Health Insurance Coverage
Re “This Is Not Your Father’s Barbecue Grill” and “An Anemic Rate of Health Coverage,” July 4:
These juxtaposed stories with photos ironically illustrate a systemic rift in the social contract that transcends inequities in health insurance coverage. A yuppie plays with a $40,000 grill in the backyard of his upscale home. A mother cradles her sick child in the waiting room of a downscale health care clinic.
The haves barbecue while the have-nots stew.
JON KAISER
Claremont
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In spite of our robust economy, the traditional system of employer-provided health insurance is in decline, as the numbers of uninsured increase by 50,000 per month here in California. Medicare is threatened by decreased benefits and increases in out-of-pocket expenses, which may impair health care access due to lack of affordability. Because of changing attitudes toward the welfare system and immigration, MediCal is diminishing as our safety net for the impoverished. Thus far, attempts at incremental reform have failed to fill in the gaps in care. Our health care system is crumbling.
Studies have continued to demonstrate that we can provide comprehensive care to everyone, without spending any more than we are at present.
The means to accomplish such reform is no secret. We merely need to accept the principle that has been effective in many other nations: establish a single, universal health insurance program, with a global budget and with public administration. Under such a model, our private health care system would thrive. Free choice of physicians and hospitals would be returned to patients. Competition for patients would be based on quality, since cost, as a market force, would no longer be an issue.
The need for comprehensive reform is not in question, but we do need to ask ourselves why we have not placed on the bargaining table this proven model of cost containment that will provide comprehensive, quality care for everyone. Isn’t it time to open the discussions?
DON R. McCANNE MD
San Juan Capistrano
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I highly commend Suzanne Gordon for her excellent commentary (July 6) on the decline in the quality of medical care, as exemplified by the short time doctors can spend with their patients in the current HMO-type climate.
However, there is an alternative to her suggestion that universal care is the answer. A great deal of money is available from the armaments area. The Center for Defense Information in Washington (run by ex-Sen. Dale Bumpers and retired high-ranking armed forces officers) asserts that we would be perfectly safe spending about only half of the $300 billion per year that we do on “defense” (translation: pork barrel and payoffs to contributors from the defense industry). This $150 billion per year could well go into socially useful areas such as health care, education, fixing my potholed street and other infrastructures. It’s time the public demanded that Congress and the president throw off the yoke of the military-industrial complex and use such huge expenditures for more useful things.
STANLEY MARCUS MD
Encino