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Marin, San Francisco, Sonoma Counties, CA June 3, 2008 Election
Smart Voter

Fixing California's Broken Healthcare System

By Mark Leno

Candidate for State Senator; District 3; Democratic Party

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Nearly 7 million Californians are uninsured, and the current system is not working. We need healthcare reform that will provide accessible, affordable universal coverage to every Californian.
I have been a longtime advocate of single-payer healthcare. I am proud to support and be principal co-author on Sheila Kuehl's SB 840 Single-Payer Healthcare Bill. Only single-payer covers everyone, including the 6.5 million Californians who have little or no access to affordable healthcare. It requires no new spending and shares the costs among individuals, employers, and federal, state and local sources. Single-payer gives consumers complete freedom to choose their healthcare providers, and it reins in skyrocketing costs, saving $344 billion dollars over 10 years. By removing the medical insurance companies as middlemen in our healthcare system, we could stop paying 38 cents of every dollar on administration, and spend our healthcare dollars instead on the treatment and prevention of illness.

The Lucille Packard Foundation did a study of the healthcare systems in 21 industrialized nations, including the U.S. In the five categories they judged: outcome, accessiblity, infant mortality, quality, and longevity, the U.S. ranked 21st in every category while paying twice as much per capita than the other nations for our healthcare. What separated us from the other 20 nations is that they all have some type of universal, single-payer healthcare system.

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