Solving UCI Medical Center’s Dilemma

UC Irvine’s dilemma of indigent patients and their inability to pay medical bills is shared by all hospitals, in Orange County and throughout the country. Inasmuch as UCI serves a larger number of these patients here, its situation is more perilous.

Until such a time that it is an accepted nationwide fact that the problem is shared not only by hospitals and medical providers but by all citizens who must pay larger insurance costs because of it, it will continue to progress.

The problem is clearly financial. There is no paucity of physicians, and many thousands of Orange County families sustain their livelihoods by hospital employment.

The solution, therefore, is for the county to obtain additional funding. It might best be discharged if UCI Medical Center returned to what it was originally meant and built to be, a county hospital.

This institution then should be responsible for virtually all of the indigent medical care in the vicinity. It can thus serve patients and students alike and maintain its research capability.

Funds must be allocated by appropriate governmental agencies to enable those of us who cannot afford medical insurance to obtain what was given to all Americans as their birthright 25 years ago, quality medical care.

DR. MICHAEL H. SUKOFF, Santa Ana