State can create own health care solution

It is time for Illinois lawmakers to embrace the Affordable Care Act and make health care for all a reality our state. Springfield must do its part to create a quality Health Benefits Exchange, much like the excellent and easy-to-use one working in Massachusetts.

An estimated 1.6 million Illinois citizens (12 percent of the population) have no health insurance, probably due to underemployment and part-time jobs in small businesses (the backbone of the U.S. economy.) In Texas, according to an NPR report, those figures are 6 million people — or 25 percent of the population suffering with no health insurance. Think of all the too-late-to-treat cancer that breeds. Women who never have pap tests or mammogram screenings.

Please ask yourself, “If this is the greatest country in the world, why can’t we provide decent health care for all?” Columnist Fareed Zakaria makes a case for the Affordable Care Act in a recent issue of Time Magazine, under the headline, “Health insurance is for everyone.” The main point is that “about 20 foreign countries provide health care for all of their citizens. All of them — including free-market haves like Switzerland and Taiwan — have found that they need to use an insurance or government-sponsored model. All of them provide universal health care at a much, much lower costs than we do and get better results.

“ ... We have to allow people to have decent health care at an affordable price. Something every other rich country in the world already does.”

Universal health care can be economical and humane. Aren’t the people of Illinois as deserving of health care as the people of Massachusetts, Canada, England, Taiwan and Switzerland? You bet they are, don’t you, lawmakers? Your jobs might depend upon it.

Jacqueline Combs Nelson

Park Ridge