Public roads. Public libraries. Public street lighting. Public schools. Publicly funded fire departments and police departments. Publicly funded military. These are things that We The People have established to ensure our safety and survival in this difficult world.

But there’s one item missing, one item included in the public contract of every other advanced nation: publicly funded universal health insurance.

As a nation, our unique failure to publicly fund health insurance places the well-being of We The People in the hands of profit-making private insurance companies driven, each year, to continually grow profits by raising premiums while further cutting operational costs — restricting access to health care through complex contractual means and ever-tightening networks.

The ACA, for all of its goodness, failed to address this dynamic. Instead it emboldened and empowered private insurers, handing over public money to boost their bottom lines.

The Republican House has now slapped We The People in the face, reminding us that profit making is a heartless business — a business that does not care about our health or financial survival — a business that should not stand between our loved ones and life-saving care.

We The People demand a fair and cost-efficient system, one that does not burden us (or our employers) with the incredible costs and inefficiencies of our current, outdated system.

It is time for us to join every other advanced nation in the world by switching to publicly funded health insurance: Medicare For All — America’s original, publicly funded single-payer insurer for more than 50 years, available now only to people 65 and older.

Improved Medicare For All. Let’s make this happen. Learn more about this at PNHP.org: Physicians for a National Health Program.

— Mark Hickling