Letters to the Editor: Tech won’t fix American healthcare’s deeply ingrained problems

To the editor: The collection of pieces on how tech is going to solve America’s healthcare problems is putting the cart before the horse (“Reclaiming American leadership in healthcare innovation: The ‘Make American Health Tech Great Again’ call to action”; “Stop waiting, start building: A national call to modernize healthcare,” Aug. 24).

Of course, technology and artificial intelligence will improve our health system, but that is not the biggest problem our country faces in healthcare. That problem is the decades-long stubborn resistance to establishing universal coverage in this country. The United States is the only high-income nation without national health insurance. The Los Angeles Times piece cites the White House, the Department of Government Efficiency and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz — all complicit in one way or another in throwing 12 million Americans off their health insurance once the coming Medicaid cuts kick in. We are heading in the wrong direction as a nation. Tech will not fix that.

Moreover, private equity, Big Pharma and for-profit health insurance conglomerates have now made the extraction of wealth the prime reason for the existence of our healthcare system instead of caring for patients. Technology and innovation are always crucial, but their effectiveness depends upon the foundation of the financing system on which they are built. Innovation in technology will be effective for everyone only if it is built on universal coverage in a unified system of public financing, like “Medicare for all.” Otherwise, we can expect more of the same: huge profits for a wealthy few while the health of Americans continues to deteriorate in contrast to other wealthy nations with better outcomes and far lower costs because of universal coverage.

Steve Tarzynski, Santa Monica

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To the editor: Does anyone really think, if all the proposed suggestions here were implemented, that healthcare premiums will not continue to rise at their current rates?

What is it about every other advanced country’s healthcare systems, which have consistently proven more able to provide better overall outcomes at significantly lower costs, that seems so alien as to be omitted from any consideration?

Conversely, why do no other advanced countries think emulating our country’s healthcare system is a rational choice?

No amount of naïveté could lead one to conclude the answers are due to concerns about best medical practices.

Ted Rosenblatt, Hancock Park