Letters to the Editor for Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Health care a right, not a reason to profit
With regards to Rep. Bob Goodlatte’s positions on the needed health care reform, I would like to call his attention to the following issues.

Click to send

Much could be saved by eliminating the profits and the enormous bureaucratic overhead of for-profit insurance companies (of which there are reportedly 1,300!), and those significant savings could go a long way toward the coverage of the uninsured who are rationed out of the current health care “system.” Bureaucrats should stay away from the health care decisions to be made by professional providers and their patients! But this must be a requirement for both government (Medicare and Medicaid) and private insurance company bureaucrats.

According to the recent report by the Census Bureau, there were 46.3 million uninsured people in the U.S. last year, up from 45.7 million the year before. An additional 4 million people became uninsured but qualified for public programs. Other data showed that 62 percent of all bankruptcies were due to medical debt of people, most of whom (80 percent) had health insurance (which was obviously inadequate).

The Institute of Medicine reported several years ago that the lack of health insurance had resulted in 18,000 inexcusable deaths every year in our country (some estimates today are much higher), which breaks down to 1,500 deaths per month, or 50 deaths of real individual human beings every day! Thus, since the last attempt at universal health care in 1993/94, the death toll has been at least 270,000! That is much more than the deaths and disabilities caused the Vietnam War, Gulf War, Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined!

Could we just insert a little morality and justice into our health care reform? Could all in Congress simply say, “Let all citizens have exactly the same options of insurance coverage that we — who are serving, and are being paid by, the taxpayers! — have.” That would require no debates over policies of health care coverage, except for the discussion over appropriate subsidies that some individuals and small businesses need in order to be able to pay the premiums.

Again, if the obscene profits would be taken out of the insurance arrangements, that task should not be a heavy lift either.
Dr. ANTAL E. SOLYOM
Bedford

Self-sustaining
Do you really want a public option that’s self-sustaining?

According to a Sept. 12 article in Newsweek by Evan Thomas, the average cost of a Medicare patient in Miami is $16,351; the average in Honolulu is $5,311. In the Bronx, N.Y., it’s $12,543. In Fargo, N.D., $5,738.

If Medicare were self-sustaining, which it’s not, Miami patients would have to be sending in an average of $16,351, while those on Honolulu $5,311, those in the Bronx $12,543, and so on. Without those premiums, how else would a self-sustaining plan have money for the following year?

According to a June 2007 report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, Medicare, as a whole, paid $374 billion in benefit payments for 44 million beneficiaries in 2006, for an average payment of $8,500. If you’re really asking for a truly self-sustaining public option, you’re asking for people to be paying premiums that average $8,500. Is that the case?
MIKE COBB
Lynchburg

For Valentine
I am writing to support Shannon Valentine’s re-election to the House of Delegates.

Like her predecessor, Preston Bryant, she has served us very well, without the burden of rigid partisan or ideological agendas. Instead, both simply recognized problems affecting Lynchburg and Virginia and attempted to solve them. Her reasonableness and ability to persuade others has led to many successes benefiting the city.

We are fortunate to have been represented by such able people. I hope you will join me and many others in supporting her candidacy and returning her to the House of Delegates.
SUE LOCKHART
Lynchburg