement by the patient.
*Provincial plans tell Canadians through advertising to get out-of-Canada coverage from private insurers. These policies are widely available and very reasonably priced when bought through association and employer plans. For example, my association plan covers an unlimited number of trips for up to 93 days each with extra days available at additional cost.
24
Medicare For All is an important and worthy goal and I hope it can be accomplished. If it can't there will be some sort of compromise. Sanders will aim high and that is a good thing. And having him in the oval office even if this important goal has to be compromised is a good thing too. Just as an example: imagine the national conversation being one about private vs public health care rather than all the drivel we are currently served up on a daily basis.
18
I love the photo by Steve Liss at the top of this article. Senator Sanders digs deeply into the most important issues the people of the United States face, and he has remained rock solid and in the right direction on them all for the past five decades.
He has been way ahead of virtually every American politician, Democrat or Republican, on all the major issues. He hasn't wavered, and he has continually worked to speak truth and bring about change despite all the obstacles placed in his path.
Senator Sanders is inspiring. He deserves our love and respect.
Why are Democrats so afraid of him?
46
@James Barth
The answer to your question is very simple. Democratic politicians are afraid of Sanders because they rely on corporate money to finance their campaigns.
15
It is way past time to fix our broken health care system. At this point, I am not sure why we even call it a health care system.
It is a system based only on the cash register. Blackstone hedge fund controls the surprise medical bills of 1 in 6 Americans since it based its business model on that area of revenue when it purchased physician staffing agencies. Cha-Ching.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-deep-pocket-push-to-preserve-surprise-medical-billing?ref=home
22
As someone who has watched loved ones struggle with the for-profit healthcare industry and who has advocated for them to keep them alive.
The only thing that changes is who does the billing and payment. And that you can go to ANY doctor or hospital without worrying that they won’t take your insurance. Best of all, most people don’t realize that government is a Non-profit entity. Meaning it spends what is required to get the job done without carving out billions for profits and executive payroll.
As a CPA it is crystal clear to me that the savings by eliminating the private insurance industry from the healthcare system will cut at least $4 trillion of costs over the next 10 years.
There’s roughly $100 billion of industry profits annually. That’s $1 trillion over 10 years. Then there are the operating costs of those companies, a multiple of the profit of say, 3 times, so another $3 trillion right there.
Healthcare insurance is not improving the health of people. It’s only siphoning off our money and working to deny healthcare.
Bernie Sanders has my vote. He is true.
41
Medicare for all could be one proposal to achieve coverage for every American as a fundamental right, but it may or may not be the most effective means of implementing this important idea.
One problem frequently mentioned of late is what to do with the private insurance Americans already have, which is certainly a thorny issue. What people don’t often consider is the difficulties that would inevitability arise if Medicare simply absorbed all private coverage. Sure, it would likely improve costs, coverages, and benefits, but people underestimate a major difficulty of this process.
There is already a booming business in supplemental Medicare coverage, so that could be expanded. But it seems highly unlikely that this would offset the loss of business for insurers caused by expanding Medicare to every American. So what, many would say, since everyone has been burned by an unfeeling insurance company at some point.
Yet, surely this contraction would severely diminish the industry as Medicare replaces private coverage. This would amount to transferring private business to the government and would certainly result in rapidly reducing the value of these companies. Not only could this harm the employees of these firms, but also the investors, who in at least in some cases, likely are owners of public stock. This taking of private property would cause substantial outrage, especially if it had a substantive effect on IRA’s and other investment accounts. Ouch!
@Marshall Doris The employees, investors and management of these for-profit health insurers are morally deficient. They need to be crushed like bugs. I'm sorry, but there should be no sympathy whatsoever towards our health insurance industry. The end for them can not come soon enough. Making large profits off the sick and dying is reprehensible.
3
As a Canadian, I'm aware of the shortcomings of our own healthcare system; the wait times for specialists and the shortages in some areas of the country for General Practitioners, but I am so grateful that healthcare is provided to all citizens, regardless of their means. My mother's cancer diagnoses (and recurrences) haven't bankrupted my parents, although there are some costs associated with prescription medications.
It seems all the more cruel in the US, where the 2nd Amendment is privileged over life itself, that citizens without health insurance, who are injured from gun violence, could have their savings depleted or be bankrupted through no fault of their own.
Healthcare reform is obviously a complex issue, with many stakeholders, but I believe that reform is possible if the political will exists, as demonstrated by various health care systems in other developed countries.
If addressing the inequalities in healthcare access is a priority to you, learn what you can about the various health care models that exist in other countries, and support those candidates who have pledged to bring about reform.
60
Universal Health Care is not a Socialist plot. It is a form of health insurance without the horrible side effects. Paying for needed care is not overhead.
30
Good article that accurately logs Sen. Sanders' long march against a broken health care system. But, I feel that the statement "he has made Medicare for all the most important issue of his campaign" is not hitting on the fundamental truth about his agenda. Our broken health care system is but one symptom of the most important issue of his campaign, which is this... money in politics has corrupted everything, including health care, education, and, most importantly, our environment.
33
Sanders was "speaking about health care in the kind of dogmatic terms he uses today"?
Excuse me?
That's not journalism.
That's propaganda.
22
Although you'll never seen a bill in Canada for a 20 minute doctor's visit or a triple bypass and a two week hospital stay, universal health care isn't entirely free in the north. To take just one example, gasoline tax contributes considerably to the funding. The average price of gas across the US today is $2.50 per gallon. I often visit BC, Canada where this week I'll pay the equivalent of US $2.88 per gallon. If it was announced that in order to fund healthcare for all in the US gas prices would immediately rise by 38 cents a gallon, an insurrection would probably follow. Bottom line is you can't introduce UHC without raising taxes, and although UHC would greatly benefit just about all US residents, most Americans have a naive sense of how much it really costs to live in America.
3
@phaeton likeabute So you show them how they're already paying it, only moreso. You pay X in premiums, your employer contributes X in premiums, you pay X in copays, you have Y as your caps, you pay Z to account for the fact that many are uninsured and yet still must receive emergency care which cost gets past on to you. Add it all up and it's plenty more than most would pay in taxes, and for WORSE outcomes! Let's try to treat the American people as adults and see how it goes
9
@phaeton likeabute
This is a sperious argument. A recent investigation by a commission into gasoline prices in BC found a number of reasons BC gas is expensive, including 13 cents/litre (over 40 cents/US gallon) inexplicably added by oil companies, plus a lack of refineries in BC, etc.
If one looks at overall taxes paid by individual tax payers, both Canada and the US are near the average for OECD. Taking one (alleged) tax rate as an example while avoiding the total tax (on average) one pays is manipulation, not an argument.
15
The article has value: It points to Sanders' Canadian alternative to the US health care system. It does so educating the US public. As a number of posts have indicated, the issue is highly complex. Politicians and the press must simplify it. Therewith distortions and errors slip in. Obama's ACA was an excellent start at reform. It is patterned after some very successful European multiple payer health care systems: the Dutch, German and Swiss. Princeton's Uwe Reinhardt, no longer with us, was the main expert advising Obama. Germany has many "sickness" insurance companies, but their payouts to health care providers are monitored and regulated by the GDR's specialists. Insurance companies need to compete with each other to achieve reduction in costs. Insurance companies operate with actuarial and statistical models: The absolute mandate of all workers, also the young, who need less health care, contributes to paying for ballooning costs of health eldercare. Those countries also permit "private" insurance on top of and separate from the state-regulated health care insurance scene. For lavish luxuries, as private hospital rooms, is not covered by the "public" health insurance system. Dominating all would be a public ethos of the "right to health", introduced in Germany by Bismarck in 1870: A "right" implies a public provider. Poor Congolese have no human "right" to be pulled out of poverty by wealthy Americans: Who would satisfy such a "right"? No pipe dream would.
One of my children is a nationalized Canadian citizen, who works as a medical professional in the Canadian medical system. If any member of the family have health issues that require more than the most routine care, they drive to the U.S. I’m not exagerating, and I’m NOT making this up.
7
@stevevelo Not true. Its a myth perpetrated by the GOP.
