The “healthcare” bill passed by the House and voted for by U.S. Rep Tom Garrett will remove numerous people in our district from Medicaid and make insurance for those with pre-existing conditions unaffordable.

Any allegations to the contrary are lies. Just like the allegations that Obamacare is in a death spiral. It’s not. 

Obamacare has problems, which could be helped a lot by creating a one-payor system.  The latter would eliminate the waste of hundreds of billions of dollars ostensibly spent for “health” which actually go to insurance company overhead (monstrous CEO salaries, stockholder profits, employees whose job is to deny you the care you’ve paid for, etc.).

The average overhead of insurance companies is 20 percent. The average overhead of Medicare is 3-5 percent. Using the higher estimate for Medicare, the difference is 15 percent. 

The annual expenditure for health care in the U.S. is approximately $3 trillion. Fifteen percent of that is $450 billion. 

We are wasting $450 billion dollars a year that could be spent on actual care or refunded to taxpayers. One-payor makes sense.

And we could save hundreds of billions of dollars more by allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices instead of guaranteeing that we pay 5-10 times what the rest of the world pays for the same drugs.

I needed an inhaler recently. I found out that my copay for a three-month supply was more than $600. 

The “actual” full cost was about $1,450. So, I checked what it would be if I ordered it from a Canadian drug supplier.

The range was $60-$110 depending if I wanted generic or brand name medicine.  That’s the whole cost. Not just a copay. 

Glaxo gets $1,450 for people buying their drugs in the U.S. or $110 for people buying the same drug in Canada.

Thank you, President George W. Bush, for this disastrously expensive payoff to Pharma.

How hard would it be for Medicare to make the same phone call I made and cut the cost of drugs for Americans by 90 percent? 

Since they would be a pretty big customer, they might even be able to negotiate a better discount than 90 percent.

Tell Garrett that you are unhappy that he voted to take away your health care.

Tell him you want a one-payor system. His number is (844) 859-3118. And vote for someone else in 2018.

Dr. Stephen Goldberger attended Cornell and Boston universities and is a retired ear, nose and throat specialist who practiced in Farmville for more than 11 years. His email address is auenhands@gmail.com.