How We Can Kick-Start the Economy, Save Lives, Give Working People a Raise and Turn a Deficit into a Surplus

It won't make you better looking, stop climate change or result in world peace, but progressives in Congress are pushing a bill that would prove a cure for much of the economic pain we're suffering. If passed, it would save lives, make American companies more competitive, put more cash in our pockets and turn those deficits everyone's obsessing over into surpluses as far as the eye can see.

This week, Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, and Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Washington, introduced the American Health Security Act of 2011(S. 915 in the Senate and HR 1200 in the House), a bill that would create a state-based system similar to Medicare but open to Americans of all ages.

“The United States is the only major nation in the industrialized world that does not guarantee health care as a right to its people," Sanders said at a press conference announcing the measure on Capitol Hill. "It is time that we bring about a fundamental transformation of the American health care system. It is time for us to end private, for-profit participation in delivering basic coverage."

“The best way to reduce costs and guarantee coverage for all is through a single-payer system like Medicare,” said McDermott. “This bill does just that -- it builds on the new health care law by giving states the flexibility they need to go to a single-payer system of their own. It will also reduce costs, and Americans will be healthier."

According to Sanders' office, the bill would “provide federal guidelines and strong minimum standards for states to administer single-payer health care programs.” Sanders represents Vermont, which is poised to enact the nation's first Medicare-for-all system. If it gets there, the state is projected to lower its healthcare costs by 12 percent by 2018, while covering everyone. The California legislature is considering a similar proposal.

There's no question enacting Medicare-for-all at the federal level will be a difficult lift, politically. Yet, as Laura Flanders noted in the Nation, “two years ago, [Vermont activists] were told that it was not politically possible to pass single-payer legislation, but they didn't take no for an answer.”

If ever there was an uphill battle worth fighting and winning, this is it. Here are some of the things that would happen were we to enact a Medicare-for-all system in the United States.

It Would Save Lives

When the Affordable Care Act is fully implemented, it will provide insurance for around 30 million Americans who currently lack it. The bad news: the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 23 million will remain uninsured.

A 2007 study conducted by researchers at Harvard University estimated that 45,000 people die every year in the United States from problems associated with lack of coverage. The study found that “uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts,” even “after taking into account socioeconomics, health behaviors, and baseline health.”

To put that number in perspective, 47,000 GIs died in during the 12 years of conflict in Vietnam.

It Would Turn Deficits into Surpluses

The Center for Economic and Policy Research has a handy tool that allows you to project what the federal deficit would look like going forward if we spent the same amount on health care per person as any of the 35 countries that enjoy longer average life expectancies than we do.

Plug in Australia's per capita spending, and you get the deficit down to zero within a few years; select the spending levels for Chile or Costa Rica – again, both with longer average life expectancies – and you see surpluses almost immediately. By 2020, we'd be taking in around $500 billion more than we spent, which could be used for all sorts of things, including tax cuts if you're so inclined.