Letters to the editor, 09/27/06

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Medicare for all would work only with priority changes

Ironically, on the same day I read Dr. Bill Wood's commentary "Medicare for All" (Sept. 13 Midweek Perspectives), I received a copy of Surgery News with the headline "CMS [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] Proposes 5.1 Percent Physician Pay Cut for 2007."

As much as I agree with Dr. Wood's assessment of our current medical system, powered by insurance giants making huge profits from our work and our patients' premiums, I hesitate supporting a public single-payer system that will continue to cut physician reimbursement.

Currently, physicians cannot afford to accept new Medicare patients -- how will it be if all patients were covered by government insurance? It would drive many physicians out of practice.

Likely, this system works well in other countries because other governments actually make health care and education a priority.

We have an administration and a Congress that are more willing to use taxpayer money for funding large, flat-screen TVs for Halliburton employees in Iraq to watch the Super Bowl than fund me to order a CT scan on my patient for abdominal pain or perform a physical and a skin biopsy on my elderly patient at the same visit.

Before I can support Dr. Wood's proposal, I have to see some big changes in our government priorities. As an American people, if we really want quality health care for all, then we must go to the polls and prove it.

VERONICA SANTEE, M.D.
West View

Not the answer

One of the main flaws in Dr. Bill Wood's piece calling for "Medicare for All" can be found in the same day's paper on Page A-6. There, in a story from The Washington Post, we hear once again that Medicare is running out of money and raising premiums ("Medicare Premiums Rise 5.6 Percent for Most," Sept. 13). The same article tells us that healthy seniors are expected to start opting out of Medicare, leaving behind only the sickest/poorest and further raising the program's costs. It doesn't begin to get into other problems, such as the fact that thousands of doctors are likely to stop accepting Medicare in the next few years as Medicare payments drop by more than 20 percent.

"Medicare for All" is a terrible idea when the Medicare we have now is falling apart. This past year, I served as one of many national spokespeople for Cover the Uninsured Week, and I agree with Dr. Wood that we face a crisis in American health care. We do need a new system, but a single-payer "solution" would leave us sicker and worse off than we are now. We'd replace uncaring, unresponsive health insurers with uncaring, unresponsive government agencies.

There are better options, ways that force insurers to actually serve patients and keep us healthy in order to earn our precious health-care dollars. Those solutions are more complicated, but that's the choice we have -- between a solution that's complex and will work and the single-payer idea that's simple but wrong.

ALIK WIDGE
Squirrel Hill

The writer is a University of Pittsburgh medical student.