Dole on Health Care

In your account of a tribute dinner at the Nixon Library (July 24), I read that the organizers decided to “toss the salad” (course) to accommodate main speaker Sen. Bob Dole’s schedule.

He was hurrying back to Washington after meeting with Republican leaders in Los Angeles to talk over campaign strategy (“GOP Presses for Delay in Health Reform Action,” July 24).

In deciding to adopt a position of delaying health-care reform until after the election, Dole said, “We don’t have to do any of it this year . . . Congress meets every year.” Dick Cheney, a relatively new player to the health-care game, agreed. Cheney is a declared 1996 presidential wanna-be and Dole most likely is.

Well that’s just great! The political ambitions of a few will now take precedence over health care for millions of people. Can we expect the Republicans to toss out health care like they did the salad?

ELLIE BERNER

San Diego

Dr. Harry Goldin’s article, “Gatekeepers May Be Hazardous to Your Health” (Commentary, July 11), was both enlightening and disturbing. Who would willingly participate in a health-care plan where the doctors care more about their profit than their patients’ health? Thinking I had all the facts after carefully researching the literature, I recently joined such a plan. It came as quite a shock when my primary-care physician told me, after excruciatingly painful back spasms that required the paramedics to get me up off the floor, that I “had used up my allotment,” and I was repeatedly denied requests to see a specialist. Consequently, the problem has gone undiagnosed. Besides being “unethical” and “dangerous,” capitated plans may, in the long run, cost the system more, as well as extend the patient’s pain and suffering.

MARILYN GRANT

Seal Beach