Health System in a Free Fall

Ronald Brownstein’s “Rising Number of Uninsured Is Causing Safety Net to Unravel” (Dec. 9) does a good job of cataloging the problems with the U.S. health-care system, including the ever-increasing financial devastation of our existing doctors and hospitals and the shame of 41 million Americans without access to health care because they can’t afford insurance. He rightly concludes that “much bolder thinking” is needed than President Bush’s do-nothing tinkering with the tax code but wrongly states that “a lot more money” is needed to fix the situation.

The U.S. now spends far more per capita on health care than any other country; we don’t need to spend more money. What we need is to adopt one of the well-proven national health-care systems in use in other industrialized countries. Canada’s “single-payer” system is one good model, but there are certainly others. The important thing is to achieve universal coverage, fair and reliable remuneration to doctors and hospitals for every patient they treat and effective cost control. Lots of other nations have done it; it’s not rocket science.

Stacy Rosenbaum

San Diego

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Brownstein’s column basically pleads for more money to save the nation’s “safety net” rather than coming to grips with the fact that cheap labor is not cheap. The true cost of cheap labor is transferred from employers to taxpayers. Millions of illegal aliens, such as Mixtec workers who are “younger, poorer and more likely to be in this country illegally” (Dec. 9), have skewed the lowest income levels from merely being poor to Third World poor. Why hire employees at a semi-decent wage with health-care benefits when you can hire illegals at minimum or sub-minimum wages without any benefits?

The cycle has become more vicious as honest employers are undercut by those who hire illegals. They must now choose to hire illegals or go out of business altogether. This then dumps more and more people onto the safety net that they once were holding up. The end result, at least in California, is to spread even thinner those dollars to those who should be getting them, as witnessed by headlines like “Cuts Target Ill and Aging” (Dec. 9). To provide real benefits to a safety net, get rid of those who don’t belong in the system in the first place.

Harald G. Martin

Anaheim

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Re “Universal Coverage Will Take Universal Sacrifice,” Commentary, Dec. 9: After spending 20 real-world years as an “evil” insurance executive, I always look forward to the utopian meanderings of your health insurance guru, Jamie Court.

Court has recommended a health-care delivery system that promotes the oxymoronic idea of organized labor overseeing cost efficiencies; asks hospitals to “submit to a public process that determines standardized rates” for treatments; recommends that employers “break ranks with an HMO lobby” to allow for government administration of health care; and asks that insurers/HMOs “agree to limits on profits and strict government regulations of premiums and coverage.”

Although all the above very much concerns me, I have an idea. Court should run a trial program in Santa Monica and let us all know how it works out.

Tom von Gremp

San Clemente

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Here we go again. Universal health-care insurance for all. Suppose every man, woman and child in California is covered by insurance paid for in a variety of ways. Utopia for HMOs, doctors, nurses, hospitals, etc.? Not if they no longer exist. Health costs have skyrocketed because the demand for health services has far outstripped the supply of those services. So we have many without insurance, yet those with insurance have found the quality of health care in a free fall. Appointments, waiting times and, yes, even tragic errors point to a system in decline. Will universal coverage fix all that? Or really exacerbate the problem?

Ask the Canadians. Their wonderful insurance system is fine up until the time you get seriously ill and actually need timely care. The quality of health care in Canada is as bankrupt of services and money as the U.S. system is about to become.

The shortfall of professionals -- that is, doctors, nurses, technicians, hospitals and the like -- is a ticking bomb. Let’s do all we can to open up the medical schools. Keep the public and private bureaucrats and the trial lawyers on the sidelines as much as possible. Universal quality care should be the goal. Debate over universal insurance as the only solution is a blueprint for mediocrity or worse.

Al Brezo

Irvine

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The time may be approaching when the federal government must either federalize health care and pension plans or face civil unrest. The time may also be coming when governments at all levels must make difficult choices between capitalizing current expenses (read inflation) or raising taxes to meet current expenses. I have no hope that any of these things will take place until there is no other choice, because no system of government that depends upon a vote of the people can make difficult decisions in the absence of an external threat.

Kenneth L. Perry

Newport Beach