A retired doctor, Richard Dillihunt, wrote a Maine Voices published Oct. 13 that was headlined “The time for universal health care and single-payer is near.” His column was wrong on several matters.

He said that Mitch McConnell is our Senate president. Our Constitution says our Senate president is Vice President Mike Pence. Mitch McConnell is Senate majority leader.

His column says we have a destroyer that’s “scraping its sides on the Panama Canal” – whatever that has to do with health care. Our widest destroyer is the newly built USS Zumwalt at 80.7 feet wide. The Panama Canal is 110 feet wide at its narrowest point – not exactly scraping the walls.

He didn’t mention the cost of universal health care or single-payer – nice names for socialized medicine. A July 21 PolitiFact.com post cited cost estimates from $2.4 trillion per year, according to Kenneth Thorpe, a professor of health policy at Emory University, to $2.5 trillion per year, according to a team at the Urban Institute, to $2.8 trillion, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The Congressional Budget Office stated that we collected just $3.3 trillion in revenue in 2016. Where will we get the money for national defense and all other federal functions?

And that, he says, just gets us the Canadian health care system, with its long waits and Canadians coming to the U.S. for surgery. When are people going to realize that socialism doesn’t work? Ask Cuba, Greece and the former U.S.S.R.

Allan Neff

South Portland