Medicare for all is future of health care

Most of us think we are in control. We lucked out and didn't arrive on this Earth with a genetically caused impairment. We think that we will always be healthy, never have a major illness or accident, never lose our job and never get old. We think that we will always be able to afford private health insurance and our drugs and somehow find health care even if it is just the emergency room.

Under the present system, you are only kidding yourself. As long as we depend on a for-profit system of insurance companies whose motives are to profit from everyone's need for health care, we will never have a system that works for all Americans. For-profit insurance companies really only want to insure healthy people. They would just as soon not pay for people whose health care may be expensive. Policies with high deductibles, outright denial of coverage or just making coverage so expensive that people who have pre-existing conditions can't afford it are just a few of the ways that private insurance companies operate.

Their reason for being is to make money. The end result can be economic ruin or in some cases death.

All the other major Western countries have figured this out. They realize that everyone must pay into a system not motivated by profit in order to provide national health insurance for everyone. It is called shared risk. Medicare, which I now have, works like that. I'm grateful that it is there. Why don't we extend and improve that program making it available for everyone? We will save on administration costs and have better overall health outcomes for a lot less money with everyone having access to quality health care.

We need a universal publicly funded single payer health care system now which would guarantee health care coverage for all Americans. We need Medicare for all. Call your representatives and tell them to support House Bill 676. Go to www.pnhp.org/facts/ single-payer-faq if you have questions.

JAMES JONES Bedford

The wall we really need

Help!

We need a wall, not protect us from Mexico, but around Washington, D.C., to protect the American people from the "powers that be."

It is not Mexico but Washington that poses the greatest threat, and elections are more than a year away.

Please, let's wake up, watch, listen and get ready to make intelligent and well thought-out decisions at the polls.

Most of all, get out and vote. I wish the vote could be held today. It is needed.

BARBARA HARE

Forest