Ask a Canadian about healthcare

Re “Universal healthcare’s dirty little secrets,” Opinion, April 5

Michael Tanner and Michael Cannon’s screed against universal healthcare coverage deserves publication of a piece balancing their extreme views and cherry-picked review of “the facts.” I’ll restrict my criticism to their claim that “simply saying that people have health insurance is meaningless,” and their citation that there is “no evidence” of a relationship between lack of insurance and ill health.

To the contrary, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences has determined that lack of health insurance in and of itself is responsible for 18,000 deaths per year in the U.S. The omission of this well-disseminated determination should allow readers to make their own judgments about the objectivity of the authors.

DAVID KERNS M.D.

Oakland

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I find it quite interesting that the old tactic of criticizing universal healthcare because of “long wait lists” continues. The only time I hear this is from conservative American columnists. My experience in spending time with Canadians here and abroad is their almost absolute lack of criticism of their own healthcare system and their dumbfounded looks when I tell them about ours and its faults. Canadians simply can’t understand how the wealthiest nation in the world can’t provide healthcare to all its citizens.

Is it at all possible to try to do what Canada and Britain do, but do it even better?

DAVID P. MCCLARY M.D.

Traverse City, Mich.

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The attack on universal healthcare coverage is a study in petulant inanity. While repeating the usual tired canards favored by “I’ve got mine, to hell with you” Libertarians, Tanner and Cannon present their points from a position of denial that there is even a healthcare crisis in the first place. They remind me of quarreling children whose idea of advancing an argument is to close their eyes, stick their fingers in their ears and sing, “La, la, la, la, la.”

GARY GEGAN

Culver City