To the Editor:

Health care in this country is an unplanned employer based or government-based system.

According to Consumer Reports, many people who have insurance face unavoidable medical bills due to out of network providers. Even the most careful studious insured medical patient can fall prey to out of network providers demanding tens of thousands of dollars in payments. The medical system has three parts competing to reduce costs and increase profits: the doctors, the insurance corporations and the hospitals. Guess who looses? The patient.

Every major country in Europe including many in Asia has national health care as a basic right of citizenship. This is rarely mentioned in the media (NPR?). People are losing their homes to foreclosure due to medical bills. Drug costs and care are way above inflation. Property and income taxes are already paying for government employees/veterans, Medicare and Medicaid. We're already paying for so many people with the unique for profit system we might as well go all the way.

Our future defense against terrorism would be better addressed with a national single payer health care system for future soldier preparation. U.S. businesses could better compete with other countries businesses if they didn't have to pay for thousands of employees' rapidly rising health insurance premiums out of private company profits.

Our veterans should be able to choose any local doctor they need instead of having to travel to far away cities for treatment.

Medical billing alone eats up 9-10% of a doctors’ gross income due to so many insurance carriers. Bernie Sanders' message is consistent and clear; the corporate owned media is a jumble of censorship by omission.

Richard Paolillo

Potsdam