Save money on health care

I have read numerous letters in The Spokesman-Review suggesting that the reason for wage inequity is due to globalization. Miraculously, it seems, global competition is bad for the poor, but global competition is good for the rich?

Globalization makes U.S. wages go down at the same time U.S. productivity is up? How convenient is that? Other first world countries compete globally and their workers do not suffer the same wage inequities that U.S. workers suffer.

One reason: U.S. workers are charged twice as much (100 percent more) for health care as any other worker on the planet, 18 percent of gross domestic product versus about 9 percent of GDP for workers in other countries.

Would you like to save 9 percent of your income per year? I would. I could do a lot with a 9 percent per year raise. A penny saved is a penny earned, right?

Maybe, just maybe, 350 million people could keep 9 percent of their income every year just by going to a universal health care system like the rest of the globalized world.

Can globalization do that?

Elizabeth Bowman

Spokane