Soon we will have the ability to vote for a candidate who endorses a national health care plan. Once again, we will be bombarded by negative information about how a national health care plan will destroy our lives. This information will be financed and promoted by organizations that have the most to lose financially: drug companies, huge heath insurance providers, and the very wealthy. They will spend many millions of dollars to stop this.

I would like you to recognize these facts as you consider a national health care plan.

Most of us cannot retire or lower our work time by going part time as we get older. We have to wait until we are 65 so we will be eligible for Medicare because we cannot afford to buy health insurance. Medicare is national health insurance. You paid all your working lives to receive Medicare health insurance part A, which is free. If you want Part B, which covers things part A does not, you pay for this part.

You should also buy a separate plan on your own if you can afford to. They pay many things that Medicare part A and B will not cover.

There are many things that Medicare A or B do not cover. You may be told your relationship and choice of doctors will be limited. If you are in most group insurance plans, you already have to use "in panel" doctors.

You may be told that you will have to have referrals for specialists. Again, in many group plans you already do need referrals.

Medicare -- being a national health care plan -- forces most doctors and most, if not all, hospitals to take you as a patient, and it regulates many prices.

Your insurance company bargains with pharmaceutical companies to lower drug costs to you. A bill to allow Medicare to do the same bargaining was just defeated this year.

How can Walmart sell a huge list of drugs for $4 for a month supply and now $10 for 3 months supply? A good Web site is medicarerightsrights.org

Margaret Rickards,

Northumberland