In your Monday editorial, “Health insurance market needs a dose of freedom,” you overlooked one important fact: The United States is the only major industrialized nation that does not provide universal health care for all its citizens. There is a reason for that.

Medicare is not a profit-making enterprise. We contribute to it during our working years and, like Social Security, receive benefits when we need them.

Private insurance companies have a responsibility to patients but also to shareholders. Every claim they can avoid paying increases profits. Too often, coverage is denied or delayed by people who have never examined the patient and are not the treating physician. Medicare exists to provide health care. Private insurance exists to generate profits.