Health care reform is sorely needed

United States citizens pay per capita about twice what citizens of England, France, Canada and other advanced countries pay for health care. Still, we get lower life expectancies and higher rates of infant mortality than they do. CIA and World Health Organization data have shown this to be true for more than a decade.

We pay a "free enterprise health care tax." It is regressive and irrational. If you are self-insured and need surgery, you will pay the sticker price, say $50,000. For the same exact surgery, an insurance company will pay the same hospital and doctors a small fraction of the sticker price, say $20,000. For the sin of not having insurance, uninsured Americans subsidize the insurance companies and those they insure. These disparities are usual, not unusual.

We pay the "free enterprise health tax" because we have no choice. Price of gas goes too high? Take public transit. Price of corn too high? Eat other veggies. Yankee Stadium bleacher tickets $500 each? Watch the game on television. But if you need brain surgery, you cannot substitute a less costly tooth extraction. You need brain surgery, regardless of cost. If your doctor prescribes a brand name medication, you are not equipped to argue for a less costly alternative, as you do not know the alternatives. It is amazing what prices the market will bear under such circumstances.

President Obama is going to tackle this national economic cancer. The people who are extracting the billions upon billions of excess dollars from us for health care will of course inundate us again with ads that champion our "right to choose." This time I hope we do not choose to continue this extraordinary and unjustified tax. We need reform.

Alfred Y. Kirkland Jr.

Elgin