Letter: Single-payer would set us free

The argument from the right against single-payer health care is that it creates a dependency on government. I would argue that what single-payer does is that it creates freedom. The type of freedom the right does not want us to have.

It gives people freedom to leave a job they hate without having to fear bankruptcy should they get sick. It gives people the freedom to go back to school to improve themselves without having to fear what happens to their children should they become ill. It gives someone with a medical condition the ability to move on safe in the knowledge that their health will be taken care of. It gives someone the freedom to take a low-paying job in order to stay in their community knowing their health care is assured.

Single-payer helps to get the mentally ill out of our prison system and into treatment.

Single-payer frees us from those who believe they have a right to profit from the illness of others.

There is no free market in health care. We will always be at the mercy of some insurance company that the company you work for decides to join. There is no competition. There is a reason the big pharmaceutical companies worked with Congress to make it illegal for Medicare to negotiate drug prices.

There will always be those few who abuse the system. That is no reason for the rest of us to have to live under the yoke of the tyranny of big business trying to squeeze us for every hard earned dollar we make.

Choose freedom over servitude.

Douglas D. Reilly

Logan