9
@stevevelo And yet Canada ranks significantly above the US in life expectancy. I'm not making that up.
20
@stevevelo, one often hears this true argument. The reason why it is true is the difference in the Canadian and the US health care systems. Often Canadian patients have longer wait times to see specialists. Americans often insist on tops in everything, never mind how much they need to pay. And Canadians live like Americans in many ways. No health care system is perfect. But there are reasons for and disadvantages to sky-high American health care in comparison to costs in "socialized" health care systems: One of the main disadvantages for Americans is very simple: Too many simply cannot afford such high costs. Never mind those Canadians who can. One sentiment is too often lacking in the USA: That less fortunate Americans are Americans too. Worthy of public support. Worthy of help when help is needed.
5
Where did you learn "math?" Americans pay twice as much for health care per capita that the rest of the developed nations. Undocumented workers pay into Medicare and Social Security, money they will never get back in benefits. The net effect of any uncovered care they receive is offset by these sums. Large studies have shown that the cost to our system is small. So, why can't we "fix" healthcare? Simple answer. Republicans have a wedge issue with false data and memes that are just not true.
26
Good luck with finding a family physician in Montreal. The US is smart enough to adopt a system that will cover everybody and incorporate the best of all the healthcare systems from around the world.
6
@Skeptical And that explains why so many other nations have taken steps to emulate our system. Oh, wait, none have. Why not, if our system is so good?
11
@Skeptical a family doctor is unnecessary. There are clinics all over that you can just walk in and see a doctor.
6
@Skeptical
Montreal is a special situation, as doctors there are also required to speak french, which makes the "pool" of qualified doctors much smaller.
I would also urge your to think of the flip-side of your argument: the US system is so expensive because of what it pays health care providers and the health care industry. This creates a huge incentive for Canadian doctors to head to the US. So I would argue your expensive system is not only out of reach for a large portion of your own population, it is also taking away from quality of care of Canadians.
5
“Dogmatic terms?” Stemming from a fixation on his mother’s death? (I know: he shoulda walked that off.)
Why not this many words on his actual *proposal*, instead of dismissing it as dogmatism via amateur psychohistory?
A question for readers, mind you.
19
Bernie can be applauded for shooting for the stars. But 'free' health care is never ever free. Canada, on a per capita basis, has a much higher rate of taxation (income and value added taxes) than the United States ( a country with $800 billion spent on it's military yearly! Canada only $25 billion...). In my view, Sanders will never get his plan off the ground, because no matter how he spins it - he'll never get past the fact that high rates of taxation is simply not in Americans' DNA. Canadians' taxes are high because of our health care system (and not the military) - and yet it's still not enough. Provinces routinely run high deficits, which to a large degree are paid with supplements from the federal government, which in turn has high yearly deficits. So taxes are high, deficits are also high and health care costs keep rising - which in turn leads to a rationing of care, something that Mr. Sanders has not yet addressed. This has ironically led to the privatization in recent years of many medical procedures here paid for the American way, with private insurance. In short, Democrats should be careful what they wish for. Canada's model is not the one to follow. A hybrid blend of public and private in equal measure would be better. Private for those who have the insurance, and public for those who do not.
8
@Rick Morris. Two tier health care is immoral. And while Canadian taxes are higher, to call them high is misleading. Our higher education is less expensive, fewer people need to pay for primary and secondary education to avoid poor school districts. Women get paid maternity leave through the Federal system, paid vacation and sick time are entrenched in provincial laws and long term care is part of the health care system, some user pay, but much less expensive than the US.
12
@Rick Morris You've basically described Obamacare. And maybe it would have worked, if states had not been free to reject Medicare expansion to the detriment of their own citizens and if subsidies had in fact been fully funded. But the result is a crazy patchwork quilt that doesn't provide everyone with the knowledge that they have some basic level of coverage, no questions asked. Not who your insurer is, or where you work, or whether you filled out Form 1110893746X after you lost your job, etc.
5
@Rick Morris. As a CPA I have done the math. And guess what? Over their lifetimes, people in the countries with higher tax rates and socialized medicine and education and pensions, guess how they do versus the average American making $50k per year?
Americans pay less in taxes and they also pay over half a million MORE for other basic services like education and healthcare over their lifetimes. So until you want to talk math please stop blathering in about how your taxes will go up. Because everything else major goes down by much more.
Non-profit versus for-profit. Government versus private corporations.
13
Yes healthcare for everyone. But I doubt it's politically palatable with taking away private insurance. It would really surprise me if that panned out. I strongly suggest Medicare for All Who Want It and in such a way where the market will naturally move toward true Medicare for All. Don't force it on 150,000,000 people at once.
2
@Tim
Hey, back at you :-).
I believe the "MFAWWI" line is courtesy of Mayor Pete, who's superb, IMO.
Cheers.
When Medicare for all started for Canada in the 1960's, the country had less than 20 million people, medical technology was relatively primitive, and the program was setup to be run by the provinces.
Sanders wants a program for 325 million Americans that would result in the firing of one million private sector employees, and the hiring of one-million employees who will work for a gargantuan federal bureaucracy based in DC. What could possibly to wrong?
Also, per capita, Canada spends 75% less for defense than the US. I suppose we could cut the defense budget by 75% and use the money for Medicare. Hey, with Sanders you never know.
9
@Erik Canada also spends 75% less on Healthcare. The citizens spend 100% less.
5
@Erik
In 2017, over 100 million Americans receive medicare, or medicaid, or other public healthcare coverage. ( Kaiser Family Foundation, kff.org). A 2018 Gallop survey shows medicare/medicaid coverage has higher satisfaction rate than private health insurance. Good public healthcare coverage seems achievable in the present date U.S.
In the same Gallop survey, it is curious that majority of people are satisfied with private insurance. My family have pretty standard employment based insurance. You have to deal with what's covered or not. If you change job, you might lose your doctor. It seems it's common people with family worried about what's covered by private insurance and their medical bills.
People may have reservations about medicare for all in the abstract. But a few phone calls about your medical bill may change people minds.
3
This is why Bernie's votes will eventually go to Elizabeth Warren. The combined votes will then pass to Joe Biden, as neither Bernie nor Ms. Warren have a plan B to improve health care in the US when Medicare-for-all crashes and burns in the US Senate.
They are proposing the implementation of a health care system that is even far more reaching than that in Canada or the UK. Given the mindset of the US population (I want everything now), the costs would be astronomical.
6
@Mike Edwards The costs would be less. Thats the whole point.
13
@Scott D
"The costs would be less."
Doubtful. The addition of another 28 million to the insured rolls would add significant cost. Also Americans are much more demanding than Canadians, Irish and the British. They will not accept the level of service offerred n those countries.
I'm not saying the uninsured shouldn't be covered. Just be straight with us about the costs.
@Mike Edwards There are 33 Senate elections in 2020: 21 currently Republican seats and 11 Dem.
34 in 2022.
Not every Republican Senator is going to win re-election, especially after Sanders wins the presidency in 2020.
1
I worked as a hospital RN for 30 years, and had the pleasure of meeting Bernie at a convention in 2006.We had a long conversation.Being a frontline healthcare worker,I saw it all up close and personal.The hospital system is rampant with greed. To be a nurse towards the end of my career was so painful.I was a whistleblower and was targeted for advocating for patients and fellow healthcare workers. I so wish we could have someone like Bernie Sanders lead our country. I can still dream.
143
@Nora
The pen is mightier than the sword.
We can 'write Bernie in this time', if we must.
The DNC can vote too,
just not with my vote.
8
In 2006 I left my job to care 24/7 for an ill parent (who was on Medicare). I had no income yet I had to pay 1,000 a month for high deductible health insurance for myself. Blew through my savings. I sure could have used Medicare at that time. I buy insurance through the ACA now, but I would prefer what Bernie has to offer. I think he is great, and hope he is the nominee.
83
Ms. Ember I think you confuse "centrist" with someone who basically wants the status quo. A centrist is defined as someone with moderate political views or seeks a middle ground. Biden seeks essentially the status quo.
