We always say that we have the best health care in the world, but it is simply not true. The truth is that we pay twice as much as any other country in the world and don’t have much to show for it. Making profit on disease is shameful and viewed by the rest of the world as cruel. We just returned from a biking trip in Europe where most countries enjoy much better health than the United States. France, Italy, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands all rank near the top in health care, and their citizens are covered for everything. They don’t know what a deductible is, or even a pre-existing condition. Their health system doesn’t profit from disease and adversity, but exists only to help people.

On the other hand, insurance companies and drug manufacturers here make billions from denying, rejecting and overdosing our population. Here, 100,000 people die each year from medical/hospital errors, and another 100,000 die from drug reactions and complications!

Many say that Obamacare isn’t working, although they won’t even give it a chance to start.

Many states are purposefully holding back their participation, denying their population health benefits just to be stubborn, making the system much slower to work. You may remember that the original idea of Obamacare was called the single-payer option, or Medicare for all. This is the answer to a health-care system that has been at best, problematic. Health to the people, Medicare for all!

James Forleo

Durango