Rocky Anderson on Health CareJustice Party challenger for President; former mayor of Salt Lake City | |
ANDERSON: Our employers in this country are at a huge competitive disadvantage with their competitors overseas, because we are the only nation in the entire developed world that doesn't provide insurance coverage for everyone, and we're paying more than twice the average of the rest of the industrialized world. And we're getting far worse medical outcomes. More than 70 percent of the American people and the majority of doctors during the healthcare debate said they wanted to see a single-payer, Medicare-for-all system in place. [Most] of the members in Congress caved in to the for-profit insurance industry and the pharmaceutical companies. And once again, we end up getting shafted, the American people, again. We can't stand for it anymore. We need to send a message: there are going to be political consequences every time the corporate sector wins out over the interests of the American people.
ANDERSON: The solution is to provide Medicare for everybody. To make it a single payer system. You look around the world--Canada, Taiwan--they have a single payer, basically, Medicare-for-all system. We are paying more than double the average of the rest of the industrialized world per-capita for health care costs. A large part of that is because we're relying upon the for-profit insurance industry to provide health care for most people. We need to get rid of that. We can control costs. We can make it affordable, provide better services, and we can do it for all. You just get the for-profit insurance companies out of the way, and all of the burdensome paperwork and the different billing systems and all the rest, that end up costing over a third of what we pay for what's supposed to go toward our medical care.
ANDERSON: We're talking here about ObamaCare and RomneyCare. I would call that "insurance companycare" because they're the ones who wrote it. They joined up with a very conservative foundation years ago to develop this plan, to make the American people buy this perverse product. We are the only country in the world that depends upon for-profit insurance companies for the majority of our coverage for health care, for those were lucky enough to have it.
STEIN: I live in the state of Massachusetts. So, I've seen RomneyCare or ObamaCare--take your pick--the Affordable Care Act actually in the flesh is neither affordable nor caring.
A: Strongly Support
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Other big-city mayors on Health Care: | Rocky Anderson on other issues: |
Tom Barrett (D,Milwaukee) Bill de Blasio (D,NYC) Rahm Emanuel (D,Chicago) Bob Filner (D,San Diego) Steven Fulop (D,Jersey City) Eric Garcetti (D,Los Angeles) Mike Rawlings (D,Dallas) Marty Walsh (D,Boston) Former Mayors: Rocky Anderson (I,Salt Lake City) Tom Barrett (D,Milwaukee,WI) Mike Bloomberg (I,New York City) Cory Booker (D,Newark,NJ) Jerry Brown (D,Oakland,CA) Julian Castro (D,San Antonio,TX) Rudy Giuliani (R,New York City) Phil Gordon (D,Phoenix) Tom Menino (D,Boston) Dennis Kucinch (D,Cleveland,OH) Michael Nutter (D,Philadelphia) Sarah Palin (R,Wasilla,AK) Annise Parker (D,Houston) Jerry Sanders (R,San Diego) Antonio Villaraigosa (D,Los Angeles) |
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