I'm writing in response to Congressman Chris Lee's recent letter on healthcare, which I found riddled with political double-speak. The healthcare reform debate is hardly a "rush" as Mr. Lee suggests. We've been discussing universal healthcare for almost 100 years, and other countries have long since gone ahead with it. The facts are the facts; the only question is, what are we going to do about it?
There is no reason to continue dragging our feet in favor of the status quo. The American public is currently paying $2.5 trillion dollars a year for healthcare that only costs $900 billion to provide. That's what I call a swindle, and the vast majority of that money is being used to line the pockets of insurance company executives and the bureaucrats who are charged with making sure you get as little healthcare as possible. Contrary to what insurance lobbyists will tell you, Americans are less healthy than people in other countries that have universal healthcare, and we pay more for what we do get. We need to demand fair value for our money.
Mr. Lee, instead of being accurate about the various reform proposals, has decided to try and scare people with claims of increased costs and "government" control of healthcare decisions. This is simply false. Under a public health insurance option, treatment decisions would be made by doctors instead of the big insurance conglomerates that make them right now. The system is similar to Medicare, which has proven to be one of the most efficient and inexpensive healthcare systems in the world. The idea that we can trust the government to take care of our parents and seniors--as well as to control an arsenal of 6,000 nuclear weapons--but we can't trust them to administer an insurance plan for the rest of us is so absurd it's almost laughable.
Congressman Lee's preferred solution, on the other hand, seems to me like re-decorating the living room while the house is burning down. He suggests computerized medical records and billing transparency, while leaving in charge of the system the same wealthy executives who have made an art out of billion dollar profits at the expense of gouging the sick and injured. That's not reform. I encourage everyone to learn about the healthcare reform proposals themselves, and not let scare tactics result in the insurance industry continuing to steal us blind.
Adama D. Brown
Warsaw, NY
