The price of private insurance

Re “Not-their-fault insurers,” Opinion, Feb 24

Ezra Klein explains clearly why it is reasonable for insurance companies to try to deny benefits to their clients who become seriously ill. Insurance companies are profit-making corporations operating in a market economy trying to outdo their competitors. But Klein’s solution is to try to force insurers to operate as though they were charitable agencies. It strikes me as a Timothy Treadwell approach to healthcare. Treadwell befriended grizzly bears and felt that the bears would reciprocate his kindly feelings toward them, but they were, unfortunately, not parties to this agreement and killed him instead.

Klein would like the insurers to behave in concert as a kind of Medicare-lite. But if we want them to behave like Medicare, we would do better to make Medicare universal and stop trying to make insurance companies into something they are not. This might have the further benefits of eliminating shareholder dividends and executive mega-salaries as well as providing better healthcare earlier in life, thereby reducing the costs of Medicare later in life.

Donald Schwartz MD

Los Angeles

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Klein does not carry his discussion to its logical conclusion. If the purpose of health insurance is to pool healthcare costs, then the profits of the insurance companies become another cost to be pooled. Therefore, any system that relies on for-profit insurance companies will be more expensive than a nonprofit, single-payer one. That is why we need to eliminate insurance companies and shift to a government-run, single-payer system.

G. Murray Thomas

Long Beach

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Klein nicely underscores the madness of the current discussions of healthcare. He would have a system in which everyone gets health insurance for the same price.

What is the justification for charging the same premiums to smokers and non-smokers? To the morbidly obese and the fitness buffs? It is madness, saddling those who attempt to live a healthy life with the costs of indulgences we forgo. But politicians and opinion shapers seem determined to ignore these problems as they promise that we can have medical care from the provider of our choice at a reasonable price, paid by someone else.

Arthur O. Armstrong

Manhattan Beach