My family has struggled to pay for our health insurance all my life. Since my father had his own business, he had to purchase his own individual plan for our family. Private health insurance plans cost families over $1000 and independents about $450 a month according to EHealth.

My mother swears that the main reason they always worried about bills when we were young was because of the cost of health insurance. According to healthcare pro-con, 8.5% of the people in the United States are not covered by any health insurance and more than half of the people who are covered have private insurance, while about 35% have government-funded coverage through Medicaid or Medicare. To add to that Ester Bloom of CNBC says Americans spend two times more on health insurance than other countries.

The cost of insurance is nine times higher than it was in the sixties, and that’s with adjusting for inflation. On top of that the United States spends more on healthcare than any other country, but still has one of the worst systems, while having the highest chronic disease rates and the lowest life expectancy and having the highest rates of suicide, obesity, and avoidable deaths according to CommonWealth. For the wealthiest country in the world, you’d expect better. I believe the United States should adopt a medicare-for-all system as other European countries have. Every human being has the right to healthcare and doesn’t deserve to be penalized because they are too poor to pay for treatment.

Cecily Hanson is a student at Diablo Valley College participating in Journalism 110