Healthcare as a right or a privilege?

    Here we go again!  The Republicans will not be satisfied until they take healthcare away from millions of Americans.  The Republicans are hell bent on jamming through the Graham-Cassidy bill that would block grant Obamacare money for health care to the states to allow the development of 50 different healthcare markets.  This bill is facing a September 30 deadline.  Republicans have long used block granting to kill or substantially reduce social programs.  This is what became of the old welfare programs in the 1990's.   The hidden truth is that once something is block granted the funds get incrementally reduced every year until the program is a shell of what it once was.  Republicans might talk about giving states flexibility but their real intent is to starve a social program they don't like.  Here is a good report on the impacts of this bill.
      At the same time many Democrat Senators are supporting Bernie Sander's bill a "Medicare for All" plan that is similar in many ways to the public option that got killed in the Obamacare debate.   With this type of plan the government would be able to negotiate lower prices for health care and reduce administrative costs below what private insurers are able to do.  Administrative costs for Medicare are about 2% as opposed to private insurance that is between 20-25%.  Do you know that the average cost paid for a doctor's visit is 3 times more in the US than in Canada?  It is not unusual for medical procedures in the US to cost 10 times more than in countries with universal care.   On their website the US insurance agents have this to say about health care spending:

    "In America, average spending per person is a bit over $8,000. This is significantly more than other countries. For example, spending in the countries that are the next highest spenders, the Netherlands and Switzerland, are about $3,000 less per year, and the average spending of all the OECD countries except for the United States is around $3,300. Despite the higher spending and the frequent assumption that "America has the best healthcare in the world," the object truth seems to be that the care Americans receive is not significantly better than the care received by those living in other countries."
   
    So which road is the United States headed on?  Stay tuned.

P.S.
      Closer to home here is the impact of the Republican bill on Maryland.  Bet I know what Republican Gov. Hogan is hoping for now.

P.S. 1
      Here in the US if you need help paying for healthcare you can always beg others to help you pay.