Letters to the Editor is a periodic Kaiser Health News function. KHN welcomes all comments and can publish a range. We edit for size and readability and require full names.
Unsolicited Advice For Corporate Titans
I’m a retired well being care guide who has been concerned in well being care financing and supply since 1973. I learn with eager curiosity how these three titans of Industry are going to extend high quality and cut back prices concurrently with know-how and efficient enterprise techniques (“Expert Advice For The Corporate Titans Taking On Health Care,” Jan. 31). Well, I want them luck. First of all, high quality well being care is about 60 % know-how and 40 % artwork (information). Secondly, expertise reveals you’ll be able to quantify the know-how, however you’ll be able to by no means quantify the artwork. If you make errors, folks die. We can’t now enable computer systems to make life-and-death selections on people. Leave that to the professionals.
— Thomas J. Garvey, Merrick, N.Y.
Big cash for what precisely Alexa? A brand new well being plan, inexpensive, more practical heath care, preventive medication, higher major care, new aproach on illness administration or an ehealth supplier which ends as much as be a onestopshop? #eHealth #BerkshireHathaway #Amazon #JPMorgan https://t.co/oMt3ql5DQj
— Matthias Lehmphul (@zippingcoffee) January 31, 2018
— Matthias Lehmphul, Berlin
We have been disenchanted KHN’s “Expert Advice” didn’t embrace enter from advocates for a single-payer system. So, right here is an open letter to the CEOs of Amazon, JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway.
Dear Messrs. Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and Jamie Dimon:
We agree with you that well being care is among the many biggest points going through society in the present day. Your super sources present a singular alternative to advocate for a well being program to learn all Americans: a common, single-payer system.
Mr. Buffett describes our profit-based well being system as a “tapeworm,” a parasite whose survival relies on its potential to empty vitamins from the host. How did our well being care system attain that sorry state?
Our nation faces a catastrophic failure on two ranges. First, the market has did not ship reasonably priced well being care to those that want it most. More importantly, our elected officers have did not enact the reforms that might treatment well being care’s woes as a result of they’re unwilling to offend large donors from the insurance coverage and pharmaceutical industries. Instead, they’ve nibbled across the edges with incremental reforms just like the Affordable Care Act. The ACA not solely did not kill the tapeworm of profit-based well being care, it fattened it up with authorities subsidies, fueling the dual drivers of well being prices — income and administrative bloat.
Adding another well-intentioned layer to our labyrinthine well being care financing preparations can’t repair them. We should transfer to 1 easy, nonprofit financing system, often called single-payer or “Medicare for all.” Mr. Buffett just lately stated that as a nation “we can afford to do it.” Medicare for all would deliver desperately wanted monetary stability to the lives of on a regular basis Americans, to each unit of presidency, and to companies giant and small.
We urge you to satisfy with coverage specialists who’ve studied this drawback for many years, in addition to the well being care professionals working on the entrance traces. Physicians for a National Health Program is a 22,000-member nonprofit analysis and schooling group that advocates for single-payer well being care. Our “Physicians’ Proposal for Single-Payer Health Care Reform” is a research-based plan for increasing well being protection to all Americans whereas eliminating the waste and profiteering of personal insurance coverage, and the inefficiencies they inflict on medical doctors and hospitals.
— Carol Paris, M.D., president of Physicians for a National Health Program, Chicago
Steering Readers Wrong?
Thank you on your articles and schooling for our senior inhabitants. But your article “No Car, No Care? Medicaid Transportation At Risk In Some States” (Jan. 30) makes it sound as if transportation fraud is rampant. My concern is that individuals learn tales like this, after which make up their minds that as a result of there may be an excessive amount of fraud we should always remove the profit. Someone must strain Medicaid and Medicare to clarify why they don’t seem to be scrutinizing claims or bumping the names as much as the Social Security Death Index. If they did that, they may catch the circumstances through which useless folks’s identities have been getting used.
— Linda Chavez, Claremont, Calif.
Non-emergency transportation has all the time been tough to successfully perform, particularly in rural areas. But waiving the requirement simply establishes one other barrier to care. It will end in fewer folks receiving wanted companies. https://t.co/fWFhNPYfUQ
— ((Sheldon Weisgrau)) (@ACAResource) January 31, 2018
— Sheldon Weisgrau, director of the Health Reform Resource Project, Lawrence, Kan.
