Assumptions lead to half-baked ideas

It would be so nice if we could all be as prescient as Mary Fisher (Sept. 22 Fence Post) is in determining the circumstances behind a cut received from a self pedicure. She assumes that the patient stiffed the hospital and never paid her ER bill. She assumes that the ER visit was at the time of injury.

Perhaps it was because of a serious infectious condition resulting from a few days of just a band-aid and some antiseptic ointment that undoubtedly Ms. Fisher would have prescribed. If the patient had insurance is Ms. Fisher implying that she wouldn't have seen a doctor under the same circumstances? Now that's an assumption that defies common sense but it does dovetail perfectly with Republican-think theory.

Perhaps Ms. Fisher isn't aware that the patient would have been billed full list price for her treatments while the insured patient's insurance company and by default the insured patient) would have been billed at one-third to one-half the rate for the very same treatment. It is hard to imagine any ER visit is limited to a bill measured in the hundreds of dollars as opposed to the thousands that a typical ER visit costs.

This is the kind of thinking that has hampered intelligent debate about universal health insurance. Someone comes to some half backed conclusion based on some incomplete anecdotal paragraph in an article and runs around locked into a "The Sky is Falling, The Sky is Falling" syndrome.

James Prescott

Schaumburg