Letters to the Editor for Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Seize the moment for reform, doctor says
Until most people feel strongly that health care needs to be changed for reasons larger than their own personal insurance plan, health care is unlikely to be reformed meaningfully.

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However, there are other forces pressuring our country, caused by the high cost of health care, that have very immediate and personal consequences to someone in everyone’s family. Sixty-two percent of personal bankruptcies are due to medical costs according the recent American Journal of Medicine article. This is primarily happening to people who have health insurance policies. American jobs are being lost to overseas companies because of the cost of American health care. Companies are laying off workers because of the cost of health insurance, and jobs are hard to find. A large percentage of recent foreclosures have resulted from medical debt. These economic trends drop the value of people’s life savings, which they count on for retirement and emergencies.

If we don’t take advantage of the momentum to change health care in this country now, I firmly believe that, as a country, we will be forced back to this table again soon, with a deeper and more complicated situation on our hands. We can’t afford not to address our current inefficient health insurance system.
Dr. BENJAMIN BROWN
Blue Ridge Medical Center
Arrington

Bigger big government
I have just finished scanning the first 200 pages of the more than 1,000 pages of H.R. 3200, “America’s Affordable Health Care Choices Acts of 2009.” This piece of legislation is historic in its depth and breadth.

It establishes (in Section 141) a “Health Choices Administration,” run by a “Commissioner of Health Choices.” The new government department is patterned after the Social Security Administration (think a new, really big government department with new big government buildings).

This new government department will have the sole purpose of regulating the health insurance industry (whether it is government-paid like Medicare, employment-based insurance or individual insurance plans).

This agency will determine (1) what insurance providers have to offer in benefits, (2) who they offer the benefits to — any one who can pay their premium — and (3) how much they can charge for their plans. (They can’t be making too much profit; that would be unfair!)

And what if you don’t want to buy health insurance? Well, Uncle Sam is going to tax you 2.5 percent of your income (section 401.59B, page 167) for your negligence.

Nobody is going to be happy with this plan. Ultimately, by regulating all sources of payments to doctors, the Health Choices Administration bureaucrats will be making health care decisions that ought to be the prerogative of patients and their doctors.

Who is ultimately going to have to pay for this huge new bureaucracy? We, the people.
LAVERNE SMITH
Lynchburg