Catastrophic Illness Coverage

Your editorial (Feb. 15), “Good Beginning,” examines President Reagan’s catastrophic health insurance for the elderly: at first, it praises it and then spends almost the entire column crying how inadequate it is.

Of course, it is “far too little,” as the editorial says, but it is a step in the right direction of help.

A Wall Street Journal article (Feb. 10) says when worrying about the passage of the bill . . . “a gleeful Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), long an advocate of cradle-to-grave national health insurance, was calling hearings before his Labor and Human Resources Committee and chiding Republican leaders in Congress to ‘listen a little more’ to their own health and human services secretary and a ‘little less to the insurance lobby.’ ”

Well, it seems President Reagan did so. So, why not fully support the bill, pass it and then as time goes on make efforts to widen it?

Twice before (not by this President), similar proposals were introduced to Congress, but the concept never went far enough for liberals while conservatives disliked it to start with. The net result was that nothing was done about this terrible problem.

People who worked and scrimped all their lives for a little nest egg lost everything when severe illness struck.

Let the bill be a “Good Beginning” and not repeat the mistakes of the past. This legislation is a must.

JOHN H. NEWMAN

Los Angeles