Letters, The New York Times, May 22, 2011
Re “Health Insurers Profit as Many Postpone Care” (front page, May 14): How more scathing an indictment could there be of the insurance industry’s commodification of the nation’s health? In a faltering economy, the health insurers have rung up record profits, rewarded shareholders with new dividends and are demanding double-digit premium increases for fear of possible higher costs.
Is health a commodity to be sold for profit, for bonuses and dividends, or is our nation’s health a responsibility of our government? Can we not now, or ever, see the need to replace this needless, costly, money-sucking, claim-denying middleman, this so-called health insurance industry, with a single-payer government-administered system?
HERBERT BENGELSDORF
Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., May 14, 2011
The writer is a retired psychiatrist.