Cutting All the Wrong Things

I am writing to you about the American economy which right now is being discussed by both the Democrats and Republicans. My feeling is that they are cutting all of the wrong things so that the one percent, that is the ultra-rich, can continue to benefit from the tax cuts that George W. Bush gave them.

We the 99 percent have already lost too much. Our college students are paying more and more each year, and our public school classes are way too crowded. When will our government of the U.S.A. get it right?

Next on the cutting block is Social Security and Medicare, and as Bernie Sanders has said many times, those two programs have not contributed one penny to our deficit. The No. 1 contributor to the deficit is the unnecessary warfare we are engaged in; stop the wars now and bring our troops home. The No.2 contributor, not far behind, is the tax breaks given to the ultra-rich and corporations.

Fix those two problems and we will have money for our schools, for Social Security and Medicare, and for fixing our infrastructure, which will give our people jobs.

Last but not least, actually most important of all the things we shall have money for is single-payer health care. I grew up in the United Kingdom, a country which has single-payer health care, and it far exceeds our system of healthcare. My father has cancer of the lymph nodes and was able to stay at home and still be taken care of. The doctor came to our house even on a Sunday, and the nurses every weekday, and this did not cost my mother one cent. When my dad died my mother still had our family house. If I lived in the U.K., as I am over 60, I would not pay a cent for my prescription drugs.

The system in the United States is completely different. In this country the surviving spouse would quite possibly lose a lot of their income to pay bills for the hospital stay. I have a personal experience of the insurance system here. I have had a pacemaker for almost nine years and recently the battery was so low that they replaced the old one with a new one. I went into Cottage at 6 a.m. and was able to go home after 2 p.m. so did not stay in hospital a whole day. I recently had a bill from Cottage and although I pay just over $600 monthly for my insurance I still have to pay the hospital close to $5,000 dollars for my co-pay and deductible.

We need to eliminate heath care insurance and go to a single-payer health care. If anyone has questions on the health care systems in Europe or the U.K, I advise you to watch Michael Moore’s Sicko, as that movie explains the single-payer system that works in most of the other countries. Health Care not warfare, and make the rich and corporations pay their share of taxes.