Parallels with car insurance

It is time to control the auto insurance companies. We need a law to force them to insure everyone, including those with histories of drunken driving arrests and others found to be responsible for numerous traffic accidents. The law must also force the premiums for those with poor records to be affordable, and therefore force the burden of coverage on the insurers whose large profits are unconscionable.

The elimination of profits that now benefit millions of citizens, through the shares they and their retirement funds own, will help redistribute their unfair wealth. Or, if the insurers choose to continue to profit from the poor addictive and accident-prone souls, all they need to do is to increase the premiums on all the other people insured. The public is too stupid to realize this is a hidden tax on them.

Finally, the government should operate its own insurance company or fund nonprofit cooperatives to force the private enterprise companies to be competitive. To do so, insurers will merely need to stop earning profits, paying taxes and investing in growing their company because the government insurer pays for financing the "government option" with taxpayer dollars, pays no taxes and does not distribute profits to stockholders. With luck this will force all the private enterprise insurers into bankruptcy.

For health care reform, against public option.

Roy L. Harmon

Geneva