Myths are killing us: HRC 23/100
20 August, 2016 | Index
Dear Hillary Clinton,
Gerard Mclean here, writing to you from Englewood, Ohio near Dayton. There were 100 days from your nomination to election, so I’m writing you 100 letters. This is the twenty-third letter. The others can be found in your USPS mailbox or online at 100HRC.com
Today, someone decided to comment on one of my letters posted on Medium. The good news is someone is reading them here; the bad news is the anti-UniversalCare trolls are finding me. They try to engage by making assertions about Universal Health Care that are patently false or uniformed.
One of the myths about a single-payer system can be summed up by this comment made by someone I just finally had to block:
“In other societies with single-payer systems, sure everyone got care, but it took so long that either (1) they died, or (2) they came to the United States to get care.”
To be clear, America is a great country, but by no means leads the world in quality, affordable, fast and efficient health care. Not even close. I have family and friends in Australia, Great Britain, Canada, France, Denmark, Spain and France — all whom have received excellent medical care in their country and none having expressed a desire to travel to the United States to get care. In fact, they are all puzzled (or horrified) over the fact that we do not have Universal Care here.
The perpetuation of this myth that America is the best at everything is pure nonsense and is preventing us from moving forward on better medical care. In fact, I would even go as far as saying many Americans die needlessly because profit is a greater motivator for insurance companies in America than actual health care.
We can’t continue to lag behind the rest of the world. It makes no economic sense to have our wealth drained by health insurance corporations and our citizens stressed trying to pay their premiums every month. We need Universal Care; we need it now.
Regards,
Gerard McLean
cc: Sen. Sherrod Brown
