U.S. health care? He’ll take France
To the editor:
Thomas Sowell would have us believe that most media discussions of health care are about as realistic as "Alice in Wonderland." In his most recent column ("Alice and the health care debate," Sunday Review-Journal), he says our system is expensive because it's excellent. Case closed.
He takes us from Wonderland to Oz, pure fantasy. A few examples:
He says the main reason for alarm about American medical care is cost. How about the 47 million Americans who have no insurance? That alarms me and my fellow Americans. How many people die from no insurance?
To take one simple example: If you're over 50, the American Gastroenterological Association, the American Cancer Society and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force suggest you have a colonoscopy every five years to avoid deadly colorectal cancer, a major killer. If you have no insurance, though, no colonoscopy. Then, of course, there's the cost shifting of expensive emergency room visits from the uninsured to us, the insured. In short, people who have no insurance are more at risk for death and are a financial drain on others.
Mr. Sowell brags about the number of MRIs we have compared with Canada. Their number, though, as opposed to access to them, is hardly a sign of good medicine. Speaking of Canada, with their paltry number of MRIs and, as Mr. Sowell says, their relatively long wait for surgery (although he makes no distinction between elective and emergency surgery), why is it in a 2000 survey that the World Health Organization rated the Canadian medical system better than ours?
Mr. Sowell talks about the long wait for doctors in countries that have government-run medical systems. This is a sweeping generalization. In France (the top-ranked medical system by WHO) doctors still make house calls in emergencies. My doctor has a recording that says I should call the emergency room.
So much for the excellence of our system. Why is it so expensive? Part is the cost-shifting mentioned above and part may be what we pay doctors. But certainly what we pay for drugs must be a large part. To take one example: The same drugs cost one-third to 75 percent more here than in Canada, and costs are also less in all other industrialized democracies because their governments set limits on what drug companies can charge.
Besides drugs, most studies have found administrative costs much higher in private HMOs than the government-run program, Medicare.
Lastly, there are payments to stockholders. HMOs are, of course, private, and as such have to show a profit.
Not even Dorothy and Toto could believe our system is expensive because we get what we pay for. Even they would know we get overpriced care that is both substandard and entirely lacking for 47 million Americans because it maximizes the profits of the health care industry.
Bruce Allen
LAUGHLIN
Good health
To the editor:
Obama and the liberals in Congress say we need to socialize health care because it is costing too much. Notice that they don't say it isn't working, or that they can point to a single example where an existing socialized medicine system works as well as our current system.
If they really want to fix something that needs fixing, they should be looking at our schools, which are a disgrace from kindergarten through graduate school. I don't expect them to do this, though, because it would quickly become apparent that the teacher unions are a major part of the problem. They will protect unions at any cost, because unions tend to vote for Democratic candidates.
They wouldn't let GM go bankrupt right away for the very same reason. An immediate GM bankruptcy would have released GM from the stranglehold of the UAW.
Owen Nelson
LAS VEGAS
Good deal
To the editor:
If anyone found the Review-Journal's Sunday article about firefighter retirement to be confusing, let me summarize: If you do not work for the government you will work until you are 80 years old to enable the firefighters and other public employees to retire at age 50.
Mike Mathews
LAS VEGAS
Rain, man
To the editor:
In response to your Monday front-page article, "Tucson rainwater harvesting law draws interest, action":
Hooray for Tucson. Harvesting rainwater is a positive and easy way to help the drought. We have been doing it for years at our house.
Everyone can do it. All you need is a large trash can and some buckets strategically placed where the water runs off the roof and you'll get more water than you can use.
Now, pray for rain!
Joyce Vestal
Jim Vestal
HENDERSON
No hope
To the editor:
If Sarah Palin was the hope and future of the Republican Party, the Democrats should be in control for a long time.
Tim Hicks
LAS VEGAS
