Debate rages on: Must we insure all?
It's supply and demand
No one person has mentioned the real cause of our less-than-perfect health care system: the law of supply and demand. It operates in every other facet of our economy.
Here's the supply problem: We've got a lack of qualified doctors, surgeons, support staff, etc, creating a noncompetitive medical "marketplace," resulting in high prices and fees for services and procedures.
Here's the demand problem: Too many patients (with too few of them paying). Only a portion of the population -- those with health care insurance -- end up subsidizing others that can't afford health care insurance, or know they can get the insured to subsidize their costs.
Hospitals inflate prices of those with health care insurance to cover the costs of the uninsured, and the insured individuals and insurance companies end up paying for those that either can't afford insurance or are stealing medical services from the broken system. The illegals and uninsured citizens go to emergency rooms where they know they cannot be denied health care attention.
Here's the solution: It makes no sense to limit medical school enrollments. Let's accept any and all qualified applicants, regardless of race, gender, etc.
And rather than the government dictating and controlling your destiny, work toward changing the tax code to allow a tax credit to people to buy their own health insurance through the free market place. With millions more covered, this will force insurance companies and medical facilities to fight for your business, thus resulting in lower costs.
KEN BAIRD
Bakersfield
Leftists hand out rights
I'm always amazed that leftists like Wendy Wayne can be so high-handed in parceling out the rights of others in a cause they happen to love. ("While we debate, millions still excluded," Oct. 25.) The Constitution (musty old relic that it is) gives the U.S. government no power to enact a universal mandatory health care system. Statists (most Congressional Democrats) seem to believe that their office gives them unlimited power to enact whatever they can get away with. This, despite their oaths to support and defend the Constitution.
As for Caroline O. Reid's Forum column on the same page ("Health-care post cards from Europe"): There is a recurrent drumbeat on the left to the effect that we can extract the good parts of socialized health care, but somehow avoid the bad.
As government takes greater responsibility for medicine, quality of care -- wait time, hygiene, state of the art technology -- deteriorates. In addition, the vitality of the nation is sapped away. European Socialist states have chronically higher unemployment than the U.S. Were it possible to "extract" the good of a social system and leave the rest, I have no doubt the Europeans would now have zero unemployment, alongside their wonderful public health care.
TERRY QUINN
Tehachapi
Check out Obama poster
I read with interest that Wendy Wayne found her health care provider "exemplary" and her care "exceptional"amounting to an "incredibly positive experience," which, I would suggest, is the experience of many people.
Her laments as to inadequate or no health care coverage, people on fixed income and escalating health care costs are real and need to be addressed.
However, wouldn't it be best to address those problems instead of reinventing the wheel and placing in jeopardy the best medical system in the world? Her experience as an administrator and the huge increase in coverage cost affecting the budget managers is but a harbinger of things to come, if her recommendations are implemented.
To fully understand the thrust of this opinion piece is to notice the poster of President Obama on the wall behind Wayne.
JACK CLARK
Bakersfield
What cost benefit?
Some numbers: The health care proposals in Congress are thought to cost $850 billion to $1.1 trillion. Eighty-five percent of the population is already insured. The plans are estimated to leave out 6 percent. That leaves 9 percent to be covered at the above costs.
Using these numbers, I figure each 1 percent of persons covered is going to cost us between $94 billion and $120 billion.
Just where is the cost-benefit here?
BOB BRALEY
Bakersfield
We must care for all
Caring for all our citizens is what we, the American nation, should be about. It is not about freedom of choice. If one cannot afford medical care, one has no freedom of choice.
The spiritual and social foundation of our nation are very much a part of who we are. We can dissent on many issues, but on the life and well-being of our citizens, we can not, nor continue to claim righteousness.
ERNEST LOPEZ
Tehachapi
Goverment insurance
The National Flood Insurance Program began in the 1970s to protect against catastrophic losses suffered by homeowners and insurance companies in the case of a flood. The government determines where the flood zones are and underwrites the insurance policies, which are administered by private insurance companies, such as Farmers, State Farm, etc. And floodzones can change.
Before 2005, insurance companies were quite lax in their administration of the NFIP. If you bought a home in a floodzone, you were rarely required to have flood insurance. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, and since then insurance companies have been understandably diligent about requiring all new homes and refinanced homes in a floodzone to have flood insurance.
I received a call recently from an elderly lady who lives in Tehachapi. She told me a story of how she is required to have flood insurance after a home refinance. If the insurance company has no information on how a home may be protected against flood damage, it will charge the maximum possible rates. In this woman's case, over $6,500 for a year of coverage. If she cannot come up with the money, she will lose her home.
If the government can throw a woman out of her home when they don't even run the insurance industry, what can they do when they set the rules for health care? What if they do control health care, which President Obama has said he wants to do?
ALEJANDRO GONZAGA
Bakersfield
