Health care costs are the larger problem

Nibbling at the most vulnerable, e.g., Medicare recipients, whilst ignoring the enormity of the overall expanding health care crisis is akin to prescribing a placebo to cure a life-threatening scourge.

The nation's current health care system is an out-of-control hodgepodge absorbing an ever greater portion of limited national resources. The root cause of the health care crisis unfolding over the past 50 years has been an annual percentage increase of health insurance premium that consistently far exceeds the growth of national income. The self-serving interests of insurance conglomerates have been fostered by misguided national policies. The results have become a crushing burden on the financially strapped population.

National health care costs have tripled as a percentage of GDP since 1960 and are a multiple of other developed economies today with comparable health standards. Exorbitant health costs are the single dominant factor accounting for the financial decline of the country. The consequences have led to stagnation and worse for vast sectors of the productive economy as health care progressively seizes more of the economic pie.

There is an existential mandate for early implementation of a universal single-payer health care system funded entirely through current year taxation.

George Black

Iowa City