| Health
Care S.O.S.
Regarding "Health Care Crisis
Is Not a Misnomer" [Business, Dec. 1]: For years we've been told to trust
the "free market" to care for our health. But in a system where insurance
companies' profits are more valued than people, the results can be staggering:
41 million men, women and children uninsured, unable to pay for proper
care when faced with an illness. The system doesn't work.
Eli Siegel, the great philosopher
and founder of Aesthetic Realism, was right on target when he stated that
profit-driven health care is unethical because it is based on contempt
for people. Treating patients in terms of how much money can be made from
them is utterly contemptible and totally contradicts what medicine is supposed
to be all about.
If the next Congress wants to
solve this crisis, it should formulate a truly democratic national health
plan in which all citizens are insured. To continue incremental patchwork
plans is tantamount to ensuring that all passengers on the Titanic have
life jackets: It will not save a sinking ship.
Dr. Jaime R. Torres
Roosevelt Island
Editor's Note: The writer
is on the advisory board of the National Hispanic Medical Association. |
