Letter: Another way to address health care

Monday, Oct. 16, 2006 | 7:28 a.m.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial on the rising costs of health insurance, reprinted in Friday's Las Vegas Sun, laments that insurance costs rose 7.7 percent last year, more than twice the rate of inflation.

Later the editorial points out that health care is predicated on continuing development of new pharmaceuticals, medical devices and diagnostic equipment. How do they expect to pay for these improvements which result in better health care?

Of the 46.6 million uninsured Americans discussed in the editorial, half of them are mainly younger people who elect (gamble) not to have coverage. The other half are about equally split between people between jobs, who elect not to have COBA coverage, and the truly needy who cannot afford the cost.

Rather than change the system for health care in this country, it would be better to expand Medicaid to cover the less than 8 percent of the population who cannot afford insurance coverage.

Henry Schmid, Las Vegas

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