LETTERS

Re “The diagnosis,” Editorial, June 22

Your editorial clearly delineates the fundamental problems with our obviously broken healthcare system. Delay in fixing it should not be an option, as the problems will only get much worse as time passes. As President Obama has stressed, this is not just a healthcare problem but one that greatly impacts our economy.

Real reform must include a strong national “public option” plan as an alternative to private insurance, as it will be a powerful incentive to the private insurance companies to bring their fees and costs in line, which is of course why they and their allies in Congress are fighting this so strongly.

Members of Congress should realize that the public is ready and waiting for major reform. Those who are simply obstructionists should rightly be held up to scorn and voted out of office.

Gertrude Barden

Porter Ranch

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Your editorial, though largely accurate, had one glaring omission: the central deleterious role of the health insurance industry itself as one of the primary uncontrolled cost drivers.

The health insurance industry has no reason to exist. The insurers do not provide healthcare. They broker healthcare, and they collect an unaccountable and usurious fee for doing so.

Jeff Goodwin

Los Angeles

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I find it remarkable that you were able to prevent those forbidden two words -- “single payer” -- from sneaking into the discussion, with the same rigidity a United States senator displayed when he barred single-payer advocates from even entering a public hearing he was conducting on healthcare.

What is everybody afraid of, that the people will discover the dirty little secret that the healthcare industry in corporate America is by definition a profit-making enterprise?

Until the profit is taken out of this one business in which life is at stake, there will never be affordable healthcare for everyone.

Just this one exception, please. Is that too much?

Saul Halpert

Studio City

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First and foremost, we have to change our paradigm of treating symptoms and not causes of illnesses.

To do that we have to reform the Food and Drug Administration (a wholly owned subsidiary of Big Pharma) and do away with direct-to-consumer advertising of drugs. To reduce healthcare costs, we have to concentrate on prevention.

William Ash

Santa Monica