People always fear change even if it is good for them. Look at the number of people who protested Obamacare and now that they have it don't want to give it up. Our health care system is broken. We have the highest cost but have poor results. How long can we sustain this model and still have 30 million people without any coverage. Bernie and the others who support Medicare for all are on the right track. They are not radicals. We need to get past the people like Biden who are stuck in the mud.
44
@Steve
Sanders most certainly IS a radical. He wants to turn this nation into an egalitarian nirvana with an economy that caters to the indolent and unremarkable. I hope he's rejected with extreme prejudice.
6
@Don B. Yep keep the poor poor and the well to do behind gates
12
Let me get this straight. Bernie lived for a while in Chicago and kicked up his revolutionary heels there. But then he fled to Vermont (95%+ white population). From there he makes his grand pronouncements for the US.
Here's my story. My family lived on the near east side of Detroit (Chene Street area). I am a second generation American of Polish descent. They did not move out until the late 1980s. When they did their house was more or less worthless. The neighborhood was a essentially a combat zone due to the actions of a portion of its residents. BTW my privileged ill-gotten inter-generational real estate inheritance consists of an empty lot with an assessed value of $101.
Fast forward to 2015. My mother was no longer able to care for herself. She was looking at living in a nursing home. I stepped in and paid for care in an assisted living facility. She lived out her years there.
I have also paid on a long term care insurance policy for myself since the mid-1990s. What will Bernie's grand scheme to to this? Oh yeah, community care but no insurance for long term care as far as I understand. It looks like Bernie and company are licking their chops at confiscating wealth - at that point it's medicaid for all.
People will be hurt by these policies. Next time you see a close presidential election please refrain from blaming the Russians.
8
@Jpthwt is incorrect. Bernie’s plan covers long term care as well as dental and vision starting with seniors. It’s a good plan, well thought out.
7
@Cedarcat: It covers long term care either through community care (in-home) or a nursing home(medicaid). His plan will not pay $4k+ a month for an assisted living care facility and long term care insurance is forbidden per his latest scheme.
1
The estimated cost per year being paid out via a mix of government, private-insurance and private-pay costs in the USA is $30 trillion; which could rise to over $50 trillion in 10 years if we do nothing. Employers are looking at $20,000 and $30,000 per employee per year, causing them to ask employees to share more of the costs on top of high annual deductibles and copays.
In total, we are paying twice as much for health care without the benefits compared to other top 20 nations that all have single-payer healthcare networks. Insulin costs $240 in the USA, and people who need to use insulin a couple times a day are dying. Meanwhile, Insulin costs $24 in Canada, which negotiates and regulates prescription drugs.
When (R) President George W. Bush was not able to discourage people from buying their drugs in Canada, he established Plan D, direct payments by the US government to big pharma corporations without any rights to negotiate the prices! Our opioids crisis is a direct result of big pharma corporations flooding the distribution and retail markets, and telling doctors that oxycodone was not addictive: So they could skyrocket profits for themselves and investors, while rewarding doctors with fabulous vacations and spending millions upon millions of dollars on political campaigns and federal lobbyists. We NEED PROTECTION via Medicare For All.
29
@mjpezzi. It would be better to call it a single payer system better than what you have now. Too many people have experience with Medicare and know their private insurance is a better option. Medicare for all is the wrong slogan.
@MEH - I have Medicare and I love it. I have resisted options that would allow me to enroll in a Medicare alternative because it's just the US Government subsidizing private for-profit insurance corporations. IE. Use the $153 a month Medicare payment to buy a Medicare Advantage plan that includes subsidy money and allows a higher administration cost. I do not want my Medicare payments to help insurance corporations make higher profits. ... even though the insurance plans offer some perks.
@MEH - I have Medicare and I love it. I have resisted options that would allow me to enroll in a Medicare alternative because it's just the US Government subsidizing private for-profit insurance corporations. IE. Use the $153 a month Medicare payment to buy a Medicare Advantage plan that includes subsidy money and allows a higher administration cost. I do not want my Medicare payments to help insurance corporations make higher profits. ... even though the insurance plans offer some perks.
Look at the reality if you retire early. Before qualifying for Medicare, a friend lost his employer based healthcare and was paying $1,600 per month with a $5,000 annual deductible. Now the bill is $153 per month for Medicare. Copays are $22 for routine office visits. The proposal is to expand Medicare to eliminate copays and iui include dental and eye care. We will save a ton of money when we eliminate the for profit leaches aka insurance corporations. We MUST also be able to negotiate prices. Senator Sanders brought people to Canada to purchase insulin for $24 that they are unable to afford in the USA because the price has skyrocketed to $240.
I talked to a young man Saturday who I could tell was an IT guy with a well-paying job because I was curious why he was holding a Bernie sign.
He said he has never thought about healthcare until his brother’s best friend almost died from the same exact thing he had, appendicitis. Because his insurer randomly dropped him (under the ACA) and he couldn’t afford the ambulance, and the $31,000 it would have cost, he waited too long. When he was almost dead, it ended up taking multiple surgeries and hospitalizations to save him, he lost his house and his job, and his wife and daughter left him.
The guy who was now dedicating all his free time to canvassing for Bernie, but really for real change in society, who had never thought about inequality, a rigged economy, who thought Hillary should be president until this experience, who’s insurance seemingly randomly paid for everything was seen immediately, taken care of, had five paid sick days he didn’t really need and almost didn’t notice the minor inconvenience.
He said he’s all in for Bernie now and went canvassing after the SNHU arena Democratic Convention last Saturday, where the crowd went completely wild for Bernie, 100 times more enthusiastically than for any other candidate. This wonderful young man said once you see the truth you can’t unsee it and he wished he had voted for Bernie last time.
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@Lilly
Randomly dropped....no way.
Under ACA only way to get dropped is by failure to pay your premium.
3
It is true.
I had a doctor friend who was randomly dropped too, just before an important, scheduled surgery.
You can not believe me.
It doesn’t change the truth.
13
@Unhappy JD - Tell that to my first insurer under the ACA.
While they didn’t technically drop me, personally, they stopped participating under the ACA in my market, and I had to find coverage elsewhere.
So, yeah, come to think of it, they DID drop me. And who knows how many others.
3
Canada also has a very strict immigration policy as they realize that if they did not, and let everyone in like we do, the healthcare system would collapse. Do the math. We can't fix healthcare until we fix immigration.
13
@Sarah99 Not true. But nice try to change to channel.
12
@Sarah99
Not correct. On a percentage basis Canada let’s in far more immigrants per year. US per year allows just over 1 million immigrants. Canada let’s in about 300,000. US population is over nine times Canada.
13
@Richard
Estimates are that we have between 10 and 20 million illegal immigrants in the US and that number rises every single day. How many millions of illegal immigrants does Canada allow? Zero.
5
It's time for Bernie to retire. My son went to the University of Vermont and wife and I spent many, many nights in that beautiful State. However the taxes are out of control, the population is small and his prescription for success on the healthcare front would only work in smaller communities. His Medicare for all would never work in a place like NY where unions, corruption and a "take what you can for no effort" is unfortunately par for the course here.
And Canada, I've had very solid doctors say that unless you have a medical emergency, getting tests like MRI & CAT take forever.
Bernie reminds me of this old-cantankerous, upper West Side socialist who believes that you never have to work or sweat and the Government will do it all for you. His theme appeals to the people who have not read history. His "medicare for all" philosophy is right out of Lenin & Stalin's playbook.
Don't fool yourselves into thinking that his solutions will fix the broken healthcare system.
p.s. - I've paid into Medicare system for 45 years and next year I'll be turning 65, earning what I worked hard and long for. Jaded New York Male
15
@Steve
For the 44 million Americans with no health insurance, MRIs and CAT scans are unobtainable unless paying 100% out of pocket. I would choose waiting awhile vs. never.
Don't fool yourself, folks are dying or homeless because they had the audaciousness to choose to be treated for cancer (or other devastating illnesses) without health insurance.
22
Maybe the people who are saying Bernie should retire either don’t understand the level of desperation and unconscionable brutality that millions live under or they know and don’t care.
