Charleston Gazette editorial: Is it time for health care for all yet? [View all]

Sept 17, 2017

Some Democrats in Congress want a historic change — one that should have been made a half-century ago, or even a century ago. They want America to launch a national health insurance system covering every citizen, of the sort that exists in most other democracies — a universal plan to cut medical costs and free employers from the burden of insuring workers.

It’s shameful that America is the only modern nation that still leaves families at the mercy of profiteering insurers and pharmaceutical firms. The switch to a government-run “single-payer” system should have been made decades ago — when President Harry Truman proposed it, or even when President Theodore Roosevelt did.

Crusading Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont has introduced a Medicare for All bill, and various Democrats are sponsoring it. Sanders wrote a New York Times commentary saying:

“This is a pivotal moment in American history. Do we, as a nation, join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee comprehensive health care to every person as a human right? Or do we maintain a system that is enormously expensive, wasteful and bureaucratic, and is designed to maximize profits for big insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry, Wall Street and medical equipment suppliers? We remain the only major country on earth that allows chief executives and stockholders in the health care industry to get incredibly rich, while tens of millions of people suffer because they can’t get the health care they need. This is not what the United States should be about.”

Bravo. We agree completely. President Barack Obama scored a breakthrough with the Affordable Care Act that brought insurance to 20 million more Americans. Now it’s time to complete the reform. Republicans have fought bitterly against the ACA, and presumably will resist Medicare for All. But we hope the project draws huge public support and becomes unstoppable.

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