Public option competitive

The advantage of a system where everybody is insured is obvious: It can lower the costs for all insured people. Presently the cost of emergency treatments for the uninsured is paid for by taxpayers and by higher insurance premiums of the presently insured.

Health insurance companies are spending over 20 percent of premiums for administration. Medicare spends 2 percent. Every insurance CEO thinks he is worth millions.

A public option would set minimum standards and force real competition in the private insurance industry which has overcharged us for years and has mostly provided restrictive insurance policies which most people don’t understand until they get sick.

Unfortunately, “socialized” is a bad word in the USA. Never mind that our infrastructure, police, fire stations, schools, etc., are all financed in a “socialized” way.

Medicare is as close as you can get to “socialized medicine.” Does anyone including elderly Republicans want to do away with Medicare? Of course not.

Some Democrats are again preventing an overhaul of our health care system, just like they did about 15 years ago with Clinton.

Why can’t the Democrats for once stick together just like the Republican right wing? There is no excuse; they got the votes.

Juergen Nolthenius

Coeur d’Alene