There has been considerable publicity about the delays in receiving elective services that are characteristic of other nations, especially the United Kingdom and Canada. At 6% and 9% of their GDP, respectively, they are spending much less than we are as a nation.

Not only do we have more than sufficient funds, we are also a nation that is infamous for our excess health care capacity. Typical of these excesses is the fact that there are more MRI scanners in Orange County, CA than in all of Canada.

With our generous funding and the tremendous capacity of our health care delivery system, the delays would not be a significant limiting factor in the U.S.

"Americans do not want socialized medicine," is a phrase that is frequently used glibly to dismiss the single payer concept. Socialized medicine is a system in which the government owns the facilities, and the providers of care are government employees.

In sharp contrast, a single payer system uses the existing private and public sector health care delivery systems, preserving private ownership and employment. The unique feature of a single payer system is that all health care risks are placed in a universal risk pool, covering everyone. The pool is funded in a fair and equitable manner so that everyone pays their fair share in taxes, unlike our current defective system in which some pay far too much while others are not paying their share. The funds are allocated through a publically administered program resulting in optimum use of our health care dollars.

A single payer system has no more in common with socialized medicine than our current Medicare program.

Many contend that government bureaucracies are very wasteful compared with the efficiencies of the private market place. In the health care arena, this has not been true. Our Medicare program, a publicly administered program, operates on an administrative cost of less than 2%. The managed care intermediaries consume 9 to 30% of the health care dollar.

This difference is due to large corporate administrations, costs involved with competition between companies and marketing expenses that would be nonexistent in a public program. A single payer system has as its mission the optimization of resources for better patient care. Funds are not wasted on corporate administrative excesses.

Another argument is that a single payer system, by being universal, would lower the standard of care to a level of mediocrity for everyone, preventing the affluent from exercising her/his option to obtain the highest level of care.

However, our current system is characterized by essentially two alternatives: either no insurance with severely impaired access to even a mediocre level of care, or being insured by a managed care industry that has whittled down what is available until mediocrity has become the standard of care. Only the relatively affluent have access to unlimited care.

The generous level of funds that we have already dedicated to health care, adding to this a more efficient administration with an exclusive mission of optimum patient care well above the mediocrity that we now have, lays the foundation for a universal health care system in America.

A single payer system does not preclude the affluent from paying, outside the system, for a penthouse suite in the hospital, or for cosmetic surgery or for any other service that should not be part of a publicly funded program.

Other than the assurance that everyone would have coverage for health, there is even a greater good that a single payer system would bring to our nation: Making preventative and public health services available to everyone would improve the level of health of this country. Reduction of communicable diseases and reducing the higher costs of untreated chronic diseases helps us all.

Healthy people, for instance, make for a healthier work force with less lost work time, greater productivity and a more positive healthy environment.

Socialism is a dirty word in this country. Universal health care for all has been equated with socialism, and much propaganda has been communicated by the press, by right wing politicians, by medical groups such as the AMA or anyone else who has an agenda to keep the 1500 plus health insurance companies a thriving market with profits that undoubtedly help to pay for their agendas.

But if Americans knew the truth, and would turn off their TVs and use that time instead to change this country, using the power of grassroots politics, to make a single payer universal system a reality for all, then we would finally have the best health care system in the world. The Green Party in this country has as one of its missions to bring a universal system of health care to all Americans.

Any group with the passion to change the world, one issue at a time, with a loving intent, can do it.