In response to Marcia Angell’s Op-Ed piece on single payer, the New York Times received a number of supportive letters to the editor:
Prescriptions for an Ailing Patient
October 19, 2002
To the Editor:
Re “The Forgotten Domestic Crisis,” by Marcia Angell
(Op-Ed, Oct. 13):
The solution to the American health care crisis is a single-payer system. It is painfully clear that our health care system is a business run for profit and not for thebenefit of the patient. Few Americans now believe the myththat the market distributes health care in the most efficient or effective way.
If the Democrats want to regain their credibility and moral high ground, they should stop accepting money from any interest that might prevent them from speaking the truth about this. They could then fight forcefully for a single-payer system. High risk, high reward: Americans might wholeheartedly give them the White House in 2004.
JANET HEROUX
Princeton, N.J., Oct. 15, 2002
To the Editor:
Re “The Forgotten Domestic Crisis,” by Marcia Angell (Op-Ed, Oct. 13): As a psychotherapist with many patients in their 20’s, I can attest to the fact that not only do most of them not have any health insurance, but they also do not expect it as a condition of living in this country.
Dr. Angell is correct about the remedy, but I fear that we cannot rely on those who profit from the current system to redistribute the “profits.” Yet that is exactly what would have to happen if all of our citizens were given adequate
health insurance.
Don’t those who pay taxes and vote in this country deserve at least the minimum of essential services?
JUDITH GREENE
New York, Oct. 13, 2002
To the Editor:
Marcia Angell (Op-Ed, Oct. 13) is correct when she says the health care system “would be front and center in this fall’s political debate” were it not for national defense issues and a looming war with Iraq crowding political agendas. Why can’t we kill two birds with one stone? Why not have a quid pro quo health care system?
Instead of a national single-payment system as Dr. Angell proposes, provide free coverage for all health care needs in exchange for mandatory military or civil service. Not only would this save money, but it would also promote unity, nationalism and provide better health care coverage than many Americans already have.
PAUL LIEBESKIND
Dumont, N.J., Oct. 13, 2002
To the Editor:
Marcia Angell (Op-Ed, Oct. 13) recommends a single-payer system similar to those in Britain and Canada. This prefers a nationalized managed care collective over the dominant H.M.O.-managed care collectives.
Managed care fails for the same reason that nationalized industrial collectives failed in Western Europe. Ill-informed centralized authoritative decisions result in
poor-quality products, unhappy customers, inflation and erosion of infrastructure – problems that in varying degrees afflict the British, Canadian and the American
corporate-style managed health care collectives. There is a better way.
ROBERT W. GEIST, M.D.
St. Paul, Oct. 14, 2002
To the Editor:
Re “The Forgotten Domestic Crisis,” by Marcia Angell (Op-Ed, Oct. 13): In addition to placing health care increasingly out of the economic reach of individuals and businesses, our commodity approach guarantees that the pool of insurable individuals will continue to shrink, thereby undermining the very essence of affordable insurance.
Insurance works because a lot of people pay premiums and not everyone uses services. The more healthy people insured, the stronger the system. A single-payer, broadly financed health insurance system is hardly socialism; it is the only way health care can become universally accessible and even remotely cost-effective.
SUSAN POOR
San Francisco, Oct. 15,
2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/19/opinion/L19HEAL.html?ex=1036034356&ei=1&en=dc3b077de7e982ea