To the Editor:
Re “Health Insurers Profit as Many Postpone Care” (front page, May 14):
How more scathing an indictment could there be of the insurance industry’s commodification of the nation’s health? In a faltering economy, the health insurers have rung up record profits, rewarded shareholders with new dividends and are demanding double-digit premium increases for fear of possible higher costs.
Is health a commodity to be sold for profit, for bonuses and dividends, or is our nation’s health a responsibility of our government? Can we not now, or ever, see the need to replace this needless, costly, money-sucking, claim-denying middleman, this so-called health insurance industry, with a single-payer government-administered system?
HERBERT BENGELSDORF
Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., May 14, 2011
The writer is a retired psychiatrist.
Note from KBJ: Several questions and comments. (1) Would health be less of a commodity if it were provided by the government? Would not those who provide care be paid? (2) What is wrong with profits? They are the reward for risk-taking and the spur of innovation and prosperity. (3) If the government would get out of the health-care and health-insurance business, there would be competition among insurers for customers, which would lower premiums. If the letter writer wants lower premiums, therefore, he should favor a robust and unfettered health-insurance market. (4) Nations don't have health; individuals do. Each individual is responsible for his or her health and nobody else's, unless the responsibility is self-imposed.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 