The costs of health insurance
Re “Healthcare insurers get upper hand,” Aug. 24
I have just read the article on the health insurance industry, and I say “throw the bums out.” The vast majority of Americans are overwhelmed by healthcare insurance costs and co-pays and cannot continue under the present system.
It appears that the insurers came to the table as wolves dressed in sheep clothing.
We are in a perilous time; we all must work together to see improvement. That is not socialism -- just common sense, from which we all benefit.
Gwyneth J. Smith
Escondido
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The healthcare insurers that you quote saying that the new legislation is a bonanza for them are the same ones who have been saying (out of the other side of their mouths) that they will be ruined if there is a public option because they couldn’t compete.
If they have trouble competing, it will be because they might have to give up the bonanza and spend more money providing healthcare.
Donald Schwartz
Los Angeles
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Without a nonprofit legal entity to compete with the insurance companies, affordable universal health insurance for all Americans will never happen.
As long as we treat healthcare as a profit-maker, the insurance companies’ investors will reap the profits and the insured will get what’s left.
Bob Murtha
Santa Maria, Calif.
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The article in The Times should be required reading for the uninformed masses that are so adamant about stopping any affordable healthcare.
It never fails to amaze me how such people will rail against their best interests, taking the rest of us with them.
That there are really a small number of uninformed, uneducated people -- and the Republican Party -- leading the charge to keep the status quo is not as alarming as the fact that the majority in this country who want genuine healthcare reform are not making themselves heard.
Jack Kenna
Whittier
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Foolishly, I put stock in President Obama and the public option.
Clearly, I should have bought stock in the health insurance companies. With my profits, I might be able to afford healthcare.
David Higgins
Los Angeles
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Thank you for your diligent, clear and fact-based reporting about the perfidy of the healthcare insurer profiteers, which is dreadful.
Such reporting is refreshing to see; I hope you don’t suffer for it.
We’re so stunned by the article that we’ve sent the following to Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and Rep. David Dreier:
“Are you as outraged as we are that the obscene profits the health industry has made from denying us coverage have been used to lobby and lie their way to even bigger potential profits?
Not to mention torpedoing single-payer and almost certainly sinking a public option?
What are you, our lawmakers, going to do to bring ordinary people the kind of healthcare programs we’ve been begging you for?”
Don and Judy Chatfield
Claremont
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The American voters who are showing their disagreement with current Democratic proposals are doing so to protect the future of our country for our children and grandchildren.
We did not enter the debate on behalf of or at the request of the insurance industry.
To say we were rallied as a resource of the insurance industry is insulting.
Greg Chambers
Los Angeles