Single-payer is the solution to Medicare problems

Cleveland Plain Dealer

In response to Ed Schmith's letter to the editor, "Medicare needs our notice" (June 25), there is a well-known solution to the crises of cost and accessibility to quality health care in America: single-payer health care.

For-profit, private health insurance companies force hospitals and providers to form needless administrative bureaucracies that have nothing to do with providing health care, yet consume 31 percent of all America's health care dollars for overhead, underwriting, sales, billing, marketing and exorbitant executive pay.

Single-payer financing could recapture that wasted money at a rate of $400 billion per year, which would be enough to provide comprehensive health care coverage for every person in the United States without paying more than we already do.

Pete Novakovic, Seven Hills