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According to PBS, 44 million Americans don’t have healthcare and another 38 million have inadequate health insurance. NetQuote, an insurance lead provider, claims 130 million Americans don’t have dental care. Millions of Americans are flooding into Mexico yearly to get cheap medical and dental care, in far more numbers than the immigrants that even Trump claims come to the U.S. During April 2019, United Health Group, the largest private healthcare insurer, suffered major losses to its shares while overall healthcare has been the worst performing sector in the stock market this year. Wall Street is blaming this on drug pricing reform and “Medicare for all” proposals coming from many of the front-runners in the 2020 presidential elections. A January 2019 Poll by Kaiser Family Foundation found that 56% polled favored “Medicare for All.”
What do all of these facts have in common? One, that healthcare has become such a huge issue in this election cycle, that it has the potential to even cancel out Trump’s immigration rhetoric. Two, that a critical mass of Americans is coming to the conclusion that private health insurance must be replaced by some form of universal healthcare for all.
Health insurance and pharmaceutical companies make huge profits denying care and inflating the costs of premiums, procedures, treatment, deductibles, co-pays and medicine. How much so? So much so that Americans who go to Mexico for care say that care there, plus round-trip airfare, hotel accommodations for a week and then enjoying the sights is cheaper. If you bring your kids, the Mexican government won’t throw them into cages.
Today’s Americans who are suffering from a private health-care system that kills them are tomorrow’s electorate that will vote it out. That private system is campaigning with propaganda that says universal healthcare for all is socialist, a threat to jobs, to doctors and to care.
Bernie Sanders recently shot back at that campaign when he said, “When we are in the White House your greed is going to end. We will end the disgrace of millions of people being denied healthcare while a single company earns $226 billion and its CEO makes $7.5 million in compensation.”
