Health care ills not just private sector problem

After reading Alfred Kirkland's letter on health care May 3 I feel compelled to address the errors in his so-called reform of health care. The need for real reform is obvious but the push today in Washington, D.C., is to take over or socialize the entire country's health care.

His letter refers to a "free enterprise health care tax." In my 30-some years dealing with health care I've never heard of that term. The letter states that "if you're self-insured you pay a sticker price of, say $50,000, while an insurance company will pay a fraction of that cost." Nonsense. I've known many people who are self-insured and when they tell the hospital and doctors they intend to pay cash the cost of the procedure drops by 35 to 40 percent. I have done the same thing on a much smaller scale. The provider's costs are lower with no paperwork or waiting for insurance companies to pay the bill.

Real reform needs to address issues such as cost shifting - where privately insured people pick up the difference for all the illegal immigrants, Medicaid and Medicare and uninsured and underinsured people. And tort reform. Trial lawyers are constantly searching for everyone and anyone they can sue, from hospitals to doctors, insurance companies and corporations. Huge judgments, in turn, mean higher premiums.

Most rational people agree that health care reform is desperately needed, but attacking it as just a private sector problem is illogical and just plain wrong. Our current federal government has not fixed the banking crisis, the faltering economy, the auto industry or anything else except spending our future wealth and printing money like there's no tomorrow. Before these politicians try to "fix" anything else lets see some results on those issues.

Terry L. Gavin

Elgin