Dear Editor:

Prior to recent elections I thought the United States was strong — strong in spirit, strong in creative ideas, strong in wealth, strong in democracy’s governance, and strong in love and kindness. But many report we don’t have enough money to pay for healthcare for our citizens. Are we poor? Are we last on lists of countries who provide healthcare

We can’t be poor when we rank #1 in gross domestic product (GDP), when our population is 324,459,463 and our economy is largest in the world at $19.42 trillion, or 25 percent of the gross world product. Don’t leaders know countries with far less GDP still manage to cover healthcare for their citizens?

Projected nominal GDP, states that top economies in 2022 will be the U.S., China, Japan, India, Germany, the U.K., France, Brazil, Italy and Canada respectively. All provide affordable healthcare to their citizens except the US. Are we poor, or do we choose to ignore healthcare needs and its investment-value for our country? 

Do leaders hide the fact we are low on the world’s quality healthcare?

Why aren’t leaders interested in improving our healthcare? Being strong was a pitch used in a campaign, but clearly the intent was not to value citizen healthcare. Without universal healthcare the United States falls down the weakness ramp. We now have a children’s health emergency as our leaders let the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) expire, putting nine (9) million children’s healthcare at risk. Now we’ll see what childhood starvation looks like as the nine million U.S. children join 20 million third world starving children. We were once a strong country full of wise leaders who cared about our people and our children. What happened?

GDP is still strong, but who benefits? The lie isn’t necessary, we see it in the recent budget proposal where tax benefits are going to the wealthy who charter planes, but cut food for the children and work to deny 24 million people from essential healthcare. Tell me: are we weak or are we strong?

Jarryl Larson

Edgecomb