Everyone should know by now that the Affordable Care Act, known widely as “Obamacare,” is faulty, unsatisfactory and inadequate as a national health care system. Millions that could not afford a doctor prior to Obamacare now must pay a premium or a penalty and also must pay huge out-of-pocket dollars for health care, just as they did before.

Obamacare detractors claim it does little or nothing to provide affordable health care but is rather, more accurately, catastrophic insurance.

Predictably it has not taken long to show the fallacy of having health insurance companies involved in Obamacare. For example, there are 24 health insurance cooperatives in the nation. In Maine, Community Health Options has 84,000 policyholders and is struggling financially, as are half of the others.

At first CHO had $7 million in profits and handed out big pay raises. As benefit payouts increased, CHO suddenly found costs were exceeding premium income. CHO needed to “randomly” shed 17,000 individual policies and cut back salaries to restore profitability.

Compare this fiasco with the fact that Medicare, our national single-payer health care system for those age 65 and older has never had to shed beneficiaries to stay afloat.

Everyone by now should know that in this presidential campaign one candidate, Hillary Clinton, if elected, vows to continue Obamacare. She ignores that health care costs will continue to rise, as they are doing now, as long as insurance company costs and profits are added to the cost of health care. And, clear heads understand insurance company costs and profits will continue to radically increase.

Forward-thinking candidate Bernie Sanders vows if elected to work to replace Obamacare with single-payer Medicare and make health care more affordable for everyone.

Jimmy D. Chiddix

Waterville


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