Opinion - Letters to the Editor

POSTED: Tuesday, Jun. 30, 2009

Column defended insurance not care

Roger Stark's guest column that stated health care reform will not work is, to my mind, typical of health insurance industry "bait-and-switch" tactics. He writes "access to a waiting list is not the same as access to health care," and I certainly agree. Yet he continues "we are truly at the brink of losing what is left of our choice and market competition in health care in the United States," which I don't agree with, and which is obviously absurd.

Stark's - and the private health insurance industry's - argument deliberately confuses health insurance with health care.

The two are not the same; often, they are opposites. No proposals before Congress would take choice of doctor away from the patient, although private health insurance systems and HMOs often do exactly this. Of course levels of care depend on how much we are willing to spend. Yet the U.S. already spends much than any other industrial country on health care, and has still fallen to 37th on standard measures of national health.

We must stop letting the for-profit health industry pull the wool over our eyes: I believe they are not for choice in health care, they are dead set against it.

Bob Marshall

Bellingham