Finding Better Ways to Fund Health Care
After thinking long and hard about the health-care system in America, I have come to the conclusion that we have a great health-care system, but receiving health care through work has to be eliminated. It distorts the labor market and causes individuals to work for certain companies because they offer a better health-care policy. Also, that companies are allowed not to pay anything makes no sense.
The most logical solution is the enactment of a health surcharge based on consumption. Government would collect the tax. Individuals would receive a voucher for a standard health-care policy that would be handled through insurance companies. This would end cost-shifting and would be an automatic wage increase for most.
David Lee Bastian
La Mirada
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Here’s a solution to the more-than-100-day grocery workers’ strike, a solution that would benefit the workers, the customers and the grocery chains. We need a health-care system in which private physicians and private hospitals will be able to provide the care we need at a cost we can afford. And the only way that can happen is with government controls on the pharmaceutical industry and health insurance for everybody in one common-risk pool. Giving still more perks to the wealthy in a multitiered system through “health-care savings plans” is the wrong remedy.
Universal health insurance is not socialized medicine. Nobody is advocating for nationalized hospitals, no one wants to put doctors on state salaries. We just want a fair and reasonable system where health-care dollars go to provide health care and not waste, fraud and bloated corporate profits.
Felix Schwarz
Irvine