Radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, collectively discussing the repeal and replacement of Obamacare. Personally, I hope it happens, because Obamacare should be repealed, and replaced with the original Affordable Care Act proposal. The Affordable Care Act was a public option that applied only to the working poor unable to afford health insurance.

Like Social Security, modest premiums would have been payroll deducted, and health care would have been affordable to the working poor because the “option” of non-profit health insurance, void of exorbitant CEO salaries and bonuses and stockholders’ dividends, would be just that — affordable.

The powerful insurance lobby successfully painted the public option as a European-styled single-payer plan. The irony is by spinning the affordable insurance option into Obamacare, the insurance industry gained 20 million new customers by changing the affordable option into a for-profit “market,” seventy percent of it subsidized by our federal government – a partial single-payer plan. Furthermore, the health insurance industry used the “added expense” of Obamacare as an excuse to raise rates on existing policies that would have been unaffected if the original proposal had not been changed.

Repeal and replace Obamacare? The self-supporting Affordable Care Act would have insured 50 million low-wage American workers. Do you really believe the politically powerful health insurance industry will give up 20 million new federally subsidized for-profit customers, so that those and 30 million more can benefit from affordable health insurance, and not be used as a reason to jack up rates on existing for-profit policies? Is the continually rising cost of health care due to inflation, or the exorbitant profitability of the health insurance industry?

Think about it, please.

Robert C. Currie Jr.

Laurinburg