In his April 12 column, Editorial Page Editor Greg Kesich stated that, contrary to some conservative arguments, “there is no free market in health care because there can’t be.” He then went on to document the ways in which, though we’re often unaware of it, “paying for health care is a government function” in the United States, as it is in most other industrialized countries.

Instructive as these points are, though, they led up to a rather disappointing conclusion: “We’re already paying for a government-funded system, so we ought to demand one that works.”

What one would that be?

How about the Medicare-for-all, single-payer one Michael Bacon outlined in his letter to the editor the next day? Drs. Steffie Woolhandler and David U. Himmelstein described it in their February column in the peer-reviewed Annals of Internal Medicine.

Documenting how such a system would save over $600 billion annually through reduced administrative and prescription drug costs, Woolhandler and Himmelstein showed that replacement of our present multi-payer system with a simpler, more cost-effective, and at last universal, one is doable.

The highly successful and popular Medicare program, universal for those who make it to 65, is a good example of “one that works.”

To learn more about this approach to health care funding, Maine AllCare will be screening “Now Is the Time,” an informative and entertaining film about the surging, if underreported, single-payer movement, on Tuesday, June 6, at 5:30 p.m. at Portland Public Library’s Rines Auditorium. A panel discussion will follow.