To the Editor:
I have “socialized” health care and I love it. I’m on Medicare. My doctors probably don’t love it as much as I do because the reimbursement to them isn’t great, but I’m sure they appreciate that I can see them when I need to see them and don’t have to worry about missing meals to do so. (Anyone who knows me knows I don’t miss many meals, but that’s another problem).
I have, in my working life, taken care of children who were on “socialized” insurance, Medicaid, and I liked it. I could treat these children with no worry that they could afford drugs or x-rays or anything else that I thought they needed.
The children of the working poor were another matter. Just paying for an office visit was a stretch. Needless to say, I support to my last breath the cause of government-run health insurance.
It’s not just about money. It will save money for families who work and are at risk of losing everything when disaster strikes. It will save money for businesses, small as well as large. And if losing jobs is worry, at least those who lose their jobs will have medical care when they need it.
And there will, of necessity, be more nurses, technicians, file clerks and others needed to take care of the millions of people that would enter the system. Millions of more ‘patients’ who could then pay for their care. Health care reform is not only necessary, it is practical. We would all, even those like me on “socialized” Medicare, benefit.
Above all, health care reform is a moral issue. We all hate it when the intake person at the doctor’s office asks to see our insurance card before she asks us what is wrong. For those who have no insurance card this must be terrifying. There is a way to cover everyone in the country without breaking the bank. Other nations do it. We are the best, so why aren’t we doing it also?
One way would be to extend children’s health care from birth to eighteen for all children. Call it Kiddicare. Drop the age for Medicare to 50. Call it MiddleMedicare. Pay for these changes with tax dollars. Then offer a public insurance policy that competes with the big guys so that the big guys really have to compete.
And don’t mandate small business to pay for it, but mandate that it be affordable, somehow. We can do it. The only businesses that will suffer from these reforms are the insurance companies. And does anyone feel sorry for a big insurance company?
Carolee Luecken
7123 Menlo
Sherrodsville, OH
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