Letters to the Editor: For-profit healthcare, not the ACA, is to blame for our sky-high costs
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To the editor: When will we start talking about the real reason that healthcare costs so much in the United States (“Sticker shock: Obamacare customers confront surging premiums as Congress dithers,” Dec. 17)?
Our healthcare is so expensive, about double per capita compared to other industrialized countries, because we rely on for-profit insurance to deliver health services.
No other country relies so heavily on that model because the purpose of for-profit insurance is to make money for the insurance company and shareholders. What’s more, our outcomes — things like life expectancy, preventable deaths and maternal and infant deaths — are regularly much worse than peer nations.
Until we stop hiding behind euphemisms and take steps to change, our healthcare costs will continue to escalate.
This country spends enough money on healthcare to provide services for all. But nobody wants to mess with the insurance industry, which has a lock on a significant profit center. And yes, I do understand that moving away from a system that provides so much wealth for so many without providing decent healthcare for the masses will upend and change our entire economy. But something has to change.
Sue Guilford, Orange
