Something is rotten in the State of Our Union. One in five Americans lacks the “privilege” of health care so that “our” private health insurance companies can make their billions. They spend over half a billion dollars annually to buy Congress and confuse the people with their false advertising. This industry “earns” $400 billion a year in administrative costs denying the American people the health care coverage they pay for.

U.S. consumers face a 6% a year rise in the cost of health care, a rate higher than both inflation and U.S. worker earnings increases. Of U.S. personal bankruptcy filings, 50% are health care cost related. 75% of those are from families with health crises so poorly covered by the private health insurance that they bought, paid for, and thought would protect them financially. At least 20% of Americans, not surprisingly, are severely underinsured or altogether lack health insurance.

The U.S. private health insurance industry says it can reduce costs by $2 trillion over ten years. However, abolishing these health insurers will save $4 trillion over the same period. Twice before, to stop the Carter and Clinton administrations’ efforts for national health insurance they promised to reduce their profits voluntarily. While the industry lost its still earlier battle against the Medicare system, that federally funded health care insurance program ultimately benefited it.

Government subsidies to serve only the most profitable patients, the healthy, ensure the private health insurers’ profit margins. Medicare takes the most costly ones - the elderly - out of the for-profit system. The veterans and workers compensation systems also remove many troublesome, from a profit standpoint, patients. And, the Obama team’s plan for a federal competitor to the private insurers is modeled on state systems that see routine “patient dumping” for private profit.

To achieve health care for all Americans, we must disestablish the U.S. private health insurance industry. If the American system is the best in the world, why are so many countries not following our example? In the advanced capitalist societies the trend is clear: towards national health insurance. Surely we are beyond the point of believing that an international communist conspiracy is seeking to deny Americans the freedom to, in effect, die for lack of health care.

Change we can believe in, indeed. The private health insurance system the Obama team seeks to save from “disruption” fails to serve too many fellow Americans and is morally bankrupt. This is before we even face the issues of race, gender, poverty, private insurers, and health disparities. So bad are these that for decades, socialist Cuba has subsidized health care provider training for impoverished U.S. African American, Latina/o and Native American communities.

How American people are paying more for less shows the U.S. private health insurance sector’s inefficiency. Moreover, employer-provided health care reaches only the employed and burdens U.S. transnational corporations with health care costs that other transnationals do not face. Single payer national insurance will help U.S. employer global competitiveness and profitability. U.S. Representative John Conyers and Senator Bernie Sanders have introduced single payer bills.

This is a case where Congress and the President should lead by clear example. Only one in fourteen Americans trusts private health insurers, but their representatives, who with their families receive federally funded health care, seem to believe that the private insurance industry can do no wrong. Let our elected representatives therefore show they are willing to join, with their families, in the insurance system they urge is best for all Americans other than themselves.

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, John Hayakawa Torok, is a critical race theorist and card-carrying member of the USA Green Party, who lives in Oakland, California. Click here to contact John Torok.

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