Letters to the Editor
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Dec. 21, 2008
Responses to “Health care reform: We can’t afford to wait to fix this broken system” and “There is a cure available,” by Dr. Oliver Fein,” Dec. 14.
Stabilize primary care
I agree with the AJC editorial that pooling all our children in one consolidated system of health financing could solve many problems.
Even among families with insurance, children must often defer needed care when their health plan changes rules, raises costs, drops a physician or terminates the employer’s contract.
Effective primary care needs stability and continuity in the patient-doctor relationship, and it functions best when the families have freedom to choose their doctor or clinic.
A universal, single-payer system would — for less money — bring us closer to these goals for children.
Why not extend a universal single-payer system to all Americans?
Dr. Oliver Fein’s commentary provided good reasons why the National Health Insurance Act offers a sensible way forward.
Dr. HENRY S. KAHN
Kahn is a professor emeritus at Emory University School of Medicine.
Single-payer system works
As a board-certified internist, I concur with Dr. Oliver Fein’s idea of a single-payer system.
I have seen many Georgia patients with strokes and myocardial infarctions that could have been prevented if they had access to good primary care. Helping these victims fit into a broken health care system has been frustrating to say the least.
Although born and raised in the United States, my medical education at McGill University in Montreal gave me a chance to observe the Canadian single-payer health care system.
While it is not perfect, it is far better overall (and less expensive) than what we have here.
Let’s put the dollars that would otherwise be spent paying administrators back into the health care system and enact a single-payer system.
Dr. SUSAN HENDERSON
Henderson is a physician at Grady Health System.
And the downside is …
Dr. Oliver Fein, in arguing for a single-payer health care system, states that eliminating the $400 billion private health insurance industry would enable us to cover the uninsured and do away with co-pays and deductibles for most Americans. But think of what we would lose if that industry vanished!
Hmmmm … can’t seem to think of anything.
Dr. ANNETTE BERNARD
Bernard is an Atlanta physician.