Can’t do nothing about health care

Craig Conn’s “Beware the Payment Advisory Board” letter appeared immediately above Froma Harrop’s “Modern America Needs Health Plan” in the June 17 edition of the Daily Herald. Craig’s main point was that the new health care law incorporates a “Payment Advisory Board” to cut costs of health care, that this amounts to price controls, and that price controls never work.

Ms. Harrop’s main point was that the United States spends about twice as much as its competitor countries on health care and still leaves millions of Americans without any coverage. Modern industrialized countries that provide medical care to all citizens do so at a cost about half of what we pay. This hasn’t changed in 20 years. As a whole, we pay more per capita, but get less, die younger and have sicker children than our developed country competitors.

Perhaps the Payment Advisory Board won’t work. But doing nothing is a recipe for disaster. As presently structured, our medical care “system” burdens our economy, and especially middle class families, with indefensible and unsustainable costs, in return for second-rate public health results. There are generic $4 per month medications that do much the same thing as branded and advertised medications that sell for 10 or 20 times the generic price, and yet the more expensive medications are prescribed without any discussion of price and value with the patient.

There is no price competition for prescription drugs. Go on line and see if you can compare prices for prescription medications on and between the websites of Wal-Mart, Walgreens, CVS, Target. You can’t.

We need health care reform that brings down the cost of our medical care. Without it where will be no Medicare, and indeed no health care system at all. So I would say that while I hear Craig’s criticisms, I am more anxious, even desperate, to hear alternative solutions. In the meantime, I believe the new health care law is our best alternative, by far.

Alfred Y. Kirkland Jr.

Elgin