Health-care decisions:

Our readers wrote letters throughout 198 7 expressing their viewpoints on a variety of issues. Here are condensed versions of some of those letters. We appreciate their taking the time to share their viewpoints and look forward to hearing from you in 1988.

The addition of Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian’s new heart transplant program provides an opportunity for the Orange County community to examine the myriad of ethical, legal and financial issues in health care policies and practices.

In Orange County in 1986, an estimated 2,000 women received inadequate prenatal care. When pregnant women do not get adequate prenatal care, they are likely to have babies who require intensive medical intervention. We are certainly not buying more health for the community with policy making that focuses excessively on high-tech care.

More than 35 million Americans have no health inmsurance or inadequate health insurance. Most of these people are working. While I don’t believe that we have the resources to provide everyone with everything, I do believe that if the public were more involved in the decision-making process, our health care resources would be more fairly rationed than they are now.

Through my role with California Health Decisions, I have had the opportunity to hear thousands of Orange County residents discuss their health concerns. Repeatedly, people have expressed their frustrations with a system that can provide limitless technological interventions--yet cannot meet their basic needs.

ELLEN B. SEVERONI

South Laguna