Ten things you may not know about health care in America

I got this from a Facebook friend.

Here are ten interesting facts you may not know about our health care system in America. If you support health care reform, make your voice hard. Go to http://standwithdrdean.com/. Howard Dean is trying to get 500,000 signatures in support of health care reform that allows individual Americans to choose either a universally available public health care option.

1. The United States is the only industrialized nation without a universal health care system. Americans are not, on average however, healthier than citizens of most other wealthy nations.*

2. There were some 37 million Americans without insurance when Clinton pushed for universal health care. That number has risen to 46 million today.*

3. Approximately 87 million people—one in three Americans—went without health insurance for some period during 2007 and 2008, while rising unemployment and job losses caused an estimated 14,000 people to lose their health insurance every day in December 2008 and January 2009 alone.**

4. The uninsured pay more for care—and get less—than those with insurance. But when the uninsured cannot pay, health care providers shift those costs to those who can pay—those who have insurance coverage. This leads to higher premiums for those who buy their insurance on the individual market, as well as workers who get insurance for themselves and their families through their job.**

5. At least six presidents have sought some version of health care reform. But only Clinton made it his first major legislative effort.*

6. Health care reform trails back nearly a century. Teddy Roosevelt called for national health care in the 1912 campaign.*

7. By 1945 Harry Truman, in a special address to Congress, became the first sitting president to publicly push for a national health care program. The opposition proved too strong for Truman.*

8. THE HEALTH CARE REFORM FIGHT IS POLITICAL. Obama and Democrats have much to gain by significant reform. Therefore Republicans have much to win by a Democratic defeat on any bill of this magnitude.*

9. According to a New York Times/CBS News poll published last week, seventy-two percent of Americans said they would back a government administered insurance plan similar to Medicare for people under 65, twenty percent said they were opposed.

10. Most Americans are limited to the choice of just a few insurance providers (in most states, more than 50% or insured by the top two insurers within that state). *** Click here for an interactive map: http://www.americanprogress.org//issues/2009/06/health_competition_map.html

11. (Couldn't resist one more) The US health care system was ranked #37 (behind countries like Morocco and Columbia) by the World Health Organization's ranking of health care systems.

*Source, Real Clear Politics

**Source, Center for American Progress Action Fund

***Source, Center for American Progress Action Fund

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: This Wednesday Obama holds a one-hour "town hall" on his health care agenda, broadcast on ABC News from the White House.