Debate rages on, even in home stretch
Get back to single payer
Now that the threat of filibuster is gone, let's get down to business and discuss what we wanted all along -- a single payer health care insurance plan that has no premium, no deductibles, covers everything including hospital, doctors, nurses, surgery, tests, drugs, dental and all things health care. The military has single payer and health care should, too.
Trillions went to the casinos on Wall Street; now let's see a $100 billion a year for health care, something we really do need.
Every person in the country needs health care coverage and many have none. No more millions for the CEOs who deny coverage to the very people who need it the most.
We want a strong public option just like Barack Obama promised during his campaign.
GARY AMSTUTZ
Lake Isabella
Bad experience in Canada
Do not select government health care if it is anything like Canada's. A dear friend in Canada recently passed away. She felt ill in February and March, and starting near the end of March, for six straight weekends, tried to get admitted to Whitehorse General Hospital. She was finally admitted May 5 and was diagnosed with a touch of pneumonia, gastritis, general infection and her kidneys were only functioning at 41 percent.
She was released on June 8, even though she had not improved since her admittance. Her doctor could not figure out what was wrong. She was losing weight rapidly and not retaining nutrients. In mid-August she was sent to Vancouver, B.C., for an MRI and three biopsies. The results of the biopsies and MRI were not available until after her death on Sept. 9, at the age of 70.
Is this the health care you want?
This same lady was on her feet most of her life as a cook, and as a result, had problems with her knees. In 2003 it took nine months to get an appointment with a specialist to evaluate her knees, then another six months before the surgery was scheduled in Vancouver.
I definitely don't want that type of health care for my family or myself. Do you? Let's push for something better. We need reform, but the current health care push is not the correct answer. Why does it need to be rushed through? Are they afraid we will read it and see the flaws?
TOM CRANDALL
Tehachapi
Germany not so great after all
The individual who wrote about the great socialized health plans in Germany should stop making a fool of himself by lining up behind every idiotic plan that President Obama and the socialist Democratic Party present ("Better off in Europe?" Nov. 27).
This president from day one has rammed bill after bill down America's throat, spending billions of dollars in programs that do not work and never will. Why should anyone who isn't deeply in love with the president think that this bill, all 2,000 pages of it, will be different?
How could anyone honestly believe that another huge government program, which still leaves around 20 million people without coverage, is fraud-free? How gullible can a person be?
I guess the writer is ignorant of the fact that the Democrats voted down a Republican amendment that would require anyone using this government health plan to prove that they are citizens of the U.S.
Since this individual has basically the same health insurance that I have, he should read his bill again -- the insurance company has contracts with doctors and hospitals on how much they will pay for all types of medical treatment and his wife's hip operation bill was only a negotiations fee and not the bill paid by the insurance company.
America has the greatest hospitals and doctors and some of the highest cancer survival rates in the industrial world. I have personally heard about the failures of the German plan from Germans both here and in Germany.
DON HUNT
Tehachapi
Still paying bonuses
In the Dec. 7 Californian, one letter-writer announced, "I will be joining Medicare soon, and I'm glad that my medical treatment will not be in conflict with a huge bonus awaiting some CEO." Unfortunately, the writer is wrong.
There are 6,000 lobbyists from pharmaceutical companies in Washington, D.C., making sure Part D (which pays for prescription drugs) will continue to have prices far higher than are charged in Canada and Europe, which are illegal to import. A California Medical Association report found that California insurers made more than $4.3 billion in profits in 2007 and that several HMOs paid their CEOs at least $1 million annually.
The CMA sponsored a bill that would have required health plans to spend at least 85 percent of their annual income on health care.
AUDREY COCHRAN
Bakersfield
