Rebecca Pruveadenti's Letter Published in the Erie Times

 

This Letter was published in the Erie Times on July 15th Single-payer still best system.  It was written by Rebecca Prudevanti of the NW Healthcare for All PA Chapter.

The Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) was upheld by the Supreme Court and many on the left are unhappy with the ACA and President Obama. This law helps keep an unsustainable, for-profit, health insurance industry in place and calls it health care. It does nothing to control spiraling costs and will spur this country's next financial crisis because it is growing three times faster than the U. S. economy.

The current system is responsible for causing medical bankruptcies -- 50 percent of all U.S. bankruptcies. The health insurance industry acts as a toll booth between you and your health care. When you get sick and begin to use your insurance, you must stop, ask permission, pay to get through. Sound like a privilege or extortion? Single-payer supporters are incensed that a sensible, single-payer solution to heath care in this country is viewed as evil, yet denying health care to a human being is the right thing to do.

Currently, the U.S. has Medicare, a single-payer plan for people over 65; Medicaid, a single payer plan for people under the poverty level; the VA Health System, true "socialized" medicine yet essentially a single-payer plan for veterans and their families; and the for-profit health insurance industry system for whoever can afford it. The most expensive and least effective for "we, the people" is the for-profit model. For-profit means profit at all costs, ignoring all moral imperatives regarding the sanctity of life because it lowers the corporate profit ratio.

The absence of equal access to health care is directly linked to an unhealthy, uneducated populace. A single-payer system where everybody pays in and gets equal access to health care is the sensible solution.

Rebecca Pruveadenti president, HealthCare4All PA, NW Chapter