Universal Health Coverage
Re “The Symptoms of a Sick Society,” Commentary, April 13: John Balzar provides a good accounting of the crisis in health-care coverage in the U.S. But it’s time to move beyond this. As he suggests, a government-run, single-payer system is the only way to achieve universal coverage and good outcomes without increasing per capita spending. We must now begin to address the obstacles to enactment of a single-payer system.
The principal impediment is the influence of the corporate middlemen who siphon off tremendous amounts of the money intended for health care but add little or no value to the product. As Americans learn more about how their money is being wasted they will be increasingly willing to accept the challenge of confronting the insurance industry.
Gerald Gollin MD
Loma Linda
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Balzar’s compassionate description of the shabby health care our uninsured people experience sounded vaguely familiar. Where had I read before about long lines for a diagnosis, long waits for procedures and a general indifference to the plight of the patient individuals? Of course -- those were reports from the United Kingdom and Canada, where everyone is served by government health care. Evidently, Balzar thinks those services are better than ours because all patients are entitled to the same miserable care.
Justifying that opinion by finding that such places have higher life expectancies is disingenuous, as most comparisons of the U.S. with individual European countries are. Any valid comparison would include the whole of Europe, including Russia, or else one could easily pick a grouping of our states to get a proper population sample.
The lesson we should learn from Balzar’s commentary is that the more government gets involved the worse the result will be. Why is this so hard to understand? Are we not able to compare how we are treated as a customer of government services (think hospital ERs, the IRS and the DMV) versus one of private enterprise (the store next door)? In my opinion, we should replace Medicaid and Medicare with medical savings accounts and use the savings to partially provide for the currently uninsured.
H.R. Richner
Costa Mesa
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One need go no further in Balzar’s diatribe advocating universal health care than “so far in George W. Bush’s presidency, 1.4 million more Americans have become uninsured” to realize his comments are less about health care than about the underlying political motive of attacking President Bush. How about simply saying “in the past two-plus years”? National health-care policy is a complex issue involving many players on both sides of the aisle. Each side has proposed solutions with merit. Balzar just doesn’t like any solution short of socialized medicine.
Balzar concludes that U.S. per capita health costs are less than universal health-care countries Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Sweden, but he disingenuously ignores the long waits and dangerous rationing of health services in those countries.
Kip Dellinger
Los Angeles
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The Balzar headline says we are a sick society. So what? We are the world’s only “stuperpower” and we are a nation of rights. And one of these rights is the right to not have universal health care. And I don’t think any one of us is willing to start down the slippery slope of relinquishing rights.
Robert Wilkins
Apple Valley
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We will never have universal health care as long as corporations run our care. Perhaps when it becomes unprofitable, things will change, but “the state’s five largest health maintenance organizations had stockpiled reserves totaling $3.15 billion as of Sept. 30. That was $2.2 billion more than they needed to meet the minimum standards of financial health mandated by the state Department of Managed Health Care,” according to The Times (Business, Dec. 6). Corporations control all our governments. I’m in favor of capitalism, but it has to be controlled.
Mary C. Thomas
Garden Grove
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More and more Americans under age 65 -- including 20 million children -- are without health-care coverage. Our schools are a shambles. And Yale historian Paul Kennedy has “checked all the way back in history, and ... just can’t find a parallel to [the U.S.] that spends more on its military than the combined total of the next 14 biggest powers” (“U.S. Finds It’s Lonely at the Top,” April 13). Guess we all know that we can’t do everything, but it’s sure great to know what our priorities are. “Boy, are we powerful.”
Helen Maurer
Mission Viejo
