Facts add to debate

We have many choices in the USA! We can choose to be informed or uninformed about health care. It is fun to be uninformed. We can scream, brandish clenched fists, call people Nazis and bring our guns to town. That doesn’t get quality health care for you, your parents or your kids.

T.R. Reid has published “The Healing of America.” He summarizes our health care quilt along with those of our chief competitors. We are the only industrialized country that allows thousands of people to die each year because they can’t afford health insurance. Other countries have made the basic moral decision to cover all of their citizens because it is right and is more efficient.

Not all foreign systems are socialized medicine, and many are less socialized than Medicare, which we borrowed from Canada. Otto von Bismarck created the most common European system in 1883. All the payers are private insurance companies. It is easy to switch policies.

Most people stick with the same insurance from cradle to grave. Only in the USA are insurance companies allowed to make a profit. In America we have equated profit with god. That is irreverent and hard on the knees.

David T. Webb

Spokane