As a society, almost one 1 of 2 adults has a chronic disease of one form or another. And where we're spending $3 trillion a year not on a healthcare system, but on a sick-care system that tries to patch us up after we've been made ill by a variety of institutional things around us - including a sick food system, air pollution, etc. Where we could be doing so much better even before people get to the point of getting sick.
In my view, this is not extremism on the left. This is what the American people support in poll after poll. Support the right to a job. Support living wages. Support real climate action. Support small community-based banks that make loans available to every day people and small businesses, not these too-big-to-fail banks that rip us off, that crash the economy at taxpayer expense. Support a public-option healthcare system, not Obamacare, which has been a boondoggle for insurance and pharmaceutical companies.
According to a recent Harvard study, $6 trillion, when you include the ongoing healthcare expenses for our wounded soldiers, which is the least they deserve, but $6 trillion for Iraq and Afghanistan alone.
Average wages now are still just barely above poverty, and one out of three Americans cannot afford healthcare even with the insurance,with jobs.
I think that equality needs to be broadened to include equal access to comprehensive healthcare, equal access to jobs, and equal rights in the workplace.
I think actually under scrutiny, Hillary's [Clinton] promotion of equal wages at poverty level and of healthcare for children but not for their families, of childcare when there are no jobs, it just doesn't cut it. I think women need a real agenda of justice because women are care-givers, because women are instruments of justice for our families and for our communities.
I think we're at a really unique moment right now because the American people are waking up to the fact that it is a race to the bottom between these two corporate parties that are sending jobs overseas, putting downward pressure on wages, starving people out of healthcare, locking an entire generation into unpayable predatory student loan debt.
I don't know if I ever mentioned back in 2002 we fought our way into a governor's debate in Massachusetts where, you know, this was televised and I articulated our usual agenda: cut the military, put the dollars into true security here at home, provide healthcare as a human right, raise wages which needed to be living wages, green our energy system, equal marriage? - we were the only ones talking about it back in 2002.
We, of course, need to improve our failing healthcare system, where costs are skyrocketing and 1 in 3 Americans doesn't have the healthcare that they need. Can't afford it, even with their insurance.
We call for healthcare as a human right through Medicare for all.
We spend $3 trillion a year [on healthcare] and we're only getting sicker.
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