Opinion: Why $32 trillion over 10 years for single payer would be better than our current healthcare system

To the editor: Healthcare punditry has descended into mudslinging. The right, the left and the center are lost in the sea of regretful policy that has morally and fiscally bankrupted our healthcare system. (“Are Democratic and Republican healthcare proposals really equally ‘extreme’?” Opinion, Sept. 19)

Physicians are demoralized and burdened by documentation as no other country requires, especially with electronic health records. When was the last time your family physician had the time to talk with you uninterrupted?

The only “beacon of hope” is with price and profit controls in a single, transparent system outside market forces. The health insurers have muddied the waters; Obamacare was not the answer. We must include physicians in the discussion for a healthcare public utility removed enough from government interference and politics.

The bean counters, including columnist Jonah Goldberg, are not physicians. The $32-trillion tab over 10 years he mentions does not give a complete picture. Extrapolating from a Lewin Group study a decade ago of the cost of providing universal coverage in California, hundreds of billions of dollars a year are lost nationally with our present system.

Yes, we can afford a single-payer system as a public utility.

Jerome P. Helman, MD, Venice

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To the editor: Goldberg misses the mark when he tries to equate extremist Republicans hell-bent on stripping healthcare from millions of Americans with Democrats who are proposing “Medicare for all.”

How is a government-run system so extreme when it exists in some form in practically every other developed economy, and appears to deliver better outcomes at lower costs? Perhaps Goldberg believes that Americans are incapable of doing large, important things, whereas liberals still hold onto the notion of American exceptionalism.

As for the quoted $32-trillion cost over 10 years, Goldberg does not say anything about the offsetting reductions in current insurance premiums, the fact that the scope of the initiative would likely be reduced by the time it became law, and that private insurance would likely continue, albeit at reduced levels, in order to cover things that the government system can’t or won’t pay for.

James Clark, La Cañada Flintridge

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