Profit motive in healthcare is sick

Re “A booster shot for insurers,” June 7

I have some questions for the health insurance companies pushing a mandate:

I’m apparently uninsurable, according to your own underwriting standards.

Will you cover me? Will you cover my preexisting conditions? Will you be as expensive or more expensive than COBRA or California’s high-risk pool?

What will be my options as my divorce at this later stage of my life becomes final?

Will I make too much money to qualify for assistance, or will I make too little to afford it in the first place, because I’m self-employed and my income in this economy is so uneven?

You’ll have to excuse me if the government-run plan looks more attractive than yours. You’re in the business of not paying for my medical needs, and you always have been. But you’ve been very good about collecting my money.

Theresa Mesa

Redlands

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As we blindly insist on choice, what a lousy choice we are making.

Misleading advertisements scare people with the line, “I don’t want the government standing between me and my doctor.” Medicare is light-years better than nothing, and guess what, we’ve already got corporate profit-mongers standing between us and our doctors anyway.

As long as we let the greedy manage the care of our sick and injured, they will bleed us dry.

We need to view healthcare as a vital public service and remove the exploitation from the system. Corporate capitalism has no room for humanity but always seems to generate huge bonuses.

I realize we can’t separate profit from injury and illness entirely, but we must attempt to civilize the system.

Eric Anderson

Delevan, N.Y.

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Our medical-care delivery system is afflicted with cancer. When you have a patient with this condition, one needs to take the best, drastic measures to fix it.

Those responsible for the waste, the inefficacy and who benefit by denying access to the needy while pocketing billions have no place in the operating room.

As your article points out, insurance companies are now seeking taxpayer subsidies to solve their impending financial crisis.

Your reporter should have put more emphasis on the only viable, proven treatment modality -- the single-payer system. It will cut administrative costs, it will share risk by including the healthier among us in the system and will be able to exert an unprecedented bargaining power. The time for reform is now.

David S. Cantor

Los Angeles

The writer is a member of Physicians for a National Health Program.

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I can’t think of a worse fate than entrusting my health to the health insurance industry.

Linda Mele Johnson

Long Beach

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The insurance companies require profits, and they serve the shareholders, not the public. That is why healthcare is unaffordable. We should not add the burden of nonproductive profit-making to the cost of healthcare.

Nicolas Sanburg

Monrovia

So former insurance company executive Robert Laszewski says:

“They are interested in 45 million new customers, but the first thing in everybody’s mind is preserving their right to do business in a way that can be profitable and meets shareholder needs.”

This statement crystallizes the major flaw in our current health insurance system -- that these companies are publicly held corporations whose primary responsibility is to their shareholders and not to the patients they insure.

Appropriate care of patients, including and especially preventive care, should be paramount.

D. Van Horn

Irvine

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Your article pointing out that mandating health insurance will result in a windfall for the insurance industry was excellent.

But the view that a single-payer system is “politically unfeasible” is a result of insurance and pharmaceutical dollars flowing to our representatives.

That is the reason why it has been “taken off the table.”

Journalists should be following the money and informing the public what “single payer” means (healthcare for all) and does not mean (a government takeover of healthcare).

Carol Watson

Los Angeles

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The reason so many people are fed up with the current structure of the health insurance industry can be found in your article -- that industry executives focus on the right to do profitable business, not the needs of patients/customers.

Bob Sparkman

Winnetka