Omission On Nuclear Fission Mission
Thanks to Sarah Varney for the article bringing to nationwide consideration the essential challenge of securing a molybdenum-99 medical radioisotope manufacturing facility in Janesville, Wis., and the significance for nationwide safety of getting one within the United States (“Inside The Global Race To Deliver A Vital Radioactive Isotope Used To Detect Cancer,” Jan. 16). The article is complete and well-written, but it surely falls quick by concentrating on one firm. Other viable firms work to provide molly-99 as a commercially viable product. Some work with confirmed applied sciences which have handed FDA approval for different producers. Among them is Coquí RadioPharmaceuticals, whose CEO, Carmen Irene Bigles, is a Puerto Rican girl.
— Carene Raldiris, Miami
Their Siblings’ Keepers
Thank you a lot for the article “Her Sister’s Keeper: Caring For A Sibling With Mental Illness” (Jan. 9). My sister Jody and I grew up 13 months aside with Jody within the lead. Jody had an advanced beginning that led to an absence of oxygen and borderline developmental disabilities. At 30, she was recognized with schizoaffective dysfunction. So a lot in your article rang true for me. I lived Jean’s life as Jody lived Ruby’s. Thank you for highlighting siblings. I’m now in a task to assist household caregivers. So few are the siblings that I personally establish with. Thank you for such an sincere, dignified and loving portrayal.
— Robin Nobling, govt director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Davidson County, Nashville
I simply need to say thanks. I, too, am the guardian for my schizophrenic sister. My life with my sister is and has been similar to what was described within the article by Jenny Gold. After I learn it, it helped me a lot emotionally and gave me energy. I’m not alone.
— Janet Brew, Jacksonville Beach, Fla.
Your article on caring for mentally in poor health siblings nearly 100 % mirrors my life. My brother has schizophrenia. He was extremely good-looking, a star athlete and an impressive educational scholar. He was candy, humorous and sort. His background is so just like Ruby’s in your story. And, selfishly, I really feel robbed. I by no means acquired to have a very good, enjoyable life with my wonderful brother. Of course, he by no means had a life, both. His illness began when he was 19 and a stellar scholar at Penn State (in the present day is his 60th birthday). Please preserve writing these tales. They’re essential.
— Claire Gawinowicz, Oreland, Pa.
A Jaw Drop On Dropping Coverage For Hoosiers
This Twitter consumer weighs in on Kaiser Health News’ Feb. 1 story “Indiana Medicaid Drops 25K From Coverage For Failing To Pay Premiums.”
Health is a human proper. No one ought to lose entry to take care of incapacity to pay. Especially these with the least. https://t.co/7W02na8D67
— Erin Gilmer (@GilmerHealthLegislation) February 2, 2018
— Erin Gilmer, lawyer and well being and affected person coverage advocate, Denver
Words Ring Harshly
In the story “When Nursing Homes Push Out Poor And Disabled Patients” (Dec. 20), I discover the time period “wheelchair-bound” offensive. Wheelchairs liberate folks. They allow folks to maneuver extra freely of their surroundings. The label “wheelchair-bound” makes these folks sound extra dependent or helpless. Thank you.
— Liz Pazdral, govt director of the State Independent Living Council, Sacramento, Calif.
Three-D Vs. 2-D Mammograms? No Contest
In response to your article “When You Need A Breast Screening, Should You Get A 3-D Mammogram?” (Jan. 16), the science-based reply is “yes.” Studies involving over lots of of hundreds of examinations have all proven that Digital Breast Tomosynthesis — Three-D breast most cancers screening — finds cancers that aren’t evident on 2-D mammography. One of the newer evaluated nearly a half-million examinations and confirmed a serious improve in most cancers detection.
The loss of life fee from breast most cancers had been unchanged for at the very least 40 years previous to the beginning of mammography screening within the U.S. within the mid-1980s. Soon after, in 1990, the loss of life fee started to fall. It continued to fall as increasingly more ladies participated in screening and as we have now improved our potential to search out breast cancers earlier in order that in the present day there are nearly 40% fewer ladies dying of breast most cancers every year than would have had screening not been instituted.
DBT detects 20-40 % extra cancers than typical Full Field Digital Mammography, and reduces the recall fee (ladies referred to as again from screening for added analysis) by 10-40 %. These are main enhancements and needs to be accessible to all ladies.
— Daniel B. Kopans, M.D., professor of radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston
[Editor’s word: Dr. Kopans was a part of the staff that secured the first patent for digital breast tomosynthesis in 1999.]
Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a nationwide well being coverage information service. It is an editorially unbiased program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which isn’t affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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