To the editor:

Health insurance ads always make me wonder whose health care was denied to pay for the ad. The goal of health insurance should be the health of our nation and not the profit and wealth of a few.

Our national health is the first line of our national defense and security. A healthy, productive workforce is the most necessary component to improving and sustaining our economy. Health care for all is good for families and strengthens the moral fiber of our national community: Children grow up in a country which not only says it cares, but does care.

Our constitution begins: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Wealth-entrenched fear mongers will try again to keep us on the same old but jingled-up renamed path of weakness and destruction for many and excessive wealth for a few. Some will tell us government is the problem.

According to a study published in the Aug. 21, 2003, New England Journal of Medicine, for-profit health insurance uses about 31 percent for administrative costs. Medicare uses about 3-5 percent. The goal of health insurance should be health, not wealth; insurance for patients, not profits. Private health insurance is all cost and no benefit. Urge passage of H.R. 676 and Senate 703.