Squandered a golden opportunity regarding U.S. health care
Letter to the Editor
South Maryland Newspapers
Friday, Nov. 6, 2009
In the spirit of full disclosure, I support a single-payer national health program. That said, my comments are focused on HR 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act. I agree with Wendell Potter, the former head of public relations for CIGNA, that this legislation could more accurately be titled “The Private Health Insurance Profit Protection and Enhancement Act.”
The readers should know that this legislation was written by the insurance industry, for the insurance industry. We are being mandated to purchase a defective product from an industry that has demonstrated for the past 60 years that it puts profits before patients. Even the so-called public option will be administered by the private insurance industry and will enroll, at most, 6 million people in a multitude of anemic markets; it will not be a robust Medicare-like market at all.
This public option is like sending in a peewee football team to compete with the NFL. It will not compete with the private insurance industry; it will become the default insurer for our sickest, least profitable citizens, leaving the younger, mandated, profitable citizens to enroll in the private plans provided in the exchange.
As Winston Churchill said, “You can count on the American people to do the right thing, but only after they’ve exhausted all the other possibilities.”
Rep. Steny Hoyer, as House majority leader, has squandered a golden opportunity and chosen to hide behind the hackneyed rhetoric of his party — blah, blah, blah, politically feasible, blah, blah, blah.
Dr. Carol A. Paris
Leonardtown, MD