A Real ‘Medicare for All’ Policy

Affordable healthcare, such as a proposed universal single-payer national health insurance system, is absolutely needed. However, the U.S. health-care system is a shell of what it once was, and has been systematically dismantled through “managed-care” looting, and is far below the necessary requirement to adequately provide for the population. To address this, I would propose we first return to the standard instituted in the Hill-Burton Act of 1946. This long-abandoned policy mandated that to achieve the goal of guaranteeing hospital and related care to every citizen in the U.S., there would need to be 4.5 hospital beds for every 1,000 citizens in an urban area. For rural areas, the requirement is higher, reaching 5.5 beds per every 1,000. The current levels in the United States are at about 2.7 beds per 1,000 people, so we would need to increase the current hospital bed inventory to 35 million, nearly double the current level.

We must prioritize the health of people first instead of catering to corporate financial interests that have largely monopolized the health-care industry. Efficiently streamlining costs, such as reducing the amount of administrators in U.S. healthcare, and prioritizing increasing the number of doctors, registered nurses, surgeons, and other essential medical personnel will also help. More hospitals will need to be built, including reopening already closed ones such as DC General Hospital.