Which health crisis do we need to fix?

In the Jan. 18 Washington Post, Glenn Kessler expounds on aspects of the health care reform bill that most people don’t seem to get. P.J. Bertrand’s letter in the Daily Herald the same day is based on some of these canards.

Bertrand quotes some statistics from Investor’s Business Daily (which I would find credible when describing the health of health care corporations) which describe, among other laudable numbers, American seniors who needed a hip replacement and received it within six months, at a much higher rate of frequency than Canada or England.

But the comparison is faulty. Do not compare the centrally managed, government-run systems of Canada and England to our American model.

“Obamacare” seeks to expand the private insurance sector, by as many as 30 million Americans currently uninsured. The “government option” to provide competition for private carriers was dropped early in the discussion. Bertrand suggests “statistics will continue to demonstrate how much better health care is than it is in most of the rest of the world.” I suggest they are carefully chosen statistics. When John Boehner made a similar claim in December, he was roundly criticized for such irrational jingoism by both sides of the aisle.

My biggest frustration is that many of those calling for repeal can’t seem to grasp what they are bent on repealing. The legislation tries to make insurance more widely available and more affordable, while reducing deficits and eliminating the industry’s game-playing with pre-existing conditions and fees attached to them, while basically leaving MediCare alone. My kids’ pre-school teacher died in 2008 of breast cancer at 59. She told no one in her family about it, knowing that her meager insurance would leave her survivors thousands in debt, so she sought no care beyond the diagnosis. It is her health care crisis we endeavor to fix.

W. Thomas Evins

Naperville