Single-payer would be better

The Dec. 28 letter, “Despite reports, it’s not succeeding,” was an unexpected gift for which I bless the writer’s conservative heart. He informs us that “Obamacare,” as currently applied, is failing. This, the writer says, will lead to single-payer health care funded like Medicare.

Hallelujah! If conservatives are finally seeing national health care (i.e., single payer) is an imperfect but affordable, more easily managed system than is the hodge-podge of insurance companies gouging us since the 1800s.

For a change, the writer is showing faith in America and realization that, as it matures, America becomes aware it was blind to realities such as: non-whites, Irish and Italians being fully human, women being equal to men, only federal government insurance can provide Social Security for elderly and disabled citizens.

Conservatives who financially or spiritually benefitted from treating non-white, Irish, Italian, women, and injured or aging workers as less than human fought against abolishing slavery, against giving women voting rights, against civil rights, against a minimum wage, against Social Security, against Medicare. And lately they’ve been fighting against national health care. But, if the writer is correct, conservatives like himself are accepting that America has opened its eyes to the need for a national, single-payer health-care system.

Paul Heckel

Snohomish