Letters to the Editor

+ Single-payer health care
Dear Editor:
There is a simple answer to the Medicaid question: single payer, universal health insurance (Medicare) for all.

It would eliminate employer-mandated insurance. This would reduce costs and make businesses more competitive. Employees would be more flexible. They would not have to navigate a morass of private plans.

They could move freely to better jobs or to other states and not worry about losing their benefits. It would relieve family anxiety about large uninsured medical expenses.

It would eliminate the expense of profit pursued by private insurance companies. Health should not be treated as a commodity.

Physicians’ offices would be more efficient without fighting the insurance companies, allowing the doctor to spend more time with the patient.

Most of all, it would eliminate the Affordable Care Act, a complicated, better-than-nothing law, constructed by the same committee that designed the camel.

In spite of all the bad mouthing of our Medicare, it is a very efficient system, and latest news is that costs are falling.

Look to the North, forget about the anecdotes about the system’s faults and interview some of our Canadian snow birds. See what they have to say. You will be surprised. As a matter of fact, why don’t you ask our seniors for their views on our government run Medicare.

Draw your own conclusions.

Gerald M. Litzky, M.D.
Longboat Key