To the editor:
In last week’s debate with President Obama, Mitt Romney presented his health care plan: let the states do it.
Never mind that the states aren’t doing it. The insurance companies will see to it that they won’t. So we continue to suffer from a terribly wasteful system.
Romney continually spouts his mantra that “competitive” private insurance companies can do it better. The facts prove the opposite.
The overhead expense of private insurance companies is several times higher than Medicare’s, one reason being bloated executive compensation. The head of United Healthcare gets more than one hundred times as much as the president of the United States.
Moreover, the insurance companies take a big profit. Unlike Medicare, they have an incentive not to pay claims and to defer payments they owe.
The English National Health Service was established in 1948.
It was so much better than the alternatives that every other industrialized country except the U. S. followed suit and adopted some form of government plan. Those plans provide better outcomes at far less cost. If we had a national health care plan as cost-effective as that in England, we would save over $1 trillion annually, more than the entire federal deficit, and be healthier as a result.
Romney’s “plan” is much better for the insurance companies and their executives than it is for the average family