To the Editor:

The recent articles and letters about health insurance benefits of retiring personnel from USD 408 is revealing of the flaws in the healthcare system of the United States.

We are one of the only countries in the world that connects health insurance coverage to employment, putting the burden of providing for health insurance on employers. In a global economy, this amounts to a huge disadvantage to U.S. companies.

In a new book, “An American Sickness,” author Elisabeth Rosenthal points out that healthcare represents 20 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, healthcare costs are two to three times higher than other industrialized countries in the world, and we are the only country other than New Zealand that allows advertising of prescription drugs on television.

Healthcare is too important to the success and well being of a society to allow it to be a political football and the object of concentrated corporate profit centers.

It is time to switch to a single payer healthcare system for everyone that could be modeled on Medicare. Private health insurance has an average of 12 percent of revenues going to profits paid to stockholders and 15 percent goes to administrative costs. In contrast, Medicare has about 2 percent going to administration costs with the rest paying for services.

Harry E. Bennett
Madison, Wisconsin