Opinion

Letter: Nation needs single-payer health system


Published: October 17, 2008

To the editor:

As a health-care provider working with people with chronic illness or disability, I see the terrible toll that our irrational, wasteful, private health-insurance system is taking on my clients every day.

My clients can't get the tests they need. They can't afford their prescription drugs. They are skipping needed medical treatments, hoping they'll get better without them.

This can't go on. We need single-payer national health insurance, an improved Medicare for all. It's the only way to provide affordable, comprehensive and quality care for all.

Best yet, it would require no new money. By eliminating the administrative waste of the private health-insurance industry, we'd save over $300 billion a year — enough to cover everyone and to eliminate all co-pays and deductibles.

That's why this week I and more than 5,000 other physicians called on the candidates for president and Congress to enact single-payer health reform. Our open letter points out that neither half-measures like the Massachusetts plan nor illusions about the workings of the free market, can provide the health care we need.

The cure is plain as day.

Stephen Hoy

Beverly