Health Care

October 24, 2000|By Jan Channon.

DEERFIELD — As an employee of the health-care industry for the past 20 years, your Bush-Gore analysis on health care frankly made my blood boil (Editorial, Oct. 15). Efforts to control rising health-care costs date back to the late 1970s. Since then, most of the major initiatives have encouraged competition in the health-care industry. These efforts have been unsuccessful and have only led to a downward spiral in our health-care delivery system.
Consider these issues. Our health-care system suffers from significant morale problems among physicians and health-care workers, many of whom are looking for ways to leave the industry. Recruitment of health-care workers is at an all-time low with no hope in sight. Disturbingly low staffing levels within hospitals and other health-care provider organizations have created serious quality-of-care issues. Medicare HMOs sign up the elderly by the droves with the enticement of low premiums, only to drop them later when the financials become less desirable for these "competing" companies.

Competition may be productive for other industries, but it has not worked in health care. It seems to me that Bush's "new" era of price competition is the old story: Let's tear apart our current health-care system piece by piece.
This country can afford to provide quality health care to our citizens. We simply need to make it our priority. It's about time we recognized that quality health care will cost money just as quality education costs money. Instead of containing costs, we need to dig deep into our national pockets and pay for it.