(I highlighted the strongest part of the letter, IMO, as well)
(From this week's Sylva Herald, Sylva, NC)
Support public option as part of health care reform
To the Editor:
I am a retired physician who was in practice for more than 30 years in Atlanta.
During that time I devoted at least 5 percent of my time to public medical service with the state of Georgia’s Children’s Medical Services and was director of its Ear, Nose, and Throat Clinic. I saw first hand the tragedy of lack of medical care among indigent people of Atlanta. I also took my training at Grady Memorial Hospital and saw what havoc lack of medical care can do to a sector of our society.
When I go to the Exxon service station at the crossroads in Cashiers and see a large glass jar with a sign asking for donations to help a fellow citizen of Jackson County cope with their medical bills, I think how can this happen in America? A country that can fight prolonged expensive wars but let their own people languish and die due to the high cost of medical expenses. How did we get in this situation when every other industrialized nation is able to give all of their people adequate medical care? What are our priorities? How can we tolerate members of Congress who deny proper legislation for even a public option in our system?
The mantra of many politicians when discussing health care is that we have the best medical care in the world. Someone with basic facts of our system should stand up and say “No, that is not true.” The United States pays twice as much yet lags behind all other wealthy nations in such measures as infant mortality and life expectancy. A 2008 report by the Commonwealth Fund ranked the United States last in quality of health care among the 19 compared countries. The Institute of Medicine notes that “Lack of health insurance causes roughly 18,000 unnecessary deaths every year in the United States.” A 2009 Harvard study found more than 44,800 excess deaths due to lack of health insurance. The World Health Organization ranked the U.S. health care system as the highest in cost and 37th in overall performance. Our life expectancy is 42nd in the world behind all G5 nations and after Chile and Cuba. Our infant mortality is 32nd in the world. We have at least 45,000,000 citizens who have no medical insurance coverage.
What is the solution? We all need to urge our Congressional representatives to vote at the very least for a public option in the upcoming medical legislation.
What is a public option? It is a government non-profit insurance program that is able to negotiate with providers of health care for the best price and quality. It would compete with our present for-profit health care insurance companies. The public option would have no restrictions regarding who could join, and no preexisting condition clauses. It in a way would be like getting a library card or enrolling in a public school. We have a public option in education, mail, security, fire, transportation, scientific research, libraries, travel, and recreation to mention a few of the free enterprise system advantages we have. Why can’t we add medical care?
A more bold solution and one I personally favor is a single-payer system. There seems to be little anger over Medicare among its recipients. A single-payer plan would be like a Medicare for all.
Contact Congress and let them know how you personally feel. A majority of Americans favor a public option. Don’t let special interests groups like health insurance and pharmaceutical companies through their lavish campaign donations be the dictating and deciding factor. We should and can have the best medical and health care in the world but not by continuing our present system.
Support the public option and demand that your Congressional representative vote for one.
(CATAMOUNT MAN BLOCKED OUT LETTER WRITER'S NAME FOR PRIVACY)
The Declaration lists a whole bunch of reasons we declared our independence... and taxes only one reason. AND it's not that the colonies were against the taxes... but, the fact that they were imposed without their consent. If the colonies were represented in Parliament... the taxes would have been fair and just and the colonies wouldn't have had a case.
