A Cherry Hill resident believes that a single payer healthcare system is what needs to be instituted in the United States.
I’d like to offer a socialist rebuttal to your recent article, “Want Cheaper Health Insurance?”
Look, most other nations have long since solved the healthcare problem by adopting some form of socialized medicine. It’s also called a “ single payer” system. Under such a system healthcare is provided free at the time of service, and is supported by the taxes you pay. In other words it operates on the same principle as your local library or your police and fire departments.
Unfortunately Americans have been so thoroughly brainwashed by our right-wing media that they have come to distrust the word “government” and have instead been told that “free enterprise” lies at the heart of American values. But is this the truth? No! Actually it’s utter hogwash.
The truth is that terms like “free enterprise” or “free market” didn’t even exist at the time of America’s founding. In fact, the Puritans (just to name one group) favored strict government control of the economy, even to the extent of setting limits on people’s earnings, so much for “free enterprise!”
We need to stop running healthcare in this country like a business and we need to stop allowing doctors and dentists to act like “kings of their own domain.” In a proper democracy, doctors and dentists should be public servants (which is what they are in Cuba, incidentally). Citizens need to agitate for change, so that we move away from the business model and back to America’s original principles.
James Camilli
