BEING OLD enough, at 69, to remember physician house calls and the absence of any tales of horrendous medical bills in a middle- to lower-middle-class neighborhood, having experienced the disastrous beginning of so-called health maintenance organizations (particularly Kaiser Permanente in California in the 1960s), and having experienced largely socialized health care in several Western European countries over nearly 50 years, I am appalled that people in the United States are held hostage to a rapacious, wasteful system of for-immense-profit insurance companies.
There is a simple solution to funding a national public health care system: income tax. Everyone pays the same percentage, and tax loopholes for the rich are eliminated. Yes, the higher your income, the more you pay, but it’s the same percentage for everyone.
Socialism? You bet. How evil is socialism? Ask the Europeans: No worries about medical bills, free or low-cost higher education, five weeks’ vacation, etc.
Dr. Sarah Roche-Mahdi
Cambridge 
