Healthcare

Our country's private healthcare system is a failed enterprise. The insurance industry has been thriving on the backs of sick Americans for far too long – and politicians are allowing them to do it.

The inflated cost of our private healthcare system is not only driving record numbers of Americans—including many who have insurance—into bankruptcy; it is crushing businesses with year after year of double-digit rises in premiums. Since 2000, healthcare premiums for family coverage have risen 59%, compared to inflation growth of 9.7% over the same period. This has made rising healthcare costs the perennial number one concern for The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), the largest advocacy organization representing small businesses in the U.S. Despite the enormous cost of our current system, almost 82 million Americans went without health insurance at some point in the last two years. That is unacceptable.

The solution to skyrocketing costs and tens of millions of uninsured is staring us in the face from across our Northern border. Canada’s single-payer healthcare system covers every single Canadian. And how does it compare to healthcare in the U.S. when it comes to cost and quality? A June 2004 study on the projected effect of Canada switching to an American style private system found that costs would shoot up by $7.2 billion per year, and hospital deaths would increase by 2,200 per year.

I am hopeful that the new Obama administration will make the implementation of healthcare in the U.S. a top priority. In the absence of federal action, studies have found that individual states could also benefit by pursuing a single payer strategy. A Levin Group study published in 2005 on the projected effect of a single payer system in California found that costs would be reduced by $8 billion annually, while simultaneously extending coverage to the nearly 5 million Californians who are currently uninsured.

I am the sponsor of a bill to implement a universal single-payer healthcare system in New York State. It’s the right thing to do to save money, make New York’s businesses more competitive, and most importantly, provide high quality healthcare to every single New Yorker. We shouldn’t settle for anything less.