The New York Times
Letter to the Editor
February 16, 2008
To the Editor:
Re “Growing Pains of Universal Coverage” (editorial, Feb. 9):
Employer-provided health insurance is seen as necessary in contributing to a state plan, but over the long term it creates more problems than it solves.
Almost everything else a state does to ensure that its citizens have insurance tends to undermine the need for, and the willingness of, employers to continue bearing the burden of providing it.
And by adding 20 percent or more in overhead in the form of marketing, processing enrollments and collecting premiums, private insurance makes costs even more unaffordable.
Both kinds of insurance must be seen for what they are: the Trojan horses of the American health care nonsystem. To be sustainable over the long term, a plan requires structural change in how health care is financed and delivered, and states simply don’t have the power to do this.
Nothing less than a single-payer public system administered nationally will do so.
John Steen
Meadville, Pa.
The writer is the former president of the American Health Planning Association.