Bernie is the only one who actually cares, and not for his own, selfish gain, like those who didn’t endorse him last election, but are copying all his policies now...
The Convention Center went CRAZY with happiness and love for last Saturday.
There was almost no one left in the arena for Warren, but that’s who the NYT reported got a huge welcome.
But I was there.
The entire arena went WILD for Bernie.
He could barely get in a word edgewise.
He .is. the most beloved politician in the country, maybe the world.
7
@Steve
Hey Steve. Our MRI waits are probably longer than yours, but they are generally linked to how badly you need it done. A bad hip might take a few months, something that might kill you is usually a couple days. And we can still pay cash if you want that hip looked at - I can get an MRI tomorrow for $550-$775 if I want to pay out of pocket. But we do get a lot of waste from folks who start to see our system as 'free'. 40 years of paying taxes has taught me that there ain't nothing free.
2
Bernie was right then and he’s still right now. How much needless suffering, how much anxiety, and how many trillions down the rabbit hole since healthcare costs first really blasted off around 50 years ago?
37
Why does he call it Medicare for all? Does he know what Medicare actually covers and doesn’t? Most private insurance is better. Medicare does not cover long term care only 60 days short term. It does not cover eye, hearing dental. So what is he talking about. He thinks the general public is stupid. Also as a border county; why are Canadians coming here to the US rather than wait.medicine is cheaper. BTW he has no idea how to pay for it. Is he providing jobs for all the people losing jobs in the private health insurance field. I challenge him to honestly state what Medicare covers.
12
He calls it Medicare for All because his version of healthcare covers everyone and everything.
Please research these questions.
It’s the responsible citizen’s thing to do.
36
@Burt Read his plan, all your concerns, assuming they are mentioned in good faith, are addressed. His plan covers dental and vision. It has just transition measures for displaced workers. Get over yourself and read his plan.
29
@Burt He should ask someone like me, who used to have a decent employer-provided plan and now has 7 years under Medicare, what I think. Because of very very low Medicare reimbursement rates, many types of benefits are very limited and some providers where I live don't take Medicare at all. Yes, Medicare may pay for you to have a hip replacement at a fine hospital, but you may be surprised how quickly you are pushed out of that hospital and how limited the post-surgery physical therapy benefits you get are.
Sanders says his plan will cover "vision" and "dental," things not now covered by Medicare. But I believe "vision" is limited to eye exams and glasses, while I would bet his "dental" does not cover the types of expensive procedures seniors often need. The private dental insurance a senior can buy now is limited to things like checkups, cleanings, cavity fillings, etc., and I suspect his plan would be similarly limited.
The best thing they could do for older people, in my opinion, is give a tax CREDIT for medical, dental & medically necessary home care expenses that exceed a certain percentage of adjusted gross income, like 5%.
4
The captioner to the photo accompanying this article doesn't know the difference between distillation and dogma. Sen. Sanders has not arrived at his position by ignoring the facts - which are simple. a lifetime of confronting the 'American carnage' of our healthcare system and contrasting it with health care elsewhere in the world has led him to his inescapable conclusion. Medicare for all is the way to go. Babbling about how we're stuck with having to modify the system we have is mere apologetics.
Private healthcare is clearly cruel and inefficient. It is obvious that the hyper-financialized medical insurance industry will fight to the death to prevent the progress and justice of universal coverage; progress which is evident everywhere we look in the world beyond our own navels. How does some version of clinging to a private corporate health-care system manage NOT to be 'dogma' while extending Medicare to coverage for all qualifies as a dogmatic rather than a pragmatic and rational idea?
44
Bravo!
Truth!
1
As a lifelong neighbour of the U.S. I can safely say that when the elephant shuffles the mice move. Canadians are for the most part shocked but not surprised that public health care does not exist in your country. The fact that the wealthy benefit from the sick is an atrocity. If Bernie is to succeed in his efforts he will have to overcome the huge propaganda machine of capitalism which as in North America has become the new and old religion. My personal experience coming from a middle class background is that without public healthcare our family would certainly be struggling financial. I have great empathy for my neighbours south of the border with respect to their broken health care system
399
Great! Now pray for the Times to finally see the light and push for Medicare for all. And that means promoting Bernie (and Warren).
The picked your comment, so, there is hope!
41
@Bill No need to mention, Canadian medicare system is not perfect. Canadians complains about long wait or lack of hospital beds. There's always a room to improve especially in a big city where population constantly grows and fast.
But once you get sick and you are hospitalized, or you need an operation, you do realize how grateful it is. I once stayed 10 days in a hospital and then a few weeks later, had a small operation for the prostate treatment. It's all free.
When I was discharged, I really felt I'm "insured" and
felt grateful. I believe many Canadians feel the same.
Canadian system is not the only way.
Why try study the systems of other countries like
Trump's favorite Scandinavian Countries.
He will understand why few Scandinavians would like to immigrate to the United states.
54
@Blunt Warren? Better look closer.
6
There are so many people in this Country are Naysayers around this issue. Do they ask the same questions when we've gone to war? Who's going to pay for it? Trillions later and countless lost lives? Those who say they want the healthcare to stay as is need to be reminded they may be laid off, get cancer, or traumatic injuries. Who pays then? Most of us are paying hundreds /month and that's after our employer subsidizes our plan? Bernie's plan will cost less combined than we're paying now BUT it will be with us forever no matter ilnesses, injuries, or lost employment. Do the math people...you'll be better off.
277
@jack ~
" Bernie's plan will cost less combined than we're paying now BUT it will be with us forever no matter ilnesses, injuries, or lost employment. Do the math people...you'll be better off."
Perhaps.
But it is a very complicated world, and someone, somehow, will lose a whole lot of jobs and a whole lot money and have to pay a lot more in taxes to balance out the program.
4
@jack-The fact that we don't ask who's going to pay for it when we go to war isn't a particularly good reason to not ask a very reasonable question.
One thing that scares me about not asking, when there is the inevitable Republican administration and Congress, who's going to fund it?
4
@jack
Biden voted for war.
Bernie never did.
You are right, with Bernie we would be better off, better people.
30
I would take with a grain of salt the claim that there is some large population (or, even any population) that is happy with private insurance and unwilling to give it up. Is it that they are happy or do they see the EOB’s, marvel at the difference between the retail price charged by the provider and the amount authorized by the insurance company and are, grudgingly, thankful for anything that reduces their own share of the cost and, thereby, fearful of losing whatever cost mitigation is offered by their policies. That “satisfaction” born of fear is a result of not fully understanding the details of a Medicare for all proposal.
A large portion of health care funding is borne by private industry through administration and funding to private insurance plans. Those costs are, in turn, passed onto the employees through reduced wages and cost sharing. If the private insurance market were eliminated or severely curtailed to supplemental plans, such as currently exists for Medicare, that frees up a large pool of funds to be redirected to a publicly funded single payer system. That, combined with some portion of the funds currently contributed by existing policy holders through premiums and co pays along with restructuring taxation priorities provides the basis for single payer funding.
While the devil is in the details, that is where the focus should be, not on the fear mongering and sloganeering promulgated by those whose profits depend on our not understanding.
31
@Ray Harper Very practical view. It seems to me like we are collectively very short-sighted when it comes to our health, which is the reason why heart disease and diabetes are so prevalent. I'd be interested to learn more about the motivations of individuals and their like or dislike for a Medicare-for-all-like system.
I can't think of a way where reducing the overhead of private insurance companies (which it can be argued is artificially inflated) to a single-payer system would increase the cost to run that system. I just don't see private insurance being so competent at what they do that it couldn't be simplified.
7
@Ray Harper I can give you two people. One, my daughter, who's first job dropped health insurance when the ACA came out. She was paying more and more for basically catastrophic care with a very high deduction. She changed jobs and now pays 1/3rd what she was and is covered for more. Next, me. I had to use military medical care for many years when we were overseas. I never want to go back to that. Long wait times, never the same doctor twice, medical tests delayed or deferred permanently. It's a great system if you're healthy. As for gov't. healthcare, we have another example, the VA. It's a sterling example of what we will get. There are a lot of things we can try before we force everybody to single payer. Perhaps the way Germany handles it with insurance. That system would work here and it might transition easier. I think I understand very well what we'd be getting if we moved to single payer. Fear mongering, indeed.
