1.When you need life-saving care, private insurance companies only profit by denying you and letting you die. If you have paid your premiums on time all your life, you're as likely to be dropped by your private insurance company when you need life-saving care as you are to get treated. A public option gives you a lifeline.
2.Private insurance companies are spending over a million dollars a day to kill the public option by inventing phony citizen groups trying to scare the elderly about euthanasia and pro-lifers with abortion; they know the only way to kill reform is to get people of good conscience fighting each other over misinformation, while they laugh all the way to the bank. They don't think very highly of our intelligence.
3.We pay more than any other country to be 24th in life expectancy: while the average Canadian family spends less than $2000 a year on health care with no waiting periods for life-saving care, the average American family spends $16,800 a year, waiting for private insurance companies to approve life-saving treatments.
4. Fourteen thousand Americans lose their health insurance every day; over forty-six million are currently uninsured.
5. Eighteen thousand Americans DIE each year due to lack of health care: THAT'S 50 A DAY.
6. Nearly two-thirds of American personal bankruptcies are related to health care costs.
7. Businesses - particularly small businesses - cannot afford to provide health insurance for their employees under the current employer based private insurance system, and will be forced to either drop their coverage or go out of business unless a public option is passed.
8. One-sixth of all our government spending is on health care, twice as much as any other country spends out of its budget. Our nation pays $2.5 trillion for care costing $912 billion.
9. Every independent estimate says the public option will save us money, from saving 150 billion dollars (CBO) to saving 265 billion dollars (Commonwealth). The Congressional Budget Office estimates the current bill in the House would actually leave a 6 billion dollar surplus.
10. So - if you'd rather spend more taxpayer money, bankrupt businesses, AND pay $16,800 a year for your family's private insurance coverage in exchange for a policy that can be dumped the second you actually need it, then the current system is great for you. If you'd rather spend less, wait less, have less of a chance of dying, and want to remove the corporate bureaucrat from between you and your doctor, then a public option is the way to go. Right now, even if you're lucky enough not to be dropped by your provider when you need urgent medical care, your private insurance company can overrule your doctor's advice for life-saving treatment and only offer to cover something cheaper; a public option would remove that middleman and leave these decisions where they belong, between the patient and doctor.
According to the author, it's worth noting: The numbers are purposefully lowballed/rounded down in order to avoid a subsequent conversation devolving into bickering that distracts from the main points being made. In that spirit, the one big change from the earlier posting of this top ten list is the $16,800 figure being added as the average American family's health care costs, instead of a higher estimate. Lastly, the statistic about the average Canadian family paying less than $2000/yr is based on a single Canadian paying $40 a month, times 12 months ($480/yr) times a family of four ($1920/yr).Thank you to ShadowSD at Dkos for creating and sourcing this information, and for providing it in a word document for easy copying and printing. Download the word document HERE.
Take these FACTS to folks that have been repeatedly fed misinformation from FauxNews... Spread the word, spread the TRUTH!
