I agree with David Broder’s July 19 column that a day of reckoning is near from health care, not to mention a legion of other problems facing America. However, when I consider his remedy, I emphatically disagree with him.
Broder advises President Obama not to “encourage his congressional allies to push ahead quickly with plans that pretty clearly are badly flawed and overly expensive.” He advises instead “structural changes that could deliver the kind of reform voters want and might actually be able to afford.”
There are at least three health care crises in this country. They are: 1) inflationary costs of medicines and care, 2) lack of available and affordable health insurance, 3) financial harm to businesses and individuals from the health insurance industry. Our predatory for-profit health insurance and pharmaceutical industries aggravate all three crises.
The reason President Obama is moving ahead with all speed to get a bill submitted sooner rather than later is that he knows he still has momentum from an election that saw him elected by a significant majority looking for health care for all Americans. So if the structural changes Broder recommends would fail to achieve universal coverage, then this is not the kind of reform we voters want.
Would universal coverage achieved with single payer contributions be expensive? Not necessarily. What are the true costs of our current system? For many people the cost of healing causes harm. According to Harvard Medical School, 62 percent of personal bankruptcies are due to health care bills.
Eric Teegarden
Brier
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