Letter: The time has come for single-payer health care in America

This latest national health-care kerfuffle has provided impetus, for those actually interested in finding solutions that don’t include letting the poor and the elderly simply die, to choosing the approach that every other developed-world nation has already implemented successfully. A single-payer, medicare-for-all system addresses the Obamacare problems that Congress has refused to fix these past seven years and covers every American with the care that every American deserves.

What problems have dominated the national discussion? Absence of competition leading to irrationally high premiums in some areas? Solved. Failure of young, healthy individuals to join the insurance pool and keep premiums reasonable? Solved. Absence of health care facilities in rural areas and inner cities because they are not profitable for private insurance companies? Solved. Employer/employment dependence (portability)? Solved.

The idea that everyone gets the same wide spectrum of care for the same price, subsidized by the federal government for many who could not otherwise afford it, works well in every other developed country, and there’s no reason it wouldn’t work here. Additionally, the availability of technology and health care professionals below the level of physicians will make this system relatively easy to implement at reasonable cost. The time has come for single-payer, Medicare-for-all in America. Carpe diem!

This story was originally published April 19, 2017 at 4:26 AM with the headline "Letter: The time has come for single-payer health care in America."