Letter: We need to level playing field when it comes to health care

Saturday, Aug. 1, 1998 | 4:14 a.m.

Kit Costello's commentary on health care (July 28) was well developed, but the call for universal health care seems to be an echo from the past.

Certainly, all Americans do have a basic right to health insurance and/or health care services and the "tinkering" should surely stop -- but how?

An untried solution could be for Congress to enact a real Bill of Rights which empowers all consumers covered or not covered by the present system to negotiate directly with provider systems in their own communities. Individual consumers are usually intimidated by the current complicated system, so a new, simpler and friendlier option needs to be created.

Currently, the combination of federal and state laws, rules and regulations mitigate against local solutions, but empowering consumers to access health care directly than these yet-to-be established community provider systems is worth looking at in order to make health services available universally to consumers.

We need to allow new concepts and ideas into the marketplace and hopefully level the playing field -- to benefit all consumers.

Henry Gothelf