@Brian Private companies can fire people that don't work. Civil servants can never be fired. Nothing the gov't takes over is ever simplified. We will be firing all the people that actually know how to do things and hiring a bunch of know-nothing civil servants that will never care to learn. Health insurance profit margins are 4%to 5.25%.
2
The Canadian system is NOT MediCare for all. Canadians carry private insurance for pharmaceuticals, dental, optometry, and other medical services covered by the Canadian system. The system is variable, depending upon the province. Sanders wants the US system to cover all medical needs without deductibles, premiums, or copays. The current Medicare system requires premiums and copays. Sanders has been misleading the US voters for decades about both the Canadian and !edicare systems.
12
@GariRae ~
I am very satisfied with paying the $135 out of my Social Security and $123 for a supplement G. So far, it has really only been the $185 out of pocket.
I do wonder how people who go into one of the free "Advantage" programs end up if they have to have surgery and a dozen tests and 10 or 12 visits to specialists and ... things that can be very hard to predict a year in advance.
My prescription plans are awful, and I do look forward to younger taxpayers paying for my new teeth and a hearing aid and better glasses.
Based on my life expectancy, that will cost them only an annualized $1000 - $1200 a year, plus the costs for the really expensive prescriptions. Forteo @ $950 a month would help my knees.
1
@GariRae
Stated a bit differently, yes, the Canadian system is medicare for all, just not ALL medicare for all. The public system won't pay for my hair transplants or liposuction or botox. It also doesn't pay for my dental care or eye glasses either (but standby--there are promises from some politicians to begin this sort of coverage as well in the public system), which is covered through extended insurance plans (often paid for by employers). But primary and acute services are all covered, typically no deductables and no copay. Yes, there might be a waiting period. But if you want to pay out of pocket, there is a "second tier" available.
15
@John Hanzel: I had to manage the affairs of a few elderly relatives (I am slightly too young for Medicare). I put them all on Advantage plans.
Advantage plans are not all $0 premium, though some are. For higher fees, you can get dental and vision care.
BUT….all Advantage plans have a yearly "cap" on expenses.
My aunt's plan was $0 premium, but was capped at $4200 out of pocket. That is $350 a month or identical to most of the Medigap plans.
She did have to pay $15 for each doctor visit, but I found that reasonable. She never came close to hitting her yearly cap! and she had "first dollar" coverage.
In years where her care only involved a few doctor visits….she saved THOUSANDS over Medigap. That was used later on, when her medical needs increased.
1
It is important to remember that Canadian "Medicare" is not "full and total free medical care for all" as Sen. Sanders styles it.
For covered services (virtually all medical services, but not prescriptions), these is no charge at point of service. Nor are there deductibles or co-pays. The system is funded by general tax revenues, plus (in Ontario, anyway), an income-linked tax surcharge From CDN $0-$900.
What the Canadian system does provide is universal coverage at a much smaller fraction of GDP than the patchwork US system. It does that by controlling costs.
There is much criticism of long delays. Well, I lived in the US until 2018, with top-tier insurance, and there were delays just as long to see specialists. Non-emergency surgery can entail a wait, but at least does not bankrupt the patient (see the Times series about hospitals suing patients).
The bottom line is that the Canadian system (a hybrid of public financing/single-payer and private providers) provides universal coverage, outcomes as good as or better than the US, at a much smaller cost, and without the risk of financial disaster for patients.
190
@John Nesbitt
On one point of clarification, Senator Sanders has clearly stated that taxpayers would indeed pay a bit more to contribute to the funding of Medicare for All, but that net -net, it will be significantly less than what is paid into premiums and deductibles currently.
I can speak to this reality first hand having paid more than $18,000 in premiums and deductibles before private insurance would pay even for a $5 pill! I have never paid this much in income tax!
32
Our healthcare system does not work well for many. That is because many of our systems do not work. We have a population that wants everything done regardless of proven efficacy or need. We have a welfare safety net that encourages laziness amongst at least some of its recipients. We have an open door immigration policy that floods the country with people who have never paid into the system, and a medicaid system that essentially makes doctors work for free. We have a tort system that uses lawsuits as a lottery that drives up cost. We have doctors and hospitals that are profiteers.
Maybe if we addressed some of the above, a whole lot more money may become available to make healthcare universal for people who pay taxes here.
But the biggest change needs to be one of expectation. Canadians do not get what we get here. Not that everything we get is good- far from it. But that is what people expect. So Bernie cannot claim to deliver a Canada style system without telling people who currently pay for themselves that their care, while good, will be nothing like what they have now.
8
@NY Surgeon
It is definitely complex, both systems have challenges, but here is a start: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2801918/
2
@John
Thank you. I do not doubt that study at all. Americans spend a fortune on waste. Canadians get less diagnostic testing and, having worked there, far less care but in a good way- wasteful useless treatment is not provided. Yet outcomes are the same. So dollar per dollar they get the same outcome for less money. My point is that Americans are used to what they have now- which is unlimited care regardless of efficacy because patients want it, or want the chance, no matter how slim, that a treatment might help.
Sure, a Canadian system would work here. Canadians are humans. The problem is that Americans (or at least Bernie) think that they can get exactly what they have now, just somehow paid for by someone else without massive tax increases for everyone.
2
Yes, I don't think everyone understands what is and isn't covered in other countries. For instance,in the UK someone with sciatica might be prescribed painkillers. Physical therapy might be more effective in actually getting rid of the problem, but is much more expensive than painkillers, and the NHS is under a lot of financial pressure. If that patient wanted PT, he or she might have to pay out of pocket if the NHS wouldn't cover it .
Bernie is the Moses of the democrats. He may not get the nomination, but he led, prodded, and forced the other candidates to where they now stand. Crucially, he defined the only sensible anchor for a democratic party otherwise cast adrift by identity politics: fighting radical income inequality and the corruption that fuels it and is fueled by it.
85
@TMJ Yeah, he already won in my opinion. he won the history book, the karma, he won the generational back of the mind Nobel prize. Basically he will go down in history as one of our best politicians of our era, next to Barrack Obama. In my view, Bernie did way more than Obama, but Obama is the first African American president and that goes a long way, and he definitely did do a lot of great things, but don't lie to yourself, or pretend he was some FDR. Bernie however, ALWAYS stood for what he believed in. Pretty much ALWAYS became proven right over and over while even most Democrats cannot even say that about major issues (which always make me laugh after I hear someone say "hes not even a democrat", as if that's all that matters....newsflash, Democrats of course are better than Republicans in a historical sense and pretty much overall sense, but lets not kid ourselves, our two parties have been terrible.
8
@Steve I don't like this defeatist talk, no other public servant will get this done. We need Bernie in the White House. I'm sorry for you Warren fans but she is for "Access to Healthcare" not Medicare for All even though she co signed. She is cozying up to the establishment and taking counsel from "We will never have Medicare for all" Hillary Clinton. So no, moving politicians left in a climate still led by big donors and citizens united is not an option. This is Bernie's time, his policies and his presidency.
1
@TMJ Actually what’s crucial is that he get the nomination, I seriously doubt any of the other candidates will follow through on their promises and Liz is not committed to healthcare reform like Bernie is, even she is a centrist or for incrementalism; there’s just to much money and temptation out there: Bernie or bust.
1
How can he campaign promoting a policy that as President he would have no power to implement? The only way Medicare for All can become reality in the US is if the Democrats control both houses of Congress and the Presidency. And even then, it is not a done deal. When Clinton was trying to enact healthcare reform his proposals were consistently opposed by several Democratic Senators. Campaigning on this issue does a disservice to the American public conveying to them false beliefs about the power of the presidency.
8
It won’t be easy but it can be done. The issue is critical for many Americans, including me.
27
@J O'Kelly, Ironically, the present occupant of the White House has shown the way: Just take the money from the Pentagon.
15
Joe Lieberman was a Democrat?
3
A Canadian here.
