Extend Medicare to everyone

In 2009, all Republican senators and two Democrats killed Obamacare’s proposed “public option” that likely would have led to national single-payer health care. Now Hillary Clinton has suggested reintroducing this Medicare-for-all option. Thus hopes are raised of reducing health care costs, impossible until health insurance companies lose control, while also increasing Obamacare’s improvements in coverage.

Canadian single-payer universal health care costs only 60 percent of the U.S. system, with better results (life expectancy, infant mortality, etc.). Despite misleading ads by U.S. insurance companies, the Canadian system is also very popular. The evidence? When May 2011 elections gave Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper a conservative Parliamentary majority, guaranteeing passage of any conservative legislation, he immediately assured Canadians of no change in their single-payer system. Moreover, the late Tommy Douglas, who introduced the system in the 1960s, was voted the greatest Canadian in a 2004 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation survey.

University of Toronto researchers said the U.S. could save $27.6 billion yearly by adopting Canada’s system. And a 2008 survey showed U.S. doctors supported a single-payer system by almost 2-to-1: 59 percent to 32 percent, according to Reuters. So let’s extend the popular Medicare to everyone.

Norm Luther

Spokane