Letter: Middleman has no place in medical care

Sunday, Oct. 7, 2007 | 7:22 a.m.

Tevi D. Troy, deputy secretary of the ealth and Human Services Department, goes from the ridiculous to the more ridiculous in his Sept. 29 letter by supporting President Bush's plan to give every American family a $15,000 tax break for buying health insurance.

Well, my friend, any family that pays $15,000 in income tax makes enough to buy at least some insurance, anyway. So what is the difference in the government paying for health care directly with taxes targeted for that purpose, a la Medicare, and paying an insurance company to provide that care?

Either way the government is the "single payer," so, in effect, Bush is really plugging for "government-run health care" while seemingly rejecting the idea emphatically. The only difference being that the insurance industry acts as an unnecessary middle man, raising the cost dramatically.

I strongly suggest the president and his followers stop playing this silly game of semantics and replace our patchwork system of "some have health care and some don't" with a much more effective and less costly (yes, less costly as administrative costs under Medicare are much lower than under private insurance) universal single payer system.

This could be done by expanding Medicare to every citizen, regardless of age (of course this would require an expansion of the Medicare tax already being collected from everybody that works and would also cover their families). The tax would still be much less than insurance premiums.

Daniel Olivier, Bullhead City, Ariz.