DEMOCRATS SPEARHEADING HEALTH BILL ARE SPLIT

I wrote this letter to the editor because I'm frustrated by how our legislators favor those who fill their financial coffers. It's clearly evident to me that this Country needs a single-payer health care system. There are 45 to 47 million people in the U.S. who have no health insurance. If everyone was covered we would have a healthier nation. Even though we may have the most advanced medical system in the world, we are ranked 37th in the world for health outcomes. Nay-sayers complain that a single-payer system would "break the bank." It would not! What would break the bank is providing for-profit healthcare insurance for everybody in the Country. The tax credits and funds to provide this service would be overwhelming. The nay-sayers call single-payer socialized medicine. It is not! The same private health care system that we have now would continue to provide the care. In a socialized system, all of the hospitals and all of the caregivers would be on a fixed salary paid by the government. The Veterans Administration's medical care system is socialized medicine, yet it serves our veterans well.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR
N. Y. Times May 30 article: “2 Democrats Spearheading Health Bill Are Split,” compares Senator Kennedy’s preference for a national health plan that looks like Medicare to Senator Baucus’ choice of a bipartisan bill that would include the private, for-profit, health insurance companies.
Senior Republican, Charles Grassley of Iowa, opposes a new government program and declares “we cannot afford the public health plan we have already.” (Medicare)
As a senior, and a physician with 47 years of family practice experience, I’m well aware of why Medicare spends so much. The seniors are the sickest and require the most medical care as a group. Patients too young to qualify for Medicare coverage, use doctors, hospitals and other medical services in far less volume and frequency than the seniors do.
It doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out that a single-payer health care system would cost less or, at worst, no more than a system that included the private, for-profit insurance companies.
Over half of our people and healthcare providers are in favor of single–payer, but the pharmaceutical industry and the for-profit insurance companies have bought our legislators with campaign money and other financial benefits.
No wonder the single-payer plan is “off the table.”

Melvin H Kirschner MPH MD