One thing worth noting is that Canada's "universal health care" system did not happen all at once, nor overnight. It began in one small Province - Saskatchewan - in the late 1940s, and spread to British Columbia and Alberta. By the late 1950s, the federal government was openly debating the merits and disadvantages of a federally funded, comprehensive health insurance plan for all citizens, coast to coast to coast. Insurance companies fought it tooth and nail, as did hospitals and many doctors (there was a major doctor's strike about this in 1962). By 1968, Canada's universal medicare program was launched, but it was not fully implemented until the 1970s. It was codified through further legislation in 1984, and it remains a topic of debate today.
For my American friends who want comprehensive medicare - start at the state level. Create a state plan that works. Other states will follow.
And for my fellow Canadians: don't take our system for granted. The Insurance companies and private hospitals would love to sink their teeth into the "Canadian market" - to the detriment of our wallets and health. No way.
331
@Norman, Good comments. We do already have a nation healthcare system that does work at the state level: Medicare (the system for everyone over 65) and Medicaid (for the poor that requires you have not more than $2,000 in assets). Both of these are administered at the state level with a large portion of the financial support coming from a federal payroll tax, that is then disbursed to the states. Bernie's proposal is to expand Medicare's current coverage to dental, eye care and nursing home coverage; then roll Medicare for All to citizens at a successively younger ages until everyone is covered.
35
@Norman - Thanks for the quick history lesson.
14
@Bob G
The biggest obstacle to universal healthcare is Medicare and a population that believes they got their's and that is all that matters.
I have USA Medicare that I never use because I don't understand why my health is more important than the health of young people whose health is far more important to the future of a country than my health in my declining years.
I have a choice and I choose Quebec Hospital Assurance which responds to the needs of all Quebecers and our future.
Health costs money but lack of health is unaffordable.
23
It is a national tragedy that we do not have healthcare for all.
We can do a lot better and it takes someone with the persistence of a Sanders to keep the issue in front of the American people so we can have a healthy and logical debate.
78
Canada’s health care system is broke, as in no money.
Bernie is a dreamer, not a pragmatist.
We need a balanced approach, as in expanded Medicare, yes. Private option, yes. National exchange, yes.
Canadian caps on doctors’ salaries and hospitals thereby hampering research and invention, no...litigation restrictions, no...and higher taxes, no!!!!
4
@Dorothy
No litigation restrictions? Meaning continue a lottery system that burdens the courts and doctors while only enriching attorneys? You will never get the most important people behind this- the doctors- without rational reform.
6
@Dorothy As a Canadian who was born and raised in the United States I can assure you that Canada's health care system is not broken, and campaigning against it has been described as stepping on the third rail of Canadian politics. Having grown up in a poor family in the USA I know well how inferior the US health care system is - unless you are rich or have top-quality private insurance through work. Don't buy the lies about not being able to choose your doctor either.
The only point of Sanders' plan I do not agree with is forcing people with private insurance or insurance through work to give it up and accept single-payer, which is much better than Obamacare as well. Many Americans would quickly drop private insurance and opt into single payer. Before long companies will start dropping private insurance for their employees. Only the very wealthy will hold out because money is not a problem for them. Canadian emergency health care is as good as ultra expensive American emergency care, but non-emergency surgery is another matter. I had to wait four months to get hernia surgery a few years ago but was not in discomfort and the surgery went very well.
15
@Dorothy This is a post filled with with lies and half-truths. Canada's health care system is working well and I don't know of any of us who would like to give it up. What a blessing to be in this country when diagnosed with a serious illness. No one asks for money. They just deliver outstanding care. Are there hiccups--for sure. It is a system always in search of better ways. American friends of one of my bosses couldn't believe my boss still owned her home even though her son had a serious mental illness and was hospitalized for months every year for multiple years. These were upper middle class professionals who believed that mental illness in one of their children would likely lead to bankruptcy. That is an astonishingly horrible fate to contemplate. Our costs for health care are much lower than yours-it doesn't matter whether it comes out of your employers costs or out of general tax revenues--all of the money comes from working people and lower costs are less of a burden for all under the Canadian system. We also have much better health outcomes.
46
There are two things that strike me about this story.
One is how Bernie Sanders is not one to pull up the ladder behind him when he has succeeded. Rather, unlike the current occupant of the White House who was given everything and for some reason thinks he has earned it, Sanders has experienced how hard it is to provide adequate healthcare for a family member, and doesn't want others to have to also suffer through that same experience. That is a true humanitarian.
My other point, though, is the New York Times attempt to get at least one little dig in on Sanders -- referring to his early and persistent call for health care for all Americans "dogmatic."
There's nothing dogmatic or radical about wanting all Americans to have access to quality healthcare, and not wanting others to watch their mother or other family members die for lack of it.
This continual argument that a rich country like ours cannot possibly afford a provide for a healthy citizenry is, to me, what is dogmatic. It is also inhumane. And wrong.
And Americans know that. If Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders were to join forces, they would have the nomination locked up today.
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@avrds
The issue is, however, that Bernie would pull up the ladder behind him. He is already rich, net worth of several million dollars in real estate and will receive a guaranteed Federal pension.
Raising taxes on income won't affect Bernie or any other rich person, including Jeff Bezos, since they are already rich. Raising taxes now would make saving harder and raise the hurdle rate required for business investment (which are made on an after tax basis).
For example, a project that can earn a 7% IRR and get approved by management would now need a 10% IRR (to account for higher taxes). Since there are fewer 10% IRR projects, less money is spent on project development, fewer jobs created, etc.
3
@avrds
Sanders/Warren 2020
Have the most money ..from
The most people
The most Votes
What are these people waiting for?
33
@avrds Points well taken. Bernie has always been an advocate for a government that puts social justice and problems of regular people first. He held these beliefs consistently since his days as a college student. The country is finally beginning to come to his way of thinking...not the other way around.
While the NYT does some excellent reporting, one cannot help but notice that it has had a long standing prejudice against the Senator. Undoubtedly, it has more to do with the large corporations who are paying it's bills than anything else.
70
Senator Sanders is not only contending with American antipathy, and ignorance, of universal medicare, he is contending with with very deep pockets, and hefty bank accounts, of several vested interests.
America’s present health insurance/health care industry is about profit, from medical device makers to the pharmaceutical industry to health care "providers", medical administrators to insurance companies.
Republicans (conservatives) have no interest in any form of health insurance/health care that 1) involves the federal government and 2) does not promise profit for private industry.
That America has seen that the free market over the last 70 years has not been a success in terms of either health insurance or health care cost control is immaterial.
37
While Bernie isn't my first choice, I can identify with the priority he gave to caring for his ill mom, and I commend the motivation behind his drive for MFA.
But as memory serves, and a quick google seems to confirm, it may be worth noting that Sen. Kennedy was a longtime and effective fighter for health care reform, apparently advocating single payer way back in 1971, but unfortunately just missing being able to vote for Obamacare.
https://khn.org/news/kennedy-health-care-timeline/
Personally -- perhaps due to reporting or my bad -- I don't recall hearing Sanders' name bandied about in the various legislative fights on healthcare prior to Obamacare. I always heard of Teddy being in those trenches. OTOH, that's not to doubt Sanders' personal feelings or goals.
3
@4anon Bernie did not much like Obamacare as he accurately surmised that it was a half-measure. That said, he did not stand in its way.
3
Two stories on healthcare. In the early 1980's I was walking uptown in NYC to service a client and wound up waiting on the west side of Park Ave at a red light. Looking uptown I saw a very elegant Rolls-Royce turn the corner and head south. It's license plate was PRE-HMO. A couple of years ago we had an Ophthalmologist and her husband out for a visit. When they came over to our house they walked through the kitchen and the husband looked at my wife's New Yorker magazine and said "Who reads this liberal mag?". In discussions at the dinner table I suggested that I was in favor of National Health/Medicare for All and suddenly all I heard were the cicadas.
12
I'm a disabled vet. If I get sick (really sick), I go to the VA. No muss, no fuss. I've also had experience with private insurance, which gives premium perks like having one GP physician, one optometrist, etcetera.
I like the second system, but think all Americans deserve at leas the first.
