Emergency Rooms Closing

The recent headlines announcing closure of more emergency rooms in Los Angeles are a deadly sign of further decline in our structurally diseased health system. These changes in our emergency care will cost literally hundreds of lives as has been documented by studies at the University of California in San Francisco and in Irvine. The deaths will come to rich and poor alike, insurance or no insurance.

The problem has developed because a sizable segment (around 20%) of our people has no health insurance and cannot pay for emergency care. The skyrocketing cost of health insurance simply cannot be borne by these people. The United States and South Africa are the only industrialized nations in the world without a comprehensive national health plan. The suffocating crunch of multibillion-dollar budgets thrown into an immoral arms race has paralyzed the national government’s ability to help.

Our system is hopelessly fragmented into many levels of care. Only the rich get the finest care, whereas, the poor get little or no care. Children do not get their shots, pregnant mothers do not get standard prenatal care, and many people cannot afford office visits. Trauma patients die unnecessarily. In the last decade there has been an alarming trend toward profit as the bottom line in the whole system. This approach does not address the true needs of the community. The truth is that democratic capitalism in the United States at this time is not willing to take intelligent care of its sick people. Our system is sick, the diagnosis is clear. Radical surgery is indicated. We need national health insurance with comprehensive coverage for all.

ROBERT MARTINEZ, R.N.

Reseda