Health Care Debate

Kudos to Parachini. During the early part of the 1900s, every other industrialized nation had established national health plans which covered all the people. Here in the United States, the richest country in the world, approaching the 1990s, we still do not have adequate medical coverage for all Americans. Parachini observes that “a cadre of health experts on the nation’s health care system is slowly coming to the position that some kind of national health insurance plan is almost inevitable by the turn of the century, and more likely by the mid-1990s.”

In the interim, we in California should urge our assemblymen and senators to endorse Bill AB 2020, authored by Assemblyman Dan Hauser (D-Arcata) and sponsored by the California Senior Legislature and Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy. The California Health Insurance Program will set up a comprehensive package of health benefits for all Californians through private health insurance carriers with premiums paid by employers, private persons and the government. Hawaii has such a program.

CARL M. LEVIN

Los Angeles