We'll have to give the money tree a pretty good shaking, though, and eliminate a lot of parasitic drag. What is parasitic drag? Anyone who's pulling large amounts of money for doing relatively little. For instance, do Canadians need health insurance to keep from going broke if they get sick? Or the Europeans? No. It's quite possible to make health care work without insurance companies siphoning money from the system.
There are similar instances.
53
Wake up, America! Health care does not have to be a scarce resource with the haves and have nots. Everyone can have high quality health care for less than you're paying today to the healthcare industry (the numbers support this).
Is it that you would rather pay more for your own healthcare than pay less but have others benefit from your contribution? Is it that you think that, because you can afford it, you deserve "the best" doctors over someone else? Do you lack confidence in your medical education and accreditation system and think there is such a wide gap in skills? Are you seduced by marketing and the illusion that wealthy doctors in fancy spaces make the best doctors?
Is it possible that your apparent, predominantly individualistic and materialistic world views blind you from seeing and having a better future?
72
You knew that a Times article about Bernie Sanders just had to take a swipe at him: "..his uncompromising position also threatens to alienate voters who are pleased with the Affordable Care Act, or who do not want to give up their private insurance. "
In fact, far from "alienating voters", Medicare for all is favored by a majority of the American people, as revealed in poll after poll.
Americans want national healthcare; Americans know that the ACA was inadequate, and after years of sabotage by the GOP, it's even more inadequate today.
Bernie Sanders has the courage to take a stand for what Americans want. Those, like Biden, who refuse to aren't "centrists", they're just cowards.
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@Sean
A poll from July of this year showed that support for Medicare for All flips from 56-38 in support to 58-37 in opposition when voters find out it would abolish private insurance. Since when is it a "swipe" to acknowledge this?
I am so tired of Sanders acolytes treating every criticism of him--no matter how small--as personal attacks and/or insults of the worst magnitude. The only thing Sanders' popularity confirms is that many American liberals will clamor to fall in line for any candidate who tells them what they want to hear.
@David And polls also show that once voters are told that they can keep their doctor even if they lose their private health insurance the numbers flip again in favor of Medicare for all. No one loves insurance. Unless you sleep with a picture of your insurance card next to your bed, neither do you.
The disingenuous swipe is implying that voters are afraid of giving up their private insurance when its really that they are afraid of giving up their doctors, which they will not have to do under Medicare for all.
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/451362-most-favor-medicare-for-all-if-they-can-keep-doctors-poll
19
@David
Medicare-for-All will not "abolish" private insurance! And anyone who asks that question in a poll not asking it in order to seek an answer, but to seed misinformation among those "polled."
Well-to-do Americans will always have the option of purchasing supplemental Cadillac care.
2
Thanks Sidney for the great story about a fantastic politician, Bernie Sanders. It is difficult to find any unflattering news on Bernie, even for you, someone from the financial area of the NYTimes with an eye for corruption. Progressive? Yes. Socialist by ordinary definition? No.
Democratic socialist, yes an FDR kinda
guy. With and for human dignity.
101
@s.whether
sp! Sydney
sorry~~
4
"Improved Medicare for All" says it all. The plan is estimated at $3.4 Trillion per year paid for via shared taxpayer responsibility vs the estimated $30 Trillion per year currently being spent via a patchwork of dozens of insurance networks, government programs and out of pocket costs, which are expected to reach $50 Trillion within 10 years if we do nothing! This means more people dying because they feared going to a doctor before it was too late. An estimated 83 million people currently have no insurance or insurance with $5,000 or more annual deductibles. In perspective, remember that more than half of Americans could not afford a $400 emergency. More than half a million families go bankrupt every year in this country due to unpaid medical bills, and the majority had insurance at the time of the illness or injury. We are leaving people at the mercy of global corporations that attack sick and injured people with threats of denied coverage and outrageous co-pays. Only in the USA. Other top 20 nations have found a way to establish care as a nationally shared responsibility. Only federal lobbyists, campaign funding and investor-greed is stopping the USA from having an Improved Medicare for All health care system. Transitioning to Medicare for all is the only way to NEGOTIATE and establish single-payer costs for prescription drugs, medical procedures and hospital costs. The plan would include eye, hearing and dental coverage and no co-pays or deductibles and still save money.
32
"Over time, he had come to believe that the American health care system was flawed and inherently unfair."
Ya think? What system? You mean the American "system" where big medicine gets wealthy on the sick and dying?
126
Why does the NYTimes not come to Canada and take a look at our health care system?
Talk to people at the doctors' offices getting medical care with no exchange of money being required.
Show the walk-in clinics and the hospitals and the talk to patients and doctors.
I believe I posed this same question four years ago.
Why must a first-class universal healthcare system next door to the US remain such a mystery to Americans, and subject to lies and misrepresentations from the GOP for example?
Sanders 1987 visit is fine, but why are you not reporting the current facts back to your readers so they can be properly informed?
449
@Technic Ally
I'm still waiting for the real journalism on this topic. TV anchors are still talking about millions of people "losing their health insurance" if M4All passes. The answer to your question, sadly, is probably that American media is so thoroughly run by and for elite interests that they refuse to educate the public for fear of losing $$/power.
59
@Technic Ally
Why? Because it took even the New York Times a decade to print something mildly positive about Medicare for all let alone Bernie.
The USA can have a superlative Universal Healthcare program. It can afford it easily. It could have afforded it from day 1.
The USA has also slid towards today starting with Ronald Reagan, the enemy of equality, fraternity and most of what we know as liberty. Trump is a direct descendent.
I sure hope Ms Ember will embrace Bernie and help him win. His win will be our win as human beings who happen to ve citizens of the USA. And be a worthier neighbor to you guys.
53
They won't come and see for themselves for the same reason they put Bernie down every chance they got when he was running against Hillary a couple of years ago.
31
I have been in the business of selling large and complex systems to large hospitals for over 40 years. Yes Canada does have a system that is essentially providing Medicare for all. The result is that there are very long waits for all major procedures such as done by cardiology catheter labs and the large hospitals such as Mayo Clinic in Minnesota get lots of people from Canada who are afraid of waiting for their cardiology procedure because delaying the procedure could and will be life threatening.
The USA is the only country in the free world that does not permit major hospitals and health insurance organizations to bargain for prices on medications. I am a type 2 diabetic and there is a new and great medication called Jardiance made by Eli Lilly, the major pharmaceutical company which brought us penicillin which was a major factor in saving lives during WWII.
David Ricks CEO of Eli Lilly leads the lobbying group providing money to our politicians to keep our medication prices high. As an example, Jardiance can be purchased by residents of GA for $848 per year. The cost for most US citizens is $6,400 per year. Our Freedom of Information act could provide the names of the politicians that get funds from these lobbyists. GO JOE BIDEN!!!!!!
4
@Butch Burton This is somewhat misleading. Many parts of the system operate with high speed and amazing efficiency. Examples include cancer screening programs and high speed interventions. Do we sometimes wait longer than we wish? Yes but not nearly as long as we would if we didn't have any insurance....Our health outcomes are far better than those in the US. The fear of waiting for a procedure does not necessarily relate to the effectiveness of the procedure.
5
@Butch Burton wrote "The result is that there are very long waits for all major procedures such as done by cardiology catheter labs and the large hospitals such as Mayo Clinic in Minnesota get lots of people from Canada who are afraid of waiting for their cardiology procedure because delaying the procedure could and will be life threatening."
I'm an American who has lived in Canada for more than 40 years. Aside from one friend with back problems I am not aware of anyone here who has ACTUALLY had "very long waits." Of course this depends on:
1) Your definition of what's "very long"
2) Your perception of the gravity of your problem
3) Your province
4) If in Ontario whether you're aware of a govt website that shows wait times for major procedures and that you can go to any hospital you want. I've talked to several people who complained about wait times and NONE were aware of this site.
FWIW, I've had 2 angioplasties, 3 angiograms, quadruple bypass surgery, double hernia repair and a hip replacement plus CT scans, MRIs etc. All done successfully with no undue waiting.
Please consider Mr Burton's comment in relation to this fact: Whether left, right or centrist no major Cdn political party has called for major change in the design of our medicare system. While there are no doubt some Canadians unhappy with it, most Canadians support it -- strongly.
6
@Old-bald-guy
Butch reveals himself with his opening sentence,"I have been in the business of selling large and complex systems to large hospitals for over 40 years."
Our system here has its faults – most dental and vision care is not covered. Nor in most cases are drugs covered for other than seniors.
However, all medical services are delivered in a timely, competent manner. All I've ever paid out for was parking and TV rental during hospital stays.
1
You can't fake authenticity. Bernie resonate with so many because he's empathetic and thoughtfully researches real world solutions to profound problems.
Regarding healthcare, Germany has had national coverage since 1883. Of the 35 OECD countries - which include the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Turkey, Mexico, Israel, Ireland and Switzerland, among others - we are the only one that doesn't cover every citizen. So, by definition, our ACCESS is lower.
In relation to the 34 other OECD countries, our per capita spend is about $8,700 compared to about $3,100 - so we are far COSTLIER.
Among indices of aggregate healthcare outcomes:
Amenable mortality
US - 88.7
OECD average - 93.7
Disease Burden
US 24,306 per 100,000
OECD avg - 18,533
Lab errors
US - 19%
OECD avg - 12%
Source:
https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/
So, our OUTCOME is middling to poor.
Lower access, higher costs, mediocre outcomes - what part of our healthcare financing system should we be fighting to preserve?
Ours is the only system that encourages the for-profit motives and insurance companies, device makers, pharmaceuticals and hospital groups extract enormous rent because the demand for healthcare is not sensitive to price - it is inelastic.
With biological certainty, everyone ages, gets sick or has an accident. Time to actually insure for this eventuality without enriching say, the Sacklers
93
@Cee
Very enlightened post. I hope you write more.
3
Nice to see a relatively objective fair-minded Sanders profile.
One thing I keep seeing, although the phrasing varies, is the fear that his "uncompromising position threatens to alienate voters who are pleased with the Affordable Care Act, or who do not want to give up their private insurance."
Who are these people? I don't mean polling - ask any one-sentence question the right way, and plenty of people will "support the ACA" or say they want to "keep their insurance." Ask most people I know, however, if they'd rather pay far less for better care, and I suspect you'll see those numbers shift. Inform people they won't *need* their $500/month insurance with the $1000 deductible, then ask them again if they'd mind "giving it up." Let union workers who fought for their insurance know there could be a provision requiring employers to refund all savings directly to employees and see how many of them still oppose M4A.
99
@Shirley0401 Though I believe in affordable health care for all, I'm not sure I believe in Medicare for all. I have been on Medicare for 7 years and while I'm paying less than I did for COBRA coverage under my former employer's plan (and certainly much less than the $20,000 or so a yr I paid for a private Blue Cross plan for a period after my COBRA ended), the benefits are much much less than they were under the employer plan. I'm not talking about things like premiums, copays, coinsurance, etc. but about the amount and quality of healthcare (and providers) available to you as someone covered by Medicare in New York City. I would have happily continued paying COBRA premiums under my employer plan for the rest of my life. Medicare reimbursement levels are very very low, probably the lowest. Some providers opt out of seeing Medicare patients; others limit what they do for a Medicare patient by limiting amount of time spent with them or discouraging further visits or suggesting patient work on problem at home (as in case of physical therapy, where reimbursements are minimal, but thank heavens for the Internet & You Tube PT sessions). Post-hospitalization home care visits have become more & more limited in years I have been involved in them (for parents). Some people may be fine with these limitations, but those who think they may not be okay with its limits have to put aside considerable funds to cover their needs privately, especially when they get old.
2
@Shirley0401
I don’t know anyone who has insurance plans they like. If there are mythical voters well enough off to rather keep private insurance and get a fraction of their money’s worth, they’re painfully myopic to the plights of the rest of us who are nickeled and dimed to literal death.
18
@Shirley0401
I am very happy with my insurance. My wife works for a city school district as a teacher. She has tenure in NY, which makes it extremely unlikely that she will ever lose her job. We pay approximately $2000 dollars per year total for insurance for both of us. The insurance plan has no deductible and only 10 dollar co-pays for seeing physicians (including specialists). At times, providers warn us that a particular medication, device, or procedure might not be covered by insurance. It is always covered. Our insurance covers everything.
I have no desire to switch to Medicare for all.
I am grateful for his commitment to this issue.
However, there is something about Sen. Sanders (as well as Sen. Warren and former VP Biden) that I would like to know. I have raised this question many times on their Twitter accounts and never gotten an answer.
It is my understanding that people who continue working after 65 may choose between continuing their employer-provided coverage, if any (though I am sure Sanders & Warren are eligible for the fed employee plan covering active members of Congress & Biden likely eligible as retiree under same plan) OR enrolling in Medicare. Since Sanders and Warren seem so opposed to anything other than "Medicare for All" I have to assume they dropped their federal coverage and signed up for Medicare. I suspect Biden kept his federal coverage as he doesn't seem to support mandatory Medicare for all (and besides the federal plan is quite rich, with good dental and other benefits). How does a person get an answer to this question -- i.e., have Sanders and Warren literally put their money where their mouths are?
2
If only in the 31 intervening years between 1988 and 2019, Senator Sanders had done anything at all to reform the imbroglio of the current older adult Medicare system.
4
@Lynne Shapiro
If only...Max Baucus, Dem from Montana,
wasn't working so close with the Republicans and in the Obama years, no less. Well, you must know the rest of the story.
Biden, Baucus, really able to work with the right, no matter how wrong they are.
8
@s.whether Well, if Senator Sanders couldn't overcome whatever a Montana senator was doing to make even minor improvements to Medicare for older adults--such as allow those with C Advantage plans to change to another one if their C Advantage plan HMO company drops their providers in the middle of the year--how can he overcome all those who will resist his major changes in his idea.
3
Bernie Sanders and the other political community members shouting "Medicare For All" need to be really shouting, "Government Price Controls For All". The Canadian system imposes caps on how much physicians are paid and how much a service such as an MRI can be priced at. If a Medicare-For-All system is introduced into the US, the next gripe will be that it is unfair if employers are continued to allow to offer subsidized benefits to attract and retain sought after talent and if individuals are allowed to buy-up coverage if they desire. What will happen when a small cadre of physicians and hospitals either refuse to take patients on the "government plan" or give top priority to people willing/able to pay? Will US citizens accept a system where a primary care doctor will make a "government plan" covered person wait 12 months for an appointment, wait in the reception room 3 hours, and see the doctor for 5 minutes - then, same practice has a suite across the hall for private pay folks with next day appointments, expresso machines, and do a full hour discussion?
1
@Questioner
You know that would happen and I can hear the screaming now.
Frankly I see nothing wrong with it.
Why shouldn’t those who can pay get better service. They absolutely should in my opinion.
What a wonderful man with a wonderful vision.
A true mensch who does not make his family story a soap opera for consumption by the media to attract voters.
God bless him and bless our nation by making him President.
Thank you for this article.
302
@Blunt I just love your comment! "My cup runneth over with love," From the song, and I do not remember the title, only the lyrics by Tom Jones for his musical The Fantastics . I actually worked with Tom and Harvey in a workshop they had for a few years. They were good, kind men too. But Bernie is in a class pretty much by himself. We are so incredibly fortunate to have this blessed man in our lives.
49
@cheerful dramatist Oops the song's title is what I quoted but not from the Fantastics, but from Tom and Harvey's show I Do I Do. Anyway my sentiment is the same and all the lyrics in the song are lovely. How can anyone not love Bernie for his character and his strength and his vision and strait talk is beyond me and he is also down to earth and very practical. The only thing not to like is your brainwashing telling you it is not possible to have good things in life even if other countries do. Sort of like the puritans who liked to suffer and do with out and make sure everyone was repressed and miserable too, and take land away from the Indians too.
21
@cheerful dramatist - Right lyricist, wrong musical. "My Cup Runneth Over" is from Tom Jones & Harvey Schmidt's Broadway hit "I Do, I Do".
4