I'm not a socialist and (most of the time) I'm not a whiner. Health care should be a right of citizenship and it shouldn't be a partisan issue. There are different types of single payer health care systems. I would prefer expanding Medicare to cover everyone. The Medicare system is already in place and has an overhead of about 3 percent (versus 15-25 percent overhead and profits for private insurance companies). As for the Canadian system, there are some problems, but most of the stories about long waits for critical care are health insurance industry propaganda. The health insurance industry makes $350 billion a year in administrative costs and profits. And as for rationing, private health insurance companies here ration care. If you don't have health insurance, you don't get health care. Fact: 120 Americans die every day from lack of health insurance; zero in Canada. The tax increase for a Medicare-for-all system would be less for most of us than what we currently pay for health insurance. Adopting a single payer system makes health care affordable to all by removing the greed which has rendered our current system ineffective.
Eric Norquist
Brainerd
