This email from Public Citizen was in our mail box yesterday.

You might want to sit down.

Earlier this week, the Business Roundtable — a trade association made up of the CEOs of giant corporations — sent a letter to Congress.

What do they want to do?

• Increase the eligibility age for Medicare.

• Make access to Medicare dependent on income.

• “Modernize” — a.k.a. privatize — Medicare.

In other words, the millionaires who run the largest corporations on Earth want to slash the social insurance programs the rest of us rely on.

You know what — never mind what I said about sitting down.

We have to stand up.

We have to stand up for the basic protections that have kept generations of Americans from living out their lives in sickness and poverty.

We have to stand up to people who have more money than they could ever need yet still want to squeeze even more from those who have never had enough.

The Business Roundtable’s leadership consists of CEOs from AT&T, Boeing, Dow Chemical, Exxon Mobil, General Electric, JPMorgan, Walmart and other mega-corporations.

What do they know about what it’s like to worry if you can retire with dignity and security?

You know the facts:

• The United States is practically alone among developed nations in adhering to an immoral (and ineffective) for-profit health insurance regime.

• 48.6 million Americans — almost one of every six of us — is uninsured.

• 45,000 Americans a year — 123 a day — die because they don’t have health insurance.

• The private health insurance industry eats up $350 billion a year in administrative costs, waste and profits.

• A single-payer, Medicare-for-all system would cut drug prices by 40% or more.

• Inflated medical bills are the number one cause of personal bankruptcies in the United States.

• The majority of doctors and the American people support a single-payer, Medicare-for-all system.

Here’s the Business Roundtable Letter.