We've been overrun with letters over the past few weeks covering just about all of the bases on health care reform. We have several antagonists we can choose among: insurance companies, Big Pharma, President Obama and Democrats, on and on. Some of these letters still might show up in the paper over the weekend.
The economy and business productivity would benefit from accessible and affordable health insurance. People would be freer to open their own businesses and become entrepreneurs if they did not have to worry about leaving their employer's health insurance behind.
Also, for those in their 50s and 60s with significant work experience who find themselves laid off or re-engineered out of a job, the opportunity to become a consultant or launch their own business could be a much more realistic option. Insurance benefits through COBRA are frequently too expensive for those laid off with families.
Many workers stay in their current jobs, not just because of the current economy, but also because of the potential of losing health insurance for themselves and their families. If people had a reasonably priced public option for health insurance, they would be less likely to stay in a job that they hate and where they feel stagnant, unfulfilled and less productive.
I am in private practice where I specialize in job-related stress and career transition. Fear of losing one's health insurance is one of the top reasons for not changing jobs.
Steven D. Mullinix, Ph.D.
Licensed Psychologist
Chapel Hill
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The current president’s recent remarks questioning the honesty and integrity of our physicians are appalling.
What we all need to recognize is that this president will ridicule and deride all private-sector industries in his efforts to socialize our economy.
The danger we face is that we may already be at the tipping point where those who are dependent upon the government for services and lifestyle support outnumber those of us who actually pay for those services and support.
With the actions of ACORN and other like-minded activist groups, those dependents will have control of the ballot box and continue to vote for those candidates who provide more and more benefits for themselves. In essence, they can vote themselves a “raise.”
We are on a very treacherous slope.
Greg Thompson
Cary
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One of the top issues for Congress to decide in this year’s health care debate is the so-called public plan option. This would create an affordable, government-backed insurance plan as an alternative to buying private insurance.
To me, these big insurance companies make too much money off of our getting sick. It seems like they are always denying claims or giving you the run around. That’s why we need a public plan option to keep these companies honest. If they are doing the best they can, why should they be worried about a little healthy competition?
I urge the N.C. congressional delegation to make sure that the health care bill has a strong public option to help people in our state afford to see a doctor or get a prescription filled.
Laura Wickwar
Raleigh
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Is a government-run health care system necessarily bad? A good model for what a public option looks like is provided by the Veterans Administration (VA) hospitals, which American servicemen and women use. According to a RAND Corporation study, the VA outperforms most private-sector hospitals and has the highest patient satisfaction of any healthcare provider in the U.S., though the cost of VA health care is 30 percent lower than the per-patient cost of Medicare. Even Bill Kristol acknowledges that, “We give [veterans] first class health care.”
Nevertheless, Democratic Sens. Max Baucus and Kent Conrad, in secret backroom talks with Republican senators, have stripped a public option from the health care bill.
If senators oppose a public option, they support the insurance companies. With no public option, there is no health care reform; there is merely insurance reform. And insurance companies are no friend to the consumer. Wendell Potter of the Center for Media and Democracy reports that insurance companies in 1994 paid claims equaling 95 percent of premiums collected. Now, just 80 percent of premiums are paid in claims; 20 percent of premiums go to shareholders, fat CEO salaries, and marketing. This is expected from an industry that makes its profit by denying your claims.
Grant Steen
Chapel Hill
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I had an interesting experience recently. I had a situation in which I needed to see a doctor. I didn’t have an appointment but didn’t want my situation to worsen and have to later go to the emergency.
I stopped by the doctor’s office and asked if they had a cancellation. They said no but that they would see me if I didn’t mind waiting. I was treated with respect and care. I evaluated my situation and had the cooperation of the medical staff. The decision was between the two of us. No government interference. Had the government been in charge, my case would have probably been denied because I’m over 80 years of age.
No government take over of health care, please!
Nita S. Norton
Raleigh
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I cannot believe the extent to which your July 28 editorial “Here, and now” ignores the facts related to the health care bill proposed by President Obama. Even CNN Money has published the truth in an article titled “5 Freedoms You’d Lose in Health Care Reform.” Please wake up as to who Obama really is and stop misleading your readers to promote the agenda of the most radical president ever.
Here are the five freedoms you’d lose:
1) Freedom to choose what’s in your plan.
2) Freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, or pay your real costs.
3) Freedom to choose high-deductible coverage.
4) Freedom to keep your existing plan.
5) Freedom to choose your doctors.
This list does not even include freedom to continue living when you are elderly and ill. Per the language of the bill, the government will then determine whether you should die because you are too expensive to keep alive with treatment private insurance would have approved.
Clearly The N&O does not understand the unprecedented threat Obama poses to freedom, the concept responsible for American exceptionalism and our prosperity.
Jonathan Anders
Raleigh
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I recently learned of H.R. 676, the United States National Health Care Act. Please provide an in-depth feature article about this act.
There has been little substantive discussion in the media about a single-payer health insurance option — every time it is raised, opponents scream "socialism" and all discussion stops. How can we, as a country, intelligently decide what we are going to do about our national health care fiasco, when we dismiss alternatives with inflammatory and unsupported characterizations?
Please present to your audience this viable option — it is no more socialism than is Medicare. Please hurry. As a country, I fear we are losing the will to make a change. And no change is acceptance of the status quo.
Susan Musico
Chapel Hill
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Usually you hear someone say that they have insurance and yet when they need a procedure their request is denied. President Obama used just such an anecdote in his press conference the other night. What of the examples where insurance is abused or misused? How often do people have operations or similar expensive procedures done and then seek more care because they are not satisfied with the results?
The insurance company picks up the tab initially and if the insured wants to have more surgery or more testing at a later date, the company gets billed again. Is this not wasteful? If insurance did not exist, you wouldn't see these second and third consultations. I never hear about this sort of insurance abuse.
Robert Peele
Rocky Mount
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I do not understand why insurance companies have such sway over procedures that should be decided by doctors. Insurance companies take money from us, then deny payment or drop us for pre-existing conditions. If I put money in the bank, I expect to get it back with interest. How do these huge insurance companies get away with taking money for years and giving nothing back?
Why is Big Pharma charging me hundreds of dollars for 21 days worth of pills? Don’t tell me R&D (research and development) needs the cash. Big Pharma is akin to street pushers. They are selling maintenance drugs, not cures.
Take a look at the balance sheets of the pharmaceutical firms. The drug industry made billions in the United States. It spends 30 percent of its take on TV ads for diseases that did not exist five years ago. How much money is invested by Big Pharma in finding a cure for cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes? According to some stats, 13 percent.
Insurance companies and the drug firms need to be reined in. The only way to do that is change the system for all of us.
J. V. Womack
Durham
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The writer of the July 27 letter “We know it’s broken” said of universal taxpayer-funded medicine, the consequences of change are uncertain but should still be tried. I propose they are very certain.
In Oregon and Massachusetts, universal plans and mandates exist now, and they are failing miserably. One woman was refused cancer medicine by the State of Oregon, but they wrote her a nice letter offering assisted suicide. That’s much more cost-effective, if life is not the object of treatment. Walter Reed Hospital, a government-run facility, is falling apart at the seams.
It is an accepted fact that taxpayer-funded, debt-ridden Medicare and Medicaid are bankrupting the U.S. at an accelerating pace. In Europe, over 35,000 people died in one month because the weather got a little hot in summer 2003 and statist European medical systems couldn't keep up!
The consequences of these power-grabbing political schemes are far from uncertain.
Michael March, M.D.
Raleigh
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If the Blue Dog Democrats were actually serious about fiscal responsibility and not just using it as an excuse to block meaningful health care reform, then they should be insisting on bringing the young and healthy into our Medicare system. This would shore up Medicare and slash health care costs.
In addition, there would be no more wasted premium dollars on bloated administration costs, marketing, lobbying, misinformation campaigns, lavish CEO and executive compensations and insatiable corporate profits.
Until they demand that the Congressional Budget Office score a single-payer system of Medicare for all, they'll continue to be all bark and no bite!
Lou Meyers
Durham
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Two words that can derail the efforts to achieve a meaningful reform of our health care system: rationing and socialism.
Rationing of health care takes place every day in the most inhumane way. Health care is rationed indirectly when uninsured individuals, and some insured alike, lack the resources to cover copayments, transportation to the health providers and other expenses associated with their care.
Some of these people are unable to fill prescriptions for medications that some times are essential for their illness. The claim that a reform that includes a public plan would result in rationing of care is ludicrous. The rationing of care with a public plan would be humane and non-discriminatory.
Socialism implies to some an inefficient, wasteful system. In fact, this description fits the private health insurance system well. That system carries administrative expenses in the order of 24 percent and is laden with high advertising and management compensation costs. Medicare on the other hand has an administrative cost of about 3 percent, does not advertise and does not have compensation packages for its executives comparable to the private health insurance sector.
Perhaps Medicare should allocate more funds to deal more effectively with fraud, sometimes committed by health care institutions and providers.
Gustavo S. Montana
Chapel Hill
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In the early ’70s, N.C. Blue Cross and Blue Shield was pushing most all companies to sign up all employees for full health care insurance to be 100 percent paid by the employer.
I wrote BCBS saying that if people had no insurance premium cost, and no cost of health care, that use of the medical system would be unlimited and medical costs and insurance costs would skyrocket.
The president of BCBS wrote back telling me I didn't know what I was talking about. Now, the federal government intends to force through the same type free-for-users program as a law.
Let's see. They say Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are all broke and that the costs of these entitlements are out of control, so the feds are intent on adding a gargantuan entitlement on top of the ones they can't pay for now.
And they can't fix the housing catastrophe they facilitated, either.
Amusing, isn't it?
Bill Price
Morehead City
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As a retired insurance executive who was involved in group and individual health insurance for 40 years, I think some of these items should be considered and implemented.
1. Enact tort reform, thus reducing frivolous lawsuits. This would not only reduce the enormous malpractice rates of doctors and hospitals, but also would reduce unnecessary tests performed to protect the doctors and hospitals from being sued.
2. Push incentives for wellness to businesses and corporations. One grocery store chain has not had an increase in its health insurance rates in years by paying its employees to lose weight, stop smoking, etc.
3, Publicize outcome studies. The Mayo Clinic has rates much lower than many areas in the country and is always rated as a top-five hospital. It gives excellent treatment without excessive testing, surgery, etc.
4. Eliminate graft and fraud in Medicare/Medicaid where huge savings are possible.
If we do not have the world's best health system, why do Arab sheiks reserve whole floors at the Washington Duke and send their sick princes to Duke University Medical Center for treatment?
Robert A. Ross Jr.
Durham
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Once again President Obama speaks when he does not know the facts. I have worked in the pharmaceutical industry for 30 years, and if Obama thinks that large pharmaceutical companies will continue to spend billions of dollars to research, develop and bring to market drugs that can be sold by competitors as generics within seven years, then he is wrong.
Where does he think these wonder drugs come from — generic drug companies? Not so. Why is he so opposed to any business or person that makes a profit? I have become so sick of our elected "representatives" making poor decisions that I may soon require a “wonder drug” to keep from going insane! Hope he doesn't run big pharma out of business before they develop one.
Robert Smith
Clayton
