Issue Position: Universal Health Care

Issue Position

Health care is a fundamental human need, essential to living a life in dignity, rising to the level of being a human right on par with food, clothing, housing, and education.

Our random, so-called "free market" non-system of health care ignores one of our most important social responsibilities. Almost 51 million people, approaching 17 percent of our population, lack health insurance in the United States, up from 44 million people a few years ago. Another 25 million are underinsured, forcing them to either forgo health care or endure severe economic hardship in their families should illness or injury give them no choice but to seek care. Loss of jobs, lower incomes and elimination of health care benefits and creation of bogus coverage plans by insurance companies are fueling this spike.

When people lack access to affordable, high quality health care, individuals and families suffer, and everyone is affected. Personal suffering, family bankruptcies, lower productivity, increasing costs from having to treat advanced conditions all combine to create a situation where health care is too expensive for everyone and delivers totally unacceptable results.

Single Payer Health Care. Allowing states the ability to innovate so that more people have access to even better coverage while reining in costs, as Minnesota has already done so well, will continue to be important. In our state, if allowed by the federal government, we could create a single payer system and show that driving down administrative costs and increasing access to preventative and wellness services, combined with improving overall levels of public health, will allow everyone to have health insurance, and at the same time ensure that mental health, long term care, prescription drugs, dental care, chemical dependency, medical equipment and supplies, improving patient choice of physician are all something everyone can expect. No longer will anyone be left out, or forced into bankruptcy because they cannot have access to this most basic human right.

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