To the editor:

Thanks to Dr. Julie Keller Pease for her excellent commentary concerning the need for universal health care (“Universal health care can’t wait,” Jan. 13). This need is not only economic, in terms of dollars saved, but it is urgently moral.

It has been estimated by the Lewin Group, a conservative think tank, that a single-payer health care system, which would cover everyone, would save a minimum of 4.3 percent of our nation’s health care expenses annually. This saving would add up fast, to nearly $1 trillion over the next 10 years.

If we do nothing, we will simply creep closer to catastrophe in the vital health care sector of our economy and lives. If our system continues on its current path, health insurance premiums will cost as much as average household income by 2025, according to the journal American Family Physician.

That is clearly unsustainable, and will mean that most people in the U.S. will have sub-par or no health insurance because we simply can’t afford it.

However, the most important aspect of this issue is moral. T. R. Reid, a Washington Post bureau chief, in his book, “The Healing of America,” wrote: “Do we want to live in a society that lets tens of thousands of our neighbors die each year, and hundreds of thousands face financial ruin, because they can’t afford medical care when they’re sick?”

Every other developed country, except the U.S., has come to the conclusion that everybody should have access to medical care. This can be done in a variety of ways, as Reid points out in his book.

In addition, none of these countries pays much more than half of what we do for health care, and most of them are ahead of us in health outcomes such as infant mortality, life expectancy, survival rates from major diseases, and deaths from curable illnesses.

We cannot justify a health care system that fails to adequately care for a rapidly increasing proportion of our population. We need health care for everyone now. Every day that we do not do so is an economic danger and a moral failure.

Kevin Twine,
Brunswick

letters@timesrecord.com