Health outcomes in the U.S. continue to be worse than in other developed countries despite spending far more on healthcare.  Social determinants of health such as poverty, racism, environmental stress, poor access to quality education and particularly poor access to quality healthcare have a bigger impact on outcomes than does medical care. Implementing universal healthcare, with a single payer system whose objective is health, rather than profit, can not only save money and improve health directly, but could also be tailored to help mitigate some of these social determinants.

Efforts are underway to implement a single payer system in California, which could serve as a template and a catalyst to a nation-wide single payer system.  But public pressure will be critical if we are to overcome substantial hesitation among even liberal Democratic legislators.

Doctors Jerome Hoffman and Nancy Greep will meet with Dick Flacks to discuss the potential for a single payer system, current legislative opportunities, and what we can all do to promote universal healthcare and a healthier state and country.

Dr. Jerome Hoffman, Professor Emeritus of Medicine at UCLA, has a long history of teaching health policy, and of involvement in many types of social justice activism.

Dr. Nancy Greep's work at both private and public medical systems gives her a great deal of firsthand experience with the problems in our healthcare marketplace; she has a passion for addressing these issues, to which end she founded the Santa Barbara chapter of Physicians for a National Health plan (PNHP), a group dedicated to a single payer healthcare system. She is also President of the statewide California organization of PNHP.