Nearly everyone agrees that providing universal health care is a prerequisite for creating a healthy and truly civilized society. And clear thinking, well-informed people understand that a single payer health care system is the most logical, efficient, humane and cost effective way to provide universal health care.

But whenever single-payer universal health care is mentioned the question is asked, "How will we pay for it?" That is the wrong question. The right question is "What will we do with the tremendous savings inherent in a privately run, publicly financed, single-payer system based on prevention and individual and corporate accountability?"

The United States spends far more on health care than any other nation, almost twice as much per capita as some industrialized nations. Despite this spending World Health Organization studies have found that thirty-six other nations provided better overall health care for ALL its citizens than does the United States.

The problem is wasteful spending. Nearly one-third of "health care" spending does not go to health care. It goes to television commercials, corporate lobbying, advertising and marketing schemes, extravagant profits for the medical-industrial complex, the extraordinary salaries of executives in the medical-industrial complex and the high administrative costs of for profit corporate health care.

Add in unnecessary (but highly profitable) tests and procedures, the costly (but highly profitable) practice of keeping alive terminally ill patients for a few extra days or weeks and all the medical errors and resulting expense caused by a for profit health care system and nearly half of all current health care spending could be eliminated. And that does not factor in the reality that most U.S. doctors, particularly specialists, are paid far more than their peers in the thirty-six nations that have a better overall health care system than does the United States.

Health care, particularly end of life health careis a highly personal and complex issue that will always lead to debate and likely elude consensus. But what is clear and beyond debate is that the U.S. health care system is a costly failure that leads to great and needless stress, pain and suffering.

The inflammatory charge that a single-payer system is "socialized medicine" undermines thoughtful consideration of the idea. The socialist bogeyman is a baseless fear. After all, how many of us fear our socialized fire departments, our socialized 911 system, socialized city streets and sidewalks, socialized water and sewer systems, socialized interstate highways, or our socialized city, county, state and national parks?

A health care system that serves the public good would be no different than the above mentioned goods and services central to creating and sustaining a healthy, humane and democratic society.

Besides, human beings are social beings. Most aspects of our lives, including health care, work best when we accept this most basic fact: We are more than the selfish, greedy, short-sighted competitive beasts that capitalism implies. We are social beings.

It is time, well past time, that our health care system reflects the reality that we are social beings and that our wellbeing is inextricably and forever linked to the well-being of our fellow citizens and all living creatures and systems.

Once we fully accept our nature as social beings, and create an economic and health care system that reflects that reality, we can debate what to do with the tremendous savings inherent in a universal single-payer health care system.