Want Obamacare Gone? Adopt Single Payer -- it Costs Less (ContributorNetwork)

COMMENTARY | Recent reports show fewer people are covered by employer health plans. While the GOP decries this as a failure of Obama administration policy, named Obamacare, it overlooks President Barack Obama's original idea was single-payer universal healthcare. Right-wing resistance was the primary reason single-payer did not pass. Rather than let millions go without health care the U.S. needs to revisit universal health care. Surprisingly, it might cost less than you think.

At the moment Social Security and Medicare are funded mainly through employment taxes -- a tax shared by employees and employers. Each pays 7.65 percent for a combined effective 15.3 percent of employee wages. For that sum we have a flawed system, to be sure -- but only because it is mismanaged and the U.S. government does not have the full ability to negotiate for better prices from drug companies.

Compare that to the British National Health Service. It's funded by an approximately 20 percent tax rate on income. The British system may not be perfect, but it makes sure people can get some health care and will not go bankrupt when they get sick.

Let's say the U.S. adopts a national, single-payer system. First of all it would have to give the government full authority to negotiate low prices for medication. It's obvious by comparing drug prices in the U.S. to prices for the same drugs elsewhere that the American public is being raked over the coals. Making the drug companies offer medicine here for the same prices they offer it elsewhere would be a huge cost savings.

Even if the employee portion of the tax rose by about 5 percent so the effective tax would be 20 percent it would still be an overall savings. A person earning $24,000 per year and paying $300 a month for health insurance is actually paying 15 percent of his gross income already -- and paying another 7.65 percent for FICA. He's actually pay less with a 5 percent increase in tax and no more insurance premiums.

It's time to stop obeying the wishes of Big Healthcare and Big Pharma and make health care the basic right of citizenship in the U.S. enjoyed in every other modern nation.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20111112/us_ac/10423369_want_obamacare_gone_adopt_single_payer__it_costs_less

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