Medicare for All: The Only Sound Solution to Our Healthcare Crisis

By Guy T. Saperstein, AlterNet. Posted January 16, 2007.

Our $2 trillion healthcare industry is not only unhealthy, it is unsustainable. Why universal Medicare is the way to get universal healthcare without collapsing the system.

We all know that America's healthcare system is collapsing. Andy Stern has written that America's employer-based health insurance system is "dead." Auto executives troop to the White House complaining that they are not competitive with foreign automakers because they pay $1,500 per car for health insurance. Some of the biggest laughs in movies come when America's healthcare system is ridiculed. Politicians, even Republicans, are offering solutions.

In the Greenberg Quinlin poll of November 2006 voters, 22 percent ranked healthcare as the most important issue; likewise, MoveOn.org recently polled its members, received over 100,000 responses, and healthcare ranked as the No. 1 concern.