Arrow-right Camera
Subscribe now

Health care “system” broken

Our health care “system” is eating us alive. It delivers a long list of poor results at an astronomical cost. For this awful report card, we pay about $10,350 per person per year, consuming 18 percent of our gross domestic product. Other wealthy nations average $5,200 per person (half our cost), or about 10 percent of GDP, and provide better care — for everybody.

The basic problem is we don’t really have a health care “system,” we have a misfit heap of parts that don’t work together. At the heart of this nonsensical “system” are employer/providers who are helplessly beholden to a dizzying array of insurance companies — adversarial rule makers, price dictators and penny-pinching gatekeepers of health care services.

How to fix it? A universal single-payer system. Eliminate the insurance middlemen (save 20 percent). Eliminate doctors and hospitals having to hassle with insurance companies (10 percent savings). Go after Big Pharma. We could save hundreds of billions, providing comprehensive coverage — for all — with no out-of-pocket cost.

Universal health care is a fiscal no-brainer that makes people’s lives better. Democrats get this. Republicans support the entrenched profiteers of our flawed “system.”

So vote accordingly. Otherwise your wallet, our economy, and our children’s future will suffocate under ever-growing health care costs.

Steve McNutt

Spokane



Letters policy

The Spokesman-Review invites original letters on local topics of public interest. Your letter must adhere to the following rules:

  • No more than 250 words
  • We reserve the right to reject letters that are not factually correct, racist or are written with malice.
  • We cannot accept more than one letter a month from the same writer.
  • With each letter, include your daytime phone number and street address.
  • The Spokesman-Review retains the nonexclusive right to archive and re-publish any material submitted for publication.

Unfortunately, we don’t have space to publish all letters received, nor are we able to acknowledge their receipt. (Learn more.)

Submit letters using any of the following:

Our online form
Submit your letter here
Mail
Letters to the Editor
The Spokesman-Review
999 W. Riverside Ave.
Spokane, WA 99201
Fax
(509) 459-3815

Read more about how we crafted our Letters to the Editor policy