All this talk and Supreme Court scrutiny of the individual mandate portion of the Affordable Care Act exposes the ludicrousness of a privatized health care system. The health insurance industry is so vast, with such a sinful proportion of its income going to bloated executive salaries and political influence that we have to ask ourselves: whom do we trust more, unfettered privatized industry or ourselves?

In an age when it is increasingly evident that our national government is more interested in the power big money can share with it than in the interests of the common citizen, especially vis-a-vis health care, why do we put up with more of the same policies that put a just system further out of reach?

Single payer health care for all, funded by the taxes that we all pay and should pay, will assure that everyone, healthy and sick alike, will have access to the care we need, when we need it.

Without the burden of paying health care benefits, small business entrepreneurs would be more encouraged to innovate and employ workers. Young people would gravitate toward work they are truly gifted in, without the worry of health care coverage. Creativity in the business and other sectors would flourish.

We can create the best and most equitable health care system on Earth. National health is no more socialist than the maintenance of schools and highways, and of equal, if not more, importance in realizing the American values of equality and freedom.

Greg Boardman, Lewiston