LETTER: On single-payer health care

The Backbone Campaign presented an excellent movie earlier this month making the case, from any reasonable perspective, that the best way to provide health care to all citizens is through a well thought out single-payer system. Every other economically advanced government in the West does it this way at less cost per person and with better health outcomes. Any honest person with decent analytical skills would come to this conclusion. But I predict that any attempt to put such a system in place now will not be successful even if Congress and the president vote to install such a system. They will not allow it to succeed. They don’t want it because they would lose insurance company campaign contributions that currently support their re-election efforts and they care more about being re-elected than whether or not we have a good health care system that covers everyone. As long as such people hold office, they will not support any legislation that b enefits ordinary citizens more than it benefits our wealthiest citizens.

Our elected officials no longer support the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the United States Constitution. This is easily demonstrated. All anyone has to do is read these documents and compare what you read to how our government actually governs. That’s what I’ve done. As long as most citizens refuse to honor, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, our rights and freedoms will continue to disappear, until one day (probably sooner than you think) we will no longer find any reason to think of ourselves as living in a democracy.

— Mark Goldman