NASW, MS Chapter Position Statement on Universal Health Care
Adopted by the NASW, MS Board of Directors on January 20, 2018
The current U.S. health care system is broken. Despite the advances of
the Affordable Care Act, millions of Americans remain uninsured, and
many millions more are underinsured, unable to afford the costs and
deductibles associated with adequate health care coverage. Nowhere is
the need for system change greater than in Mississippi, the unhealthiest
state in the nation.
The NASW Mississippi Chapter believes that it is time to adopt a
publicly financed, federally administered single-payer universal health
care program that guarantees health care to all citizens, regardless of
ability to pay
. The U.S. system presently spends more on
health care per person, yet produces poorer results, than any advanced
nation in the world. Mississippians, along with all U.S. citizens,
deserve better.
A federally administered single-payer universal program promises
multiple advantages over the current system — including administrative
simplicity, greater capacity to control costs, more equalized benefits,
and enhanced ability to promote prevention over intervention — as well
as the most important of all advantages, emphatically prioritizing
people over profits. The time for fundamental reform is now.