Letters: How to fix health care, insurance
Winthrop-University Hospital is holding a mini-med school adult education program consisting of five classes on five consecutive Wednesdays beginning next week. Each class centers on parts of the body and how they work. Credit: Bloomberg News
In your editorial "Bleeding us dry" [Nov. 14], you left out a key variable in the formula for more cost-effective health care: the food industry -- specifically, suppliers and restaurants.
Until the excessive amounts of saturated fat, sugar, salt, cholesterol and triglycerides that are contained in our processed food, which are commonly acknowledged to be detrimental to health, are brought under control in the food industry, improved national health and lower heath care costs will be difficult to achieve.
Paul Jacobs, Huntington
Health insurance reform should not have become a partisan debate, in which Republicans arrogantly ask the public whether they're happy with their current coverage as a way to thwart change. Democrats and Republicans in federal government long ago voted themselves the most privileged plan in the country, thereby making it impossible for them to understand or experience what it's like to try to compel a medical insurance company to abide by its coverage benefits.
Single-payer Medicare insurance and a competitive private insurance company landscape would vastly improve the situation. Reforms should include elimination of a higher tier of health insurance for federal elected officials, and tort reform leading to the elimination of malpractice insurance, or at a minimum, a no-fault category of coverage.
The American Medical Association should empower its review infrastructure to oversee practitioners who are incompetent by decertification, reassignment or retraining. Last, every health care facility should operate its expensive modalities 24 hours a day, with healthy young patients being offered off-hour appointments at a reduced out-of-pocket expense and less waiting time.
If everyone participates equitably, we won't have to ration care, and our resources can be maintained at their current, generally high levels of care.
Joseph P. Nolan, Rockville Centre
Editor's note: The writer works for Carestream Health, which sells medical and dental imaging systems.
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