There is plenty of money to pay for this and cover all citizens. If we stop the war in Iraq, demand that corporations pay their fair share of corporate income taxes, stop the waste of “Star Wars”, $700 toilet seats and hammers, by having a unified electronic medical record, single form, single formulary, preventative care, no deductable, no copay, no preexisting conditions, no coordination of benefits subjudication of health insurance plans and having doctors not accountants and lawyers make the determination with their patients, what is medically necessary, we can have universal health care for all for less money then we are spending now.

Do I sound like a democrat? I’m not! I’m a hardcore fiscal conservative. So why do I support single payer? Simple, because preventative care is good for the economy and the country. If we take care of people now, they will have less debilitating chronic diseases later, lessening the cost of the retired community. Heck, if they are healthier, more people will work past retirement, which means more tax revenues. Also, one of my neighbors had to sell his house to help pay for his father’s brain cancer treatments. They ended up filing bankruptcy because they couldn’t pay their medical bills! In the long term, preventing financial collapse of a family from medical bills will pay a much larger return in the future. They can keep working, keep paying property taxes, and prevent the financial loss that always occurs with bankruptcy.

Also, if people aren’t “trapped” in a job that has a good healthcare plan, then working conditions HAVE to improve for these companies to keep their employees. That means less stress, less chronic disease, less alcoholism, less smoking. And if the poor and uninsured can see a physician or nurse, maybe they can get help in stopping poor health habits, which decreases the costs when these patients reach Medicare age. That is one of the problems, that some of these Medicare patients have spent a lifetime without preventative care, and then they get cancer, COPD, emphysema, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol leading to atherosclerosis which leads to many problems, including heart disease. Geez, if we could get these people healthier now, it would decrease all costs in the future. I mean, do you drive your new car into the ground, with no maintenance or oil changes, or do you do scheduled maintenance and checkups, to prevent major problems in the future? Of course, you take good care of your car. And we should be doing the same thing for our citizens.

People that work in healthcare deserve to make a salary. But there should not be big profits to companies that do not directly contribute to healthcare. They are not “managing” care, they are denying care to people who are a risk to their profits!

I could go on and on, but I won’t. There is NO GOOD REASON to keep the current system we have, except that insurance company lobbyists pay big bucks to politicians to keep everything the way it is.

Please! The new administration has got to give us some relief!