A Growing Wave Favors Single Payer Health Care
D. S. Mitchell
Across the nation our cities and towns are full of working families, seniors and students who are uninsured or struggling with unmanageable health care costs. Americans spend more money per person on health care than any other industrialized country with worse results.
For many, the lack of access to affordable health care leads to decreased quality of life. It often is choices. The choice of being able to work, or attend school. A choice between food, or medication. For others it boils down to waiting until the health care situation becomes emergent. Sadly, for many it leads to death.
Health care affects all Americans. Whether it affects you, or your neighbor, your sister, your grandmother. Affordable health care crosses traditional boundaries and is one public policy issue that touches us all. It is a unifying thread of need, not of agreement.
The New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt offered new ideas and new solutions for a country without health care and created the first American social safety net. More than eighty years have passed since the first struggles to provide basic health care was initiated in the United States. A lot has happened since the 1930’s but America still is struggling with a realistic view of health care. Public health care policy that serves the most people the most effectively should be the agreed goal.
As I have mentioned in the past it is time we join the countries of the modern world and provide health care for all. Once you decide health care is a human right, not the privilege of a few that are wealthy enough to afford insurance, great movement can take place. Once that thought has been internalized we must take those beliefs to the ballot box. Vote your values and make sure that your elected officials vote our values. We must hold them accountable.
