Clinton Health Reform Plan

* The Administration’s health care reform plan seeks to force as many Americans as possible to buy health care coverage exclusively through government bureaucracies called health alliances. Only a single health alliance would be available in a given area.

Initially the Clinton plan put all individuals and workers in firms of less than 5,000 employees in these government-run purchasing pools. Now, Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen says the Administration will negotiate the ceiling down to cover only businesses of 500 or even 100 employees (Jan. 27).

Five thousand? Five hundred? One hundred? The Administration is in search of a magic number: the point at which enough voters are freed to seek coverage from all carriers to permit the capture of as many involuntary participants as possible.

No wonder. From a consumer’s point of view the alliances are a Frankenstein monster, the result of stitching together the worst aspects of the public and private sector: bureaucracies and monopolistic cartels. Both lack the incentive to be either cost effective or consumer-friendly.

What’s right in Clinton’s health reform plan--health care that’s always there--doesn’t require a Frankenstein solution. It requires common sense and a focus on solving existing problems while not creating new ones.

ALAN KATZ, Immediate Past

President, California Assn. of Health

Underwriters, Tarzana

* Guy Molyneux argues that excessive health care cost and denial of insurance coverage are reason enough to institute socialized medicine (Opinion, Jan. 30). I must point out that his demands for more coverage and thus more health care at a lower cost contradict each other. They conflict with the law of supply and demand which says that prices must rise as demand increases.

His demands cannot be met except by government fiat, price controls, and the forceful taking of value from one group for the benefit of another. People possessing satisfactory health care now will be disappointed with the outcome, as will the doctors coerced to provide more of it at a lower cost.

MARK POLLINA

Torrance

* A carefully orchestrated campaign again threatens the enactment of a national health care plan. As in President Truman’s day, we are again hearing ominous threats of “socialized medicine”; we are now being told that there is no longer a health care emergency, as suddenly health care costs have stopped their precipitous rise, but only until a health care plan has again failed.

Wake up, America; one-third of our people have no health care coverage; infant mortality in this country is shamefully high; insurance premiums are escalating beyond the average wage earner’s means; many with pre-existing illness can only obtain coverage at inflated cost; as a result of the economic downturn, those that have lost their jobs have also lost their coverage, and those who were long-time employees now have “pre-existing” illness when they try to get new insurance.

As a retired surgeon I strongly believe that although we do have the world’s best in medical care, it is only available at present to probably half our people; is this what we really want? Under a national health care plan this care would be available to all who need it; good doctors would still be good doctors; money is not their primary motivation; good patient care, and the satisfaction of knowing that we have truly helped the sick are more important.

JERRY M. PINTO MD

San Diego

* Robert Rosenblatt’s Jan. 28 article on the Wellstone-McDermott bill omits an essential aspect of the single-payer plan. That trillion-dollar tax bill over three years will be far less than three years at the present cost of insurance premiums, which do not cover the preventive and long-term care included in single-payer. Fewer than 10% of taxpayers would pay more in taxes than for present insurance premiums. Moreover, businesses large and small will be relieved of costly paperwork.

It’s not revolutionary and it’s not socialist. It’s an extension of Medicare, a successful government-funded system that requires only 2% of its budget for office overhead, as against 20%-25% in the insurance industry.

ROBERT HANSEN

Carpinteria