Letters: Socialized health care is the only real rational solution
Oct 1, 2009
Socialized health care is the only real rational solution
Dear Editor,
At the risk of sounding boring I will repeat myself. Socialized medicine is the only rational solution for health care reform in this country. Responses to my previous article have been entertaining in their knee jerk, right wing reactionary way. It is almost like they get their opinions directly from Fox News programs.
Judy Berkman describes she and her husband's frequent frenzied escapes from the horrible socialized medicine countries, apparently barely escaping with their lives to get back to their beloved US health care system. I am happy for them that they are among the few in this country that can afford the best health care we can deliver. Sadly more than half our citizens are either uninsured or underinsured. Those are the people who pay the price for the Berkmans' getting the best.
I too have experienced socialized health care first hand. I lived and worked in England for two years. The care I got there was equal to or better than the care I have gotten here. I got to choose my own doctor, change doctors at will, received excellent care for the serious but not life threatening surgery I had done there, and no family members had to give up their jobs to feed me in the hospital.
Berkmans' characterization of family members being required to attend to patients in the hospital might have occurred in China or some other dictator driven agrarian country, but most certainly not in England, Canada, Australia, Germany or any of the other 30 some democratic and industrially developed countries with health care superior to ours. Her paragraph on that reeks of demagoguery; but then that is the prescribed tactic of the Republican right wing in their attempts to undermine health care reform.
The end - holding on to their wealth at the expense of the rest of the citizens' well being - justifies the means. Here I am generalizing about a group, not addressing the Berkmans personal ethics. The patent lies and programmed responses of those most avidly opposed to health care reform are designed to preserve the status quo, because for that minority the system works quite well.
As a business owner I struggle to afford good health care, but cannot afford to give the same care to my many deserving employees. Health care costs and poor availability are symptomatic of a country with its values upside down. No less than Warren Buffet, one of the world's richest men, has decried our system where his secretary pays a higher marginal tax rate than he does.
It is a fact that our health care costs are 50% higher than those of any of the 30-plus industrialized countries whose health care is rated substantially higher by their citizens than ours is by our citizens.
Berkman claims that a major part of the cost problem is lawsuits and bizarre judgments. Good demagoguery because it drives a knee jerking emotional response, but simply not true. If all these legal settlements were eliminated, that would take care of 1 percent of the health care costs in this country. On the other hand that number does not take into account the CYA (Cover Your Ass) costs in health care that are a response to those lawsuits. A good way to take care of that is a government controlled approach that limits unjustified testing.
Do you hear and see the irony on both sides of these arguments? Berkman wants private enterprise to run the health care system for a profit, but then wants the government to control your ability to sue (tort reform). I say that tort reform will not directly solve the problem, but have to admit that indirect costs of lawsuits are part of the excessive costs of health care in the United States.
That is just a small example of the complexity of the health care reform issue in our country. That is exactly why we need a deep, disturbing and continuing conversation combined with immediate reforms to find our way out of the health care crisis we are in. If the goal is readily available health care for all members of our society, then there is no doubt that we have tried the current system and it has failed.
If you are of the opinion that delivering excellent health care to all of our citizens simply is not a priority, then you and I will continue to disagree in the extreme. That is what I feel is the crux of the argument. It's a NIMBY thing. Not in my back yard, or "I've got mine, what you get is your problem". I profoundly disagree with that perspective. It is our problem and solving it is critical to the American Dream we are all so fond of.
Dr. John Quick has owned and operated the Animal Care Center in Morgan Hill for 28 years
The Bullet Train black hole is coming, ready or not
Dear Editor,
The California bullet train will be profitable when pigs fly, but will make the subsidies taxpayers fork out for Amtrack and Caltrain seem small in comparison to the motorists' tax dollars we throw down the bullet train black hole.
Joe P. Thompson, Gilroy
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