Health Care System Abuse

* Your article on the demise of rural hospitals due to financial problems was distressing (April 2). It is one more sign of a failing health care system, especially in California. The causes are too numerous to discuss in this response. I would like to inform your readers about a more troubling problem in health care.

Last week, while working in a San Fernando Valley emergency room, I took care of an elderly gentleman with severe vascular disease of his legs. The family informed me that he had arrived in California from his native country only one month earlier. He had obtained emergency Medi-Cal health insurance, which became active the day I saw him.

This gentleman has never worked or lived in this country, yet he has obtained health care benefits on the backs of taxpayers. He will eventually get his vascular bypass and probably return to his country. This is not right. We have made it too easy for others to use and abuse our health system. This is apparently a fairly common occurrence. Foreign newspapers advertise to their subscribers that they can come to California and get treatment for their serious medical problems. The taxpayers need to demand a change in the system. It’s well known that the current Medi-Cal system is a victim of fraud and abuse involving millions of dollars. We cannot take care of the entire world and their health problems. This is not racism, it is fiscal responsibility.

ED LOWDER MD

Chatsworth

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Robert Reich, former secretary of Labor, presented a most comprehensive commentary (“If Not Now, When, for Universal Health Care?” April 2) about our American health system, which is indeed faulty compared to those 17 countries that provide their citizens with superior health care for all their people. We selfishly deny 44 million Americans any insurance. Reich also discussed Hillary Clinton’s quest for a universal health plan, which he claimed was too complicated; I would like to add that the powerful insurance companies bad-mouthed the plan to defeat its implementation.

The insurance industry controls presidents, senators and representatives, plus our own state legislators, and consequently we the American people have become powerless.

MILFORD C. WALKER

West Covina