Single-payer plan is best

Letter to the editor
Concord Monitor (NH)
October 17, 2009

Our failed private insurance health care system is already more than 60 percent taxpayer subsidized. Despite enormous taxpayer expenditure, we have a health care emergency, breaking our nation’s core moral value of protecting its citizens.

Fanfare surrounds the Obama administration health care reform bill that protects the private insurance industry. Purchase of policies will be compulsory. Expect tax increases to subsidize those who cannot afford this mandate. This is an immoral bill, amounting to a massive government bailout to guarantee insurance profits.

Despite complicit opposition from the media, current system stakeholders and politicians bought by the insurance and pharmaceutical industry, single-payer health care - Medicare for all - is still alive. Single-payer costs less and covers everyone for life. Everybody in, nobody out.

In two to three weeks, an amendment to substitute single-payer legislation for the House leadership’s bill will be voted on the House floor.

Ask your representative to vote “Yes” on the Weiner Amendment and the Kucinich amendment: the state single-payer option/ERISA waiver, approved by the House Education and Labor Committee 27-19, with 14 Democrats and 13 Republicans voting yes.

Sen. Bernie Sanders will introduce two single-payer amendments to the Senate bill, one creating a national single-payer plan, the other allowing individual states to adopt single payer.

Urge your senators to vote “Yes” on the two Sanders amendments. True health care reform can’t wait any longer.

MARCOSA SANTIAGO, MD
Rumney NH