To the Editor:

Conservative business owners are realizing that our dysfunctional health care system, driven by private health insurance, is cost prohibitive for businesses.

Michael Grimaldi, past president of General Motors of Canada, states, “Canada’s public healthcare system significantly reduces total labor costs for automobile manufacturing firms.”

David Steil, business owner and a former Pennsylvania Republican legislator, said, “Conservatives should be supportive of single-payer because it costs less. When they look at the single-payer model they will come quickly to the conclusion that it is the least expensive, the most supportive of a free market, and will have the most direct effect on the costs of their operation.”

Richard Master, CEO of MCS Industries — a world leader in their industry — discovered, in an attempt to control costs, that USA physicians average $84,000 annually just interacting with private health insurance. In contrast, Canadian physicians under their single-payer system spend little more than a quarter of that. In the USA, 33 cents of every premium dollar goes to maintaining administrative functions with private insurance.

More importantly, private insurance has not been doing the job they’ve claimed in controlling health care service costs. Master states, “The truth is that private insurers end up paying 20 percent more for health care services than Medicare, which, keep in mind, is our government-run program for people much older than the average privately insured American.” Because of all this waste, we spend more on health care than any other country, and we have far less to show for it.

Master states, “it’s a myth that under a single-payer system, the government takes over the delivery of health care. Not only are hospitals operated privately and doctors are in private practice …, patients in [single payer] countries have complete freedom of choice of providers. By contrast, more and more Americans find themselves in health plans that severely restrict their access to providers.”

In a recent PBS interview, Warren Buffett said, “I think that [single payer] probably is the best system.”

At American’s expense, our bought-and-paid-for-representatives help private insurance propagandize the myth that Medicare for all is socialized medicine and too costly. Both are lies. The fact is, our current market driven system is the most bureaucratic, most inefficient, most costly, and most rationed health care system in the world.

The conservative solution is Improved Medicare for All (H.R. 676). This 30-page bill simplifies and economizes. It is the most conservative, cost saving, and efficient solution.

Watch the movie at: FixItHealthcare.com.

Allen Lomax

Sylva