Guess what — insurance companies are not in the business of providing health care. Their business is making money for their shareholders and top executives. What they do is administer payment for health care — a task that governments do, too, but governments do it without sucking out multi-billions of dollars in profit and waste due to excessive paperwork.
Insurance companies (and the legislators they have bought and paid for) think they’ll scare us by asking, “Do you want a government bureaucrat making decisions about our health care?”
Please, tell me how having an insurance company bureaucrat making the decisions is one bit better.
Another bogus argument is that care will be “rationed.” Isn’t it obvious that it is rationed right now, on the basis of insurance coverage? The uninsured man who knows he can’t afford leukemia treatment decides to just go home and die.
They also say we will suffer long waits for treatment. How about 14 years for an MRI? That’s how long I waited while I was a part-time worker with no insurance.
No matter how smart, caring and hardworking our doctors and nurses are, I can’t see how the U.S. will ever have a health care system that is rational, efficient, just, compassionate or effective as long as for-profit corporations hold it hostage. If the Democrats’ “public option” insurance proposal squeezes insurance company profits — or perhaps puts them out of business — I’ll shed no tears.
In poll after poll, the majority supports the inclusion of government in managing health care. Will our legislators give us what we want and need? Or will they make protection of the insurance industry their priority?
PATRICIA BUCK
Elizabethton
Thanks, Patricia! Right on! And Snad published a letter the same day!
Stimulus ‘waste?’
I was amused by the article in the paper July 5 claiming that many people are upset about the “waste” of money generated by the recovery.gov signs that are being displayed at project sites that are being funded by the federal stimulus plan.
Obviously, these fiscally frugal folks feel the people employed in the businesses of designing, manufacturing and installing signs do not need economic stimulus as badly as the rest of us.
SANDRA GARRETT
Elizabethton
Thank you both. Speaking your mind is a good stimulus plan!
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