Editor, Gazette-Journal:
The Patient Protection and Affordability Care Act is the first step to save our great nation. Affordable health care is an inalienable right of all citizens. We should immediately reject the social Darwinism of our present free enterprise health care system created by the high-profit insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital corporations. Employer-supplied health insurance handicaps our exports by raising their price in the foreign marketplace. This hobbling system subsidizes imports to our country because part of the price of our products is the employer’s health care costs. Over 50 percent of our personal bankruptcies are caused by a medical crisis. Over 50 million citizens have no health insurance and another 50 million are underinsured. Besides causing individual mental depression, insured and paying patients have to subsidize these cases to keep hospitals and doctors financially solvent.
The Patient Protection and Affordability Act is just a starting point. The public option (Medicare for All) was forbidden entry into the congressional discussions. Medicare has 5 percent management costs. Free enterprise insurance companies are screaming murder when threatened with a limit of 20 percent for management costs. "Socialized medicine!" Why not? We already have socialized defense, socialized highway systems, socialized and private educational systems, socialized fire protection systems, and federal and state public health systems all protecting our lives and property.
I would rather have my doctor point out to a well-educated government official which procedures have the best outcome for my condition—national health is their goal. I don’t want a corporate operator telling my doctor what he can or cannot do—raising insurance company shareholder dividends is their goal. "Death panels" is the boogie man of the health care industry. Maintaining comatose cadavers is highly profitable. We need professional counseling preparing our advance directive before we become unable to decide for ourselves.
Jim Renner
Port Haywood, Va.