TODAY: Democrats to Unveil Health Care Reform Legislation

In the 20+ years I have been a physician I have seen the influence of the Insurance companies gradually degrade our healthcare system so that it is not providing good healthcare to ANY Americans who do not have their own primary care provider on private retainer.

This is directly related to the influence of the healthcare insurance industry.

The only way to improve healthcare in our country is to move quickly to a Single Payer system which will enable us to stabilize the situation and gradually move America's healthcare back to what physicians pledged to do when they took their oath.

Single Payer also is, as I understand it, the only way we can provide healthcare and pay for it without tremendous debts!

Please add a Single Payer option to health care reform legislation. Please eliminate the costly and corrupt Health Insurance companies and give the citizenry back the ability to heal and recover with dignity.

HR 676, a single-payer bill - Medicare for All -would meet all of President Obama's goals. By contrast, bills which continue to utilize and even protect the private "for-profit" insurance industry cannot reduce costs, protect choices, or guarantee access to quality, affordable health care.

Myths abound about single-payer, based on fear and not fact. Buzz words like "government run", "rationing", "Washington bureaucrats making your health care decisions", etc. are used, and used often. The fact is, our system is currently run by profit motivated bureaucrats, our care is already rationed, and health care decisions are made by insurance companies who stand to gain by denying care.

Only single-payer can give us the administrative simplicity, bulk purchasing power, and risk sharing to reduce costs and cover all Americans.

We cannot continue as the only industrialized country to put profits above people in need of health care. People in other countries are no kinder or magnanimous than the American people. They just know that healthy, happy citizens create better communities than poor, worked-to-death, and scared-to-get-sick people as we have in the U.S... Please use your reasonable minds to share some of the wealth given so freely to private corporations with the rest of us and give us a strong, public health care system that allows quality care by medical professionals, instead of blocking tactics by private insurers.

Taxing the rich is fine, but the entire nation and every employer benefits from a healthy workforce, healthy children and healthy elderly. The policy should be a 3% income tax for everyone, and a 8 to 10% employee tax paid by all employers. These two taxes would generate $250 billion and $550 billion for the Medicare Trust Fund, and bring the total money in the healthcare coffers to two trillion dollars when added to the money now spent in Medicare ($450 billion), Medicaid ($400 billion), HHS funds ($325 B) the total available for healthcare for all US residents would be close to two trillion dollars (what is now spent less the excessive overhead costs of $400 Billion. If we are unable to provide healthcare to everyone for $7K per capita, twice what all other civilized and humane countries pay for their coverage, we should throw in the towel. The myth of "Not enough Money in the system" is a flat out lie promoted by the Profit mongers in the system: the insurance industry, Big Pharma, most hospitals and some MDs.

Jonathan Weisbuch, MD, MPH, Phoenix, AZ