Get used to socialized medicine being the best hope

Millennials have it right when it comes to affordable health care policy in America

Both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton proposed the only option that will ever work, making health care a right for all Americans. But that proposal as our best option sent constituents of both parties running away from these visionaries — except the millennials.

Voters must get used to the idea of socialized medicine as the best health care option for our country. People need to know democracy won't be destroyed if there is an American health care ministry under the Medicare model. We must let go of the idea that "government run" no longer means tax burden, bureaucracy and imminent failure. And privatization isn't the be-all-and-end-all for any large program to be administered. Running health care through the insurance system and on a business model will never work. Never.

If we respect people's health, we respect life herself. We have to.

Our millennials want health care for all. It's who this generation is becoming. Even their groundbreaking inventions are based on a large community model brought about by companies such as Facebook and Google.

People must learn that a free market system for health care won't provide health care for all. It can't be sustained, and will leave thousands without lifesaving health care.

As long as a Republican Party exists, and millennials don't take the call to change our health care, this problem will not find its solution already waiting in the wings.

The Republican Party is the problem and not the solution. Health care and big government are inevitable. But we are the most innovative country in the world. Big government does not mean money-losing bureaucracy

Unfortunately, by the time our country gets in place a single-payer Medicare program, the Republicans will not only have wasted time, but will have cost lives.

Believing health care can only be sustained in a free market system is a blind alley walk. If a family member contracts cancer and the only life-saving medication isn't affordable, well, sorry family member, that's life — your child's early death saved our free market and kept capitalism strong.

The free market system and health care reform are oxymorons. The Republicans and anyone who thinks their proposed health care delivery system will work are dreaming.

We must start getting people to understand socialized medicine, Medicare for all is our only fair, ethical, compassionate option that protects a freefall disaster for health care providers.

Bernie Sanders medical reform scared people because the word "socialist" was thrown around. People are led down the path by old-rank Republicans compelling voters to believe socialism and communism are the same.

Ask 10 people what it would mean if we socialized medicine. Most would think it means living as near to communism as you can get. Now ask 10 people what it would mean to have a socially progressive health care delivery system in which children were saved from a rare form of cancer and they were told the child was saved by a socialized government health care ministry.

Lorelei O'Connor is a writer and author living in Beaverton.