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Reform Pricey Health Care

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 15, 2009

Regarding "Health Coverage For All" (Letters, March 13):

Horse feathers. Linda Miller would seem to be a shill for the bloated health insurance industry. Shades of "Harry and Louise." Most Americans now fully understand that our health care delivery system is too expensive, too complex, too fragmented and overwhelmingly frustrating. Although some still believe that America has the best health care in the world, the truth is that our reimbursement system is killing us.

Any universal health care plan would replace private coverage and would almost certainly cost the individual taxpayer less. A great deal less. Most of your exorbitant premiums, if you are "lucky" enough to have coverage - some of us can't get coverage at any price - goes to support advertising and marketing as well as a huge bureaucracy whose sole purpose is to find lawsuit-proof ways to deny claims. Not to mention lavish bonuses for the executives.
Linda Miller dutifully trots out the "socialized medicine" canard. No one is proposing "socialized medicine," even though the U.S already has a system of "socialized medicine" in place: the armed forces and the VA, where doctors are employed directly by the government. The reform most of us are hoping for is "socialized insurance" based on the Medicare model. That's right: the United States already does that too. Medicare pays for services from private practitioners using public money.

ROBERT TROUT

Riverview

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