Healthcare For All.

We can lead the nation in providing health care for all New Yorkers. Where you work, whether you can pay your deductible, or if you are on public assistance or on the street, you should not have to choose between eating and getting your prescription filled. Today, it’s difficult for some Medicare patients, people who have worked all their lives, to find a doctor who will take them. And many New Yorkers face an even worse fate, without coverage or the means to buy it. We must also protect the full range of women’s health care needs from curtailment by religious extremism.

Health insurance costs are bankrupting our local governments and school districts. Small businesses struggle to provide health benefits to their workers. The US is the only modern democracy where people literally go bankrupt because of medical bills…even if they are insured!

Every other modern democracy, Canada, the UK, France, Germany, provide health care for their people. We can, too. A government-run health care system, whether expansion of Medicare or some other model, will benefit everyone:

• Providers will eliminate insurance company red tape and administrative costs, leaving more time for patient care;

• Governments & school districts will no longer face rising health insurance costs for their employees, and rising taxes for their residents;

•  Local taxes will be more stable once local governments’ insurance rate increases are gone;

• Individuals will no longer face huge deductibles and gaps in coverage;

• Insurance costs will no longer be a bar to hiring.

• Job mobility will increase, as your health care will no longer depend upon your employer.

Providing health care independent of employment will be key to economic growth here in New York. It will be easier for small business to create jobs and keep workers; it will lower state and local taxes by ending corporate welfare to insurance companies; and save lives and protect families in the bargain.