Indigent Health Care Is Inadequate

Your article, “Health Problems Loom Larger as Jobs Are Lost (Aug. 17),” certainly illustrated the recession’s effects on local residents who are without health insurance.

However, the article overlooked the major problem regarding Orange County’s indigent health care system, that county sponsored medical services and facilities are inadequate for those without either the means to pay for their health care needs, or insurance through their workplace.

It is not simply that the physicians of Orange County refuse to care for those without insurance. This is untrue.

Without adequate county-sponsored medical services, who has been caring for the medical needs of those without insurance all these years in Orange County?

It has been the private physicians and private hospitals, along with the UCI Medical Center which, contrary to the popular belief, is not a county-owned and -operated hospital.

Unquestionably, there is no other major county in the state where private physicians care for a greater percentage of the indigent.

To address these inadequacies, the Orange County Medical Assn. (OCMA) in concert with the California Medical Assn. (CMA) continues to develop and support reasonable solutions to the plight of the uninsured and underinsured.

The CMA supports both Senate Bill 248 and Proposition 166, which would systematically provide health insurance for these individuals, while the OCMA continues to be instrumental in the development of the County Organized Health System, a public/private endeavor to restructure the local safety net to more efficiently provide greater access to care for our medically indigent residents.

PETER G. ANDERSON, MD., Secretary-Treasurer, Orange County Medical Assn.