Health Care Quality

* It’s interesting, and indicative of the mentation (or lack of it) that is prevailing these days, that your article on health reform (July 6) failed to mention anything about the quality of health care and its effect on patients.

If we don’t salvage the majority of our current medical care provision system, it will take only two or three years before there is a drastic decline in the health and longevity of Americans. The first group to suffer will be the senior citizens. As their care becomes more and more rationed, their lives will become more and more complicated and shorter.

Nowhere in the article, however, was the patient considered as anything but a consumer, a source of income or of financial expenditure.

MICHAEL H. SUKOFF MD

Santa Ana