Americans overwhelmingly want universal health insurance.

Presently more than 40 million Americans have no health insurance, which usually means they have no health care, period. Most Americans have little room in their budget for doctor bills; to make matters worse, cash purchasers of medical services are billed at rates far higher than the rates paid by the insurance providers for the same services.

America has th highest cost per capita of health care in the world . . . yet by most every metric the American health care system is one of the worst, if not the very worst, of all the industrialized nations.

The direct costs (to businesses and industry) of paying inflated prices for second-rate medical coverage for its employees is crippling the American economy.

The solution that I propose is a single-payer system like the Canadian system, which might be considered “Medicare for all Americans.” The only difference — and this is a big difference — being that the burden of the cost of health insurance not be placed on the back of business. It is not business’ responsibility to provide for the health care of the American worker. The cost of individual subscriptions for health care services must be billed directly to the people . . . perhaps in conjunction with their annual tax return. Such a change would lead to “leaner, more focused” business enterprises better able to compete in today’s global economy.

Universal health-care coverage should not cost this nation anything; the savings from the eliminating the inefficiencies of HMOs and private insurance companies (“private bureaucracies-for-profit”) should easily cover the cost of extending basic health coverage to those presently without health care in America.