To the editor: Visitor contributor Kim-Lien Nguyen dusts off a drained and roundly disproven libertarian answer to our healthcare financing disaster, arguing that giving customers cash instantly as a substitute of to personal insurers will one way or the other magically “empower” them to “make their very own healthcare decisions and leverage their self-interest” (“Subsidizing insurance coverage simply props up dysfunction. Empower customers as a substitute,” Nov. 20). This assumes that healthcare operates as a really perfect free market and customers and sufferers are all-knowing concerning the product they’re buying when, in reality, the alternative is true.
Does a affected person with chest ache that could possibly be a coronary heart assault actually have time to check and determine on which ambulance service and emergency room they want to go to from a value standpoint? The identical may be mentioned for each main medical drawback. And the sum of money that will be given on to customers won’t ever cowl the prices of care.
What is required is what each different high-income nation is doing, which is yielding higher outcomes and decrease prices than the U.S.: a common unified system of public insurance coverage, maybe “Medicare for all.”
Nguyen additionally argues that “we don’t should accept a managed decline of our healthcare system.” However that’s precisely what is required for our financing of the system to be able to ease the transition to a public nonprofit insurance coverage system, similar to a “managed decline” of our dependence on fossil fuels.
Steve Tarzynski, Santa Monica
This author is the previous president of the nonprofit advocacy group California Physicians Alliance.
..
To the editor: The writer means that giving the cash on to people would permit them to purchase their very own medical insurance plan or pay for healthcare instantly. The issue is, how a lot insurance coverage can $2,000 (or nevertheless a lot is allotted) purchase? Or, if paying for healthcare instantly, what occurs should you want surgical procedure or different hospitalization? Neither of those options are actually the reply.
What the insurance coverage firms don’t need People to know is that the very best (and solely) answer is single-payer healthcare. Weirdly, 32 of the 33 industrialized nations have been capable of make common healthcare work (America is the one one that also depends on insurance coverage firms).
So let’s discover the actual reply. Get the intermediary out of the way in which. See how Europe does it and make it higher for People. We’ll lower your expenses too.
Ritch Barron, Cathedral Metropolis
..
To the editor: Nguyen’s op-ed was intriguing and made me suppose. Sadly, there have been no details or research to again up the opinion. The proposals sound like good concepts, however is there any proof or expertise of them working anyplace?
I’d additionally notice that your complete thought relies on clear pricing for medical providers. That alone could be an enormous enchancment — one which suppliers would battle in opposition to tooth and nail. Let’s see that occur, after which we will discuss empowering residents to make knowledgeable decisions.
Michael Snare, San Diego
..
To the editor: When certainly one of Dr. Nguyen’s sufferers wants coronary bypass surgical procedure and the affected person tells her they’ve solely $1,500 of their well being financial savings account, is she going to say to them, “Come again and see me after you’ve gotten a financial institution mortgage to cowl the remainder of the fee”?
June Ailin Sewell, Marina del Rey
