Every election cycle, health care ranks as a top priority across the nation, and yet Congress continues to fail to act. Our health-care system is expensive, inefficient and wasteful. I have many uninsured friends and most of the students at the public schools I founded are uninsured. The human face of our current health care madness is an inexcusable blemish on our nation.

The problem is we don’t get a bang for our buck – we pay more and get less. We pay six times more per person on administrative costs than similar nations, and more than 25 percent of our health care labor force works in administration. We have fewer physicians, nurses and hospital beds per capita than the average industrialized nation. And prevention and public health programs – which are nearly always cheaper than treatment – represent only four percent of our spending and adults receive recommended care only half the time.

This is why I support Healthcare for all, a publicly funded, privately delivered health-care system that extends similar coverage as the Medicare program to all Americans of all ages, regardless of their employment, income, health status, pre-existing condition, or any other factor.

This single-payer system combines a private health-care delivery system with public financing, creates a common risk pool, protects the doctor-patient relationship, and severs the ties between employment and health care, making insurance truly portable. Entrepreneurship and innovation will increase as employees will no longer be forced to remain with their employers solely because they can’t risk losing their health care for their families. Almost all (95 percent) of families would pay less and receive the same or better benefits.

The average business will also pay significantly less. A 4.75 percent Medicare payroll tax for employees will cover all program costs. Relieving businesses from the skyrocketing premiums for employee and retiree health insurance would help strengthen American competitiveness in the global marketplace and remove an incentive for outsourcing jobs, as well as lead to increases in salaries for working families.

In addition, by focusing on patients and not profits, Healthcare for all will put an end to health care discrimination, penalizing the sick, discouraging prevention, distracting doctors with bureaucratic tasks and risking families with financial ruin.