Single payer plan earns physicians' support

As physicians, we confront the suffering caused by America's health care crisis every day. More than 47 million Americans are uninsured, 500,000 in Wisconsin. At least as many have insurance in name only, with high deductibles, exclusions and restrictions that effectively deny them care
Everyday we see patients who can't fill their prescriptions, afford screening tests or get help to manage their illnesses.
We also know the way out. It is single payer health insurance for every American. Under single payer, the government is the insurer and pays the bills. Single payer would save more than $350 billion per year through lower administrative costs. Choice of doctors and hospitals remains.
As physicians, we could go back to treating patients instead of arguing with insurance companies, whose purpose is profit, not health care.
On behalf of the Linda and Gene Farley Wisconsin Chapter of Physicians for a National Health Care Program, we urge our fellow doctors and citizens to demand consideration of single payer national health insurance.
We ask our Wisconsin congressional delegation to support house bill HR 676 and senate bill S 703 (single payer bills). The time for true health care reform is now.

-- Dr. Laurel Mark, Dr. Rian Podein and Dr. Melissa Stiles, all of Madison

Private insurance needs a viable challenger

In the United States, an estimated 20,000 people die ever year because they don't have health insurance. Rather than discussing this problem, we have been subjected to a campaign of lies and disinformation.
What the debate is really about is who gets to keep the trillions of dollars spent on health care, and for insurance companies the status quo lets them keep the most money.
For decades we've put up with private insurers that:
• Spend up to 40 percent of premiums on paper work and executive salaries instead of health care.
• Refuse to approve procedures that can save a person's life.
• Take away a person's insurance as soon as a costly procedure is required.
• Refuse to insure people because of past illnesses.
• Reject claims the first time they are submitted in the hopes that the insured will give up and pay the bills themselves.
We are told to be afraid of government bureaucrats making health care decisions. I'm much more afraid of insurance company bean counters, who are trying to protect their boss's bonuses, making my health care decisions than I am of any government bureaucrat.
Any health insurance reform must include a government plan to provide an option to the practices of private insurers.

-- John Hallinan, Stoughton

Why pay taxes for others' health care?

People without children pay property taxes to support school systems and benefit from products and services from an educated, internationally competitive workforce.
People without cars pay taxes for transportation infrastructure, allowing delivery of products and services.
We all benefit from an educated workforce, a well-maintained transportation infrastructure and a healthy populace. Healthier Americans means more work productivity, more medical service availability, less cost covering uninsured medical emergencies, more research into curing diseases and less waste treating end stages of preventable diseases.
Our private insurance system fails because their bureaucracies and profits stand between health care providers and us. Our health care system is ranked 37th by the World Health Organization; we're 24th in life expectancy and, tragically, 46th in infant mortality.
This is wrong. It's the moral obligation of a compassionate society to fix it. We must decide whether Americans' health care is as important as schools, libraries, roads, police, or mail delivery, and is essential to our Constitution's mandate to "promote the general welfare."
The conduct of our health insurance companies is unworthy of our loyalty. It's time for a public option.

-- Joseph Rogozinski, Oxford

Change would come if Congress had our plans

Here's a suggestion to the president to help pass universal health care.
Just have members of Congress and their families put in groups, and have private health insurance companies rate the groups and bid on the coverage.
Congress can accept which private company plan they want from all the bids submitted. Each member will then pay 20 percent of the cost and 20 percent of each year's increase.
My bet is that if our representatives had to live like ordinary working Americans, we would have universal coverage before 2010.

-- Allen Knop, Madison

Turn health care over to 'C for C' planners?

Some folks believe that inserting the federal government into Americans' health insurance is a good idea.Look at the government's recent success in administering another hastily assembled initiative - "Cash For Clunkers."
Assuming a $4,000 average credit, this $3 billion program generated a total of 750,000 "claims" during its eight-week lifespan. That pace annualizes to less than five million "claims" over the course of a year, far less than the number of claims the government would have to process when extending health coverage to an estimated 47 million uninsured Americans
So how has the government administered the program? One local dealer sold 250 eligible vehicles during the program but, according to the State Journal, that dealership has received approval on only 17 of those sales to date, and has thus far received actual reimbursement on none.
Yet we are supposed to believe that the same organization that is running Social Security and Medicare into the ground and can't efficiently operate the relatively small-scale "clunkers" initiative, is capable of becoming America's insurer?

-- Greg Thoemke, New Glarus