To the editor: In the last two years, more articles are appearing in business magazines advocating a Canadian-style single payer health care program in the U.S. The costs would be distributed the same way taxes are, the rich would pay a higher percentage. In 1940, President Truman tried to push such a program. It would have brought the rest of the U.S. in line with the rest of the industrial world. It was beaten by a huge corporate offensive, as Clinton’s plan was in 1992. Interestingly, when business starts to get hurt, issues move into the public agenda. Several Fortune 500 companies, the Business Roundtable, Howard Baker, Reagan’s former chief of staff, the AARP, Andy Stern of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and the CEO of Wal-mart and General Motors are calling for universal health care. $1,400 of every American vehicle goes to employee health care costs. The Japanese and German auto makers do not have to absorb those costs. Moreover, the public appears willing to go for it too. A NY Times/CBS news poll in March, found almost 80 percent said it was more important to provide universal health insurance than to extend Bush’s tax cuts. Most young people who enter the work force today will be working 8-12 jobs by the time they are 35. Employer health care coverage is becoming a postindustrial relic. The Canadian Auto workers use to laugh at Americans and tell my father, the former V.P. of the U.A.W. at Mack Trucks in Allentown Pa., “Why do Americans not have universal health care like all the other industrial nations? When a person gets sick, they should see a doctor or go to the hospital. We love our health care system!” With universal health care, think how much money the tax payers of West Milford and Greenwood Lake would save by not having to pay for the health insurance of town workers anymore. The time for universal health care in the U.S. is now. Please write your congressman and senators. Jim Geist Hewitt