WHAT THEY ARE SAYING: Americans Urge Elected Officials To Build On What Is Working, Reject One-Size-Fits-All Health Care
WASHINGTON – As the higher taxes and harmful consequences of new government-controlled health insurance systems were highlighted for Americans during this week’s presidential debate, voters throughout the nation are encouraging elected officials to oppose a one-size-fits-all system that will force American families to pay more to wait longer for worse care.
Janet Trautwein, CEO, National Association Of Health Underwriters:
… [T]he public option would not allow the millions of people who like their insurance to keep it. In short order, the public option would destroy the private health insurance market and force everyone into a one-size-fits-all, government-run health insurance system. The majority of Americans have and like private health insurance.About 180 million people receive coverage through their employers, according to data from the U.S. Census. Most of them – about seven in 10, according to polling from the Kaiser Family Foundation – are “content” with that insurance.
But that coverage could disappear under the public option, according to new research from KNG Health Consulting. Nearly one-quarter of Americans with employer-based coverage would lose their plans by 2023 under the Medicare for America Act, a prominent public option proposal introduced in the House of Representatives earlier this year. By 2032, nearly one-third of all workers, and more than half of workers at small businesses, would lose their employer-sponsored plans … Eventually, the public option would be the sole remaining health insurance “option.”
Jennifer Sloot, Small-Business Owner, Pennsylvania:
… Medicare for All will cost at least $34 trillion over 10 years. Some estimates project the costs to be even higher, depending on the details. To put that in perspective, it will explode the already bloated federal budget by 60% … These one-size-fits-all government plans willtake away choice from consumers, as the 180 million people who currently receive their health care through their employers will be shunted off to a government plan … Abolishing or significantly changing the current health insurance system will cause the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs.
… [W]e could be headed toward long waits for health care, hospital closures, doctor shortages and even rationing of care if America were to adopt a government-run health care system like Medicare for All … Medicare for All would mean just that along with 180 million Americans losing their employer-sponsored insurance. It would require massive tax increases to pay for enormous costs yet would not address the true problems. A better solution is to improve the existing system. We can build on what’s working and fix what’s broken rather than starting over … Pennsylvanians deserve the best care – without long waits or massive costs.
… [F]rom the public option to Medicare-for-All to single-payer … the net result would be the same: higher taxes on hardworking Americans in order to fund a system that creates less choice, less flexibility, and poorer health-care outcomes …[T]hese government-controlled proposals would all require large tax increases on Americans and result in higher private plan premiums. With a price tag of more than $30 trillion over the first 10 years alone, there would be no way to fund these programs without increasing taxes.
Not only that, but the creation of a public option would spell the inevitable demise of private and employer-sponsored health care plans as we know it. According to a recent study, 20 percent of state marketplaces would no longer offer a single private insurance option by 2028 if a public option were to be introduced. That figure would increase to nearly 70 percent by 2050 … In place of the wide array of health care plans available today, Americans would be stuck with a one-size-fits-all, government-run health care insurance system that yields higher costs, diminished access, and a lower quality of care.
… Medicare-for-All, a public option, or single-payer will shift the ability to make critical health care decisions away from patients, families, and their doctors and toward government bureaucrats and politicians. That is not the direction our health care system should be headed.
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