ALFRED BEEBE

READER

We have a chance to get the health care system we all need. With the collapse of the Republicans’ repeal of Obamacare, we are suddenly at a crazy moment where the impossible might just be possible.

Some recent evidence:

•At Andy Harris’ first town hall since the election, held at Chesapeake College, there was overwhelming support for single-payer. In the Washington Post, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote, “A broad consensus is developing that health care is indeed a right” and columnist Fareed Zakaria reminded us Donald Trump wrote in his book “The America We Deserve,” “I’m a conservative on most issues but a liberal on this one … We must have universal healthcare …We need, as a nation, to reexamine the single-payer plan” [Wapo, Mar. 30]

•I was a volunteer at the second Mission of Mercy, a free dental clinic held at the Civic Center two weeks ago, which served about 1,500 people. It was heart-wrenching to see so many people who cannot afford basic dental care. It makes you understand why we need a system where anyone can get the care they need, when they need it.

Is this simply a moral question? Absolutely not. The only way to maximize our human and economic potential as individuals, and as a society, is to provide health care for all our citizens. The same is true for education, by the way.

Trump supporters and Democrats alike can get behind this demand for universal health care. Sen. Bernie Sanders will soon introduce a bill for single payer health care.

Whatever your politics, urge our senators to co-sponsor this bill. Bi-partisan support will drive it forward. A supportive President Trump will sign it.

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Organizations here in Maryland that support single-payer are many. One is hchrmd.org – healthcare is a human right – MD. A national organization is pnhp.org – Physicians for a National Health Program.

Urge your local organization to get behind universal health care.

What does universal health care mean to me? Here are some of my opinions:

•Health care should be considered a right. Physicians’ mindsets must change – choosing a career in medicine should mean choosing to serve one’s fellow man, not to get rich.

•Insurance companies must be removed as the financial middlemen between us and our health care. I am persuaded by the argument that, as a for-profit business, insurance companies will seek to avoid care for the sickest patients and attempt to limit their insurance pool to the healthiest patients.

Columnist Zakaria cites Nobel Prize economist Kenneth Arrow’s argument against free markets for health care: “He argued that there was a huge mismatch of power and information between the buyer and the seller. … If a doctor insists you need a medication or a procedure, you are far less likely to reject the advice. … people think they don’t need health care until they get sick, and then they need lots of it.”

•Other countries do a much better job with their health care systems. We can overcome our hubris toward the rest of the world – that we’re so much better than everyone else – and learn from universal health care systems around the world. Zakaria cites Taiwan as a great example that went from a free market system with 41 percent uninsured in 1995 to a Medicare-for-all system today, paying only 7 percent of its GDP (compared to 18 percent in the United States) for healthcare while achieving some of the best outcomes worldwide.

If we fund health care through income taxes, all will share in this vital responsibility – young and old alike – and the issue of young people opting out will no longer exist.

We need a national health service in which doctors are assigned where they are needed, not where they are going to make more money. Under-served communities don’t need more free clinics, they need doctors!

Alfred Beebe lives in Salisbury.