Letters to the Editor: Paying consumers directly won’t fix our health care market

To the editor: Guest contributor Kim Lin Nguyen debunks a tired and completely unreliable liberal solution to our health care funding crisis, arguing that paying consumers directly instead of private insurance would magically “empower” them to “make their own health care choices and use their own benefits” (“Insurance subsidies only promote unemployment. Empower consumers instead.” November 20). It assumes that healthcare operates as an ideal free market and that consumers and patients know the product they are buying when in fact the opposite is true.

Does a patient with chest pain that could be a heart attack really have time to study and decide which ambulance service and emergency room to go to cost-wise? The same can be said for any major medical problem. And the amount of money paid directly to consumers will never cover the cost of care.

What is needed is what every other high-income country is doing, which brings better results and lower costs than the United States: a universally unified system of public insurance, perhaps “medicine for all.”

Nguyen also argues that “we don’t need to address the systemic deficits of our health care system.” But it is what is needed to finance our system to facilitate the transition to a public non-profit insurance system, similar to the “managed reduction” of our dependence on fossil fuels.

Steve Torzynski, Santa Monica
This author is the former president of the California Physicians Alliance, a nonprofit advocacy group.

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To the editor: The author suggests that paying people directly would allow them to purchase their own health insurance plans or pay directly for health care. The problem is, how much insurance can $2,000 (or however much is allocated) buy? Or, if paying for health care directly, what happens if you need surgery or another hospitalization? None of these solutions are real answers.

What insurance companies don’t want Americans to know is that the best (and only) solution is single-payer health care. Ironically, 32 of the 33 industrialized countries have been able to make universal health care work (the US is the only country that still relies on insurance companies).

So let’s find the real answer. Get the middleman out of the way. See how Europe is doing it and making it better for Americans. We will also save money.

Rich Baron, Cathedral City

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To the editor: Nguyen’s op-ed was interesting and got me thinking. Unfortunately, there are no facts or studies to support the idea. The suggestions seem like good ideas, but is there any evidence or experience of them working anywhere?

I also note that the whole idea is based on transparent pricing for medical services. That alone would be a major development — one that providers would fight tooth and nail against. Let’s see that happen, and then we can talk about empowering people to make informed choices.

Michael Snr, San Diego

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To the editor: When one of Dr. Nguyen’s patients needs coronary bypass surgery and the patient tells him they only have $1,500 in their health savings account, will he tell them to “come back and see me after you get the bank loan to cover the rest of the cost”?

June Elaine Sewell, Marina del Rey