The truth is we can pay for a comprehensive national health care program with the same money than we are now spending and cover every single person in the United States. We don’t have to break the bank. We don’t have to reduce the Bush tax cuts to the very rich --although we should. We don’t even have to reduce the Bush permanent war budget -- although we should. The whole U.S. system suffers from these two movements of our money to the very rich and the military industrial complex, the war machine that profits from a permanent war. Despite these irresponsible transfers in our federal budget, our current health care budget would pay still pay for a comprehensive national health care system. It is a matter of the will of the people to change the way that money is now being spent.

How can we afford a National Healthcare Program?
There is a bill in Congress, H.R. 676, calling for a plan that will use the money we are now spending to pay for health care for everyone. The financial costs and the roadmap for paying for it are well-documented and practical in this bill introduced by Rep. John Conyers and a growing number of co-sponsors.

We will be creating a health care system based on the excellent record of achievement and inclusion modeled by Medicare, but with improvements that will make Medicare even more effective. In the words of Dr. Quentin Young, one of the architects of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), “Everybody in; nobody out.” Even though Medicare needs to be improved, even in its current form, over 90% of its recipients are happy with it.

Says Dr. Ida Hellander, Executive Director of PNHP, “One in every three dollars we now spend goes for overhead and bureaucracy. Streamlining to Canadian levels would save us over $250 billion per year. “She further noted that “Health care costs will exceed $3 trillion by 2009 without reform and that we already spend almost three times as much as any other industrialized nation on health care.”

While the Medicare program has an overhead of only 3%, private insurance carriers show overhead costs that range from 16% to as much as 30%. Eliminating those unnecessary costs provides much of the savings that could be achieved through single payer national health insurance.”

The HR 676 Medicare for all bill will extend coverage to every U.S. resident whether working full or part time, retired, laid off, in school or between jobs.