For all the sound and fury generated by America’s debate of health care, it is amazing how murky the basic facts have become.
The two pieces in the Sunday Telegram of Feb. 6 titled “Health or wealth?” and “Getting medical help boils down to justice” are welcome efforts to cut through the smoke and mirrors.
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What all Americans should appreciate about the health systems of other developed nations — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and Switzerland — are two facts. The first is that their systems are all based on the concept of universal health care.
That is, everyone is entitled to health care, not just those who can pay for it, as in our country. Because of this universal approach, their health system costs average less than half the U.S. cost of 17 percent of GDP.
The second fact is that a universal health care system not only ensures that all may see a doctor but that they see their doctors more frequently and to greater benefit than persons in this country. The benefits show up in lower infant mortality, a better overall quality of life and a longer life span.
Contrary to the impression that some opponents of universal health care have attempted to create, this is not “socialized” medicine — most use private doctors, private hospitals and even private insurance companies — but effective medicine.
Frazier Meade
Newcastle
In the Feb. 6 commentary titled “Health or wealth?” it was suggested that all the bad things of our present health care system are due to private insurance companies and their greed.
As a practicing physician for the past 27 years both here in Maine and in Massachusetts, I can attest to the fact that dealing with the government/state health insurance programs — Medicare and Medicaid — has been extremely onerous. The hoops both provider and patient have to jump through were many, the denials and nonpayment for care frequent, and the payment for services poor at best.
On the other hand, dealing with the commercial insurers seemed a breath of fresh air when compared to dealing with the government.
And now we are being asked to go with a single-payer government health system, maybe like the one in Canada, where the wait time for many diagnostic and surgical procedures takes months when compared to similar cases here in this country.
Maybe that’s why Canadians come to this country for their care. I don’t see anyone in this country doing the reverse.
There are a number of countries using socialized medicine where there is a two-tiered system. Those who can afford it go outside of the government and have their own private commercial system for obvious reasons, similar to what the unions will be able to do once Obamacare in enacted.
In countries where socialized medicine is used, folks in their 80s with ruptured aortic aneurysms are not operated on as they would be in this country, because the cost of caring for these patients is so high and the results so poor.
As for the soaring cost of medical care, it has more to do with technologic advancements and demands of the populace than with paying the rare CEOs of private insurers obscene amounts of money. Most of these companies are barely able to eke out a 5 percent profit.
In this state, for those without commercial or government health insurance, there is health care insurance specifically for them. It’s called “Care Partners” under the direction of MaineHealth.
Care Partners provides a sliding-scale payment system depending on one’s income, and hospitals and providers around Maine have signed on to provide them care. All one needs to do, however, is to try and stay as healthy as possible to avoid excessive out-of-pocket costs, and that’s the rub!
No one wants to talk about people taking responsibility for their own health. It seems to me that we are being asked to throw all of our tax dollars into a single-payer system for those who eat and drink to excess, who don’t keep their diabetes and hypertension in check, and who smoke and participate in other risky behavior.
Isn’t it time we all started to take better care of ourselves, and then maybe the cost of medical care will start to diminish?
We providers have been and will continue to be there for those who need our help with these and other medical problems whether they have insurance or not, as we have always done in the past.
Mark Aranson, M.D., FACS
Cumberland
Fox Islands Wind shows how technology works
Anti-wind activists, most recently on display at Mountaintop Industrial Wind Legislative Summit, represent a small, fringe minority that is aiming to hijack an attainable future in Maine of clean, affordable energy, significant job growth and the great prospect for Mainers to control their energy destiny.
Wind generation is part of the solution for both our energy and environmental needs, and how we can strengthen the Maine economy. By producing significant amounts of clean, renewable power, we will both create jobs and reduce our dependence on domestic and foreign fossil fuels.
Do we want to continue to import dirty, expensive power? Today, coal contributes roughly two-thirds of the nation’s carbon emissions, producing over 2.5 billion tons every year. Coal accounts for more than 50 percent of the U.S. electricity supply.
We need to do better than that if we want to stay competitive. We must make sure our policies invest in a future that will bring prosperity and jobs to our state. Wind power does that.
Come out to the Fox Islands and see for yourself how well-designed wind projects are positively impacting our communities. Fox Islands Wind is supported by more than 98 percent of the residents of both islands and is a community-owned model that benefits and helps sustain the year-round working population. This model could work for your community, too.
A future of wind generation in Maine is commonsense. It will keep money in our communities and jobs here at home in our state.
Adam Lachman
Friends of Fox Islands Wind
Vinalhaven
Reviewer says art ‘arrogant,’ but it’s his review that is
Daniel Kany’s intellectual exploration of the Rackstraw Downes exhibit at the Portland Museum of Art, which runs through March 20, is intelligent, but opinionated.
Kany states in the Sunday Telegram of Feb. 6, “I do not like the Downes exhibit because the artist seems more concerned with proving he is an important painter than making good paintings.”
One can like or dislike Downes’ style, but no one can detect whether the artist is trying to prove anything. That is an assumption. Downes is a nationally well-known artist. He does not have to prove anything. One can either like or dislike Downes’ style, but to assume the artist is trying to prove something is an assumption that tinges on snobbery.
Kany states that Downes’ work is “arrogant.” How can anyone detect “arrogance” in a painting? That is a “perception” only of Kany the writer, an inaccurate value judgment.
Downes’ work is precise and disciplined, not intellectually arrogant. It is the reviewer who is intellectually arrogant, not a work of art.
There are other professional arts writers in the state. I am one. I loved the Rackstraw Downes exhibit at the PMA and invite everyone to see it again. I did not find anything arrogant in it.
Pat Davidson Reef
Falmouth
Whole whoopie pie debate was no treat for taxpayers
OK, is the great whoopie pie debate to be the state of Maine’s official state treat/dessert the reason we send elected state representatives to Augusta?
Come on folks — move on to something more relevant and stop wasting our hard-earned tax dollars on something so trivial!
Dennis Ouellette
Saco
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