Single-payer health care system needed

I hope the opponents of a government-run health care system read in the July 7 Health and Fitness section, the article titled "The Doctor Can't See you Now, More Patients Finding."

To re-quote Peter Cunningham from this article, "It's not a pretty picture, especially for insured people who increasingly are finding that the access to care once guaranteed by insurance has declined."

If you read the article and if you know the details about this system, it will most assuredly continue its decline.

To all opponents of the single-payer system, you have tried your usual scare tactics in trying to convince people that this system would never work.

This system is in need of a major overhaul. Or better yet, we need a single-payer system because as Thom Hartmann states on his radio program, "Health care should be a right, not a privilege."

The concept of a group insurance plan is well past its usefulness.

Employees wonder why they don't receive better pay increases not realizing that they are receiving pay increases: They just happen to be going to ever-increasing premiums rather than into their accounts.

To any company, both salaries and insurance are operating expenses. But the economics of this situation will result in employers transferring more and more of this increasing expense to the employees through larger payroll deductions.

How is it that in 2008, this country is the only industrialized nation on this planet that does not provide health care to its citizens?

Of course, by far the biggest reason, is that there are many people making too much money off of the current system.

And their lobbyists will do all they can to be sure employees and consumers are fed as much misinformation as possible to keep the current system intact.

Kevin Martin

Schaumburg