EDITOR:

In a recent edition, you had an editorial cartoon showing a person identified at Kamela Harris and another person next to her with his arm around her shoulders. The caption was, Harris says “Free health care for all” and the other person says, “And how are you going to pay for it?”

This is a bit insulting to those of us who did not sleep through grade school arithmetic. The United States has the highest per person medical costs in the world. No one else is even close to what we pay. And we do not have the best results, the best care, the best infant survival rates or the longest life averages. So we are NOT getting our money’s worth now with our present system. So, “How are you going to pay for it?” Come on now, you can figure this out. There is a huge amount of money being spent on medical now. We just emulate many countries around the world whose health care quality and results exceed ours at a lower price and do as they are doing.

Now the arithmetic –if they are paying less, so will we be paying less. The cartoon suggests that the money for health care for all is NEW money. No, that is wrong. We are paying money out now and at the top prices. So we use part of that same money and buy better health care. Then we put the remainder back in our collective pockets.

Now where did the excess come from? Stockholders, middle-man suppliers, multi-million-dollar-a-year CEO payments that will not be paid any longer and then we have the savings from negotiated drug prices.

And remember, when you say “all,” you can deduct the millions of people who now receive healthcare from a current single payer system. I receive mine from the Veterans Administration.

As for quality issues, which the politically inclined are going to bring up, let me point out our local Oscar G. Johnson VA Medical Center is rated as one of the top hospitals in the nation, private or otherwise. I believe it is in the top eight!

Take the politics out of this, take the kickbacks to politicians out of this, and just use your grade-school arithmetic. And when someone lies to you — probably someone from Washington or someone repeating their lies — just hand them a grade-school arithmetic book and demand more value from the dollars you are ALREADY spending on medical.