Thank you to reporter Jack Troy and TribLive for covering the important report from Public Citizen about hospitals across the country, including 3 UPMC hospitals in Southwestern Pennsylvania, that are at threat of closure due to Medicaid cuts included in the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” of 2025. (“Report identifies 3 UPMC hospitals at risk of closure from Medicaid cuts,” May 5, TribLive).
At a time when President Trump is spending billions of taxpayer dollars on an unauthorized war in Iran and requesting another billion for a White House ballroom, people in this country are dying prematurely for lack of health insurance coverage and the ability to access necessary healthcare. This is unconscionable.
Healthcare is as necessary as food, water, shelter and education, and needs to be treated as a human right, not a privilege. I call on all our elected officials to recognize that the current state of healthcare in this country is failing and to support a single payer system of healthcare, aka National Improved Medicare for All (NIMA), free from the profits and wasteful administrative overhead of private insurance companies that put their bottom line before the health of the patient. Not only would NIMA cover everyone, from birth to death, it would eliminate financial barriers to care and ensure that needed hospitals would have the funds necessary to continue to provide care.
To find out more, go to nationalsinglepayer.com or Physicians for a National Health Plan (pnhp.org).
Sandra Fox
Churchill
The writer is a psychiatric social worker and was a co-founder and is on the steering committee of the Western PA Coalition for Single Payer Healthcare, an all volunteer organization formed in 2006 to educate and advocate for National Improved Medicare for All.