Submitted by Mark Dunlea, Oct 10, 2007 07:58

It is always good to see movement by our political leaders on universal health care.

However, as the article mentions, the state is embarking on a process of doing a cost benefit analysis of various approaches to universal health care. I hope that our political leaders are willing to support whatevre proposal provides the best comprehensive health care coverage at the lowest cost rather than doing something they think the special interests will support but costs at lot more money.

We look forward to see the details of Gottfried's new proposal, particularly to understand what the $50 billion price tag envisions (i.e., does it reduce spending by employers and consumers by more than $50 billion?).

When California undertook a similar study process, they found that a single payer / Medicare for All type system would save $38 billion annually over a ten year period while providing quality comprehensive coverage to every resident. We need a universal health care system that not only provides quality health care to everyone while giving consumers the right to choose who they get service from, but cuts the obscene amount of money we presently spend on our health care. Hopefully both single payer and the Gottfried plan will be one of the proposals studied.

Consumers, taxpayers, employers and businesses all feel the pain when we spend nearly twice as much money on health care than other industrial countries that we compete with economically. And not only do they spend far less money than we do, their health care system overall provides much better care than what the American system does

Note: Comments are screened, and in some cases edited, before posting. We reserve the right to reject anything we find objectionable.