With regard to the ongoing crisis in education and conflict regarding consolidation, I’d like to offer an alternative solution to the funding challenges. Approximately 15% of school budgets are for health benefits and insurance. What if we had a single payer health care system that would be financed by progressive taxation — everyone pays their fair share. School budgets would suddenly be free of this ever increasing burden.
Single payer health care, which every other industrialized country has, makes more sense than the crazy-quilt, profit driven system we have in the U.S.
This conversation has been going on for a long time. Nothing we have tried in our private insurance based system has worked to reign in price increases.
Health care is not a commodity — it’s a necessity. Like clean air, clean water and safe food.
Let’s free our schools from shouldering an outsized proportion of these costs. The wealthy should pay at least their fair share, and maybe more.
Jack Mayer, MD, MPH
Middlebury