Two letters on single payer in Newsday
Newsday
Letters to the Editor
September 30, 2007
“A healthy debate” [Editorial, Sept. 23] dismisses single-payer systems because “they would give consumers very little choice.” That is dead wrong. The same choice seniors now enjoy under Medicare - free choice of doctor and hospital - would continue under a single-payer system, or Medicare for all. Most private insurance companies confine choice to their own list of participating doctors and hospitals.
We now spend on health care twice as much per capita as any other country, enough to cover everyone and preserve the choice that counts.
Dr. James S. Bernstein
Rockville Centre
Regarding your editorial, you are absolutely correct that none of the health care proposals so far offered by the leading presidential candidates really address the serious problems of cost and access.
On one crucial point you err: These plans offer consumers only a “choice” of health plan, something that few if any consumers care about. What they don’t offer is the choice consumers want: the ability to choose their doctors and their hospitals. Instead, the private insurers on whom these plans depend increasingly limit just such choices. A single-payer plan such as that offered by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is, contrary to your assertion, the only plan that would offer consumers the real choice they want.
Leonard Rodberg
Editor’s note: The writer is professor and chairman of the Urban Studies Department at Queens College and co-director of Community Studies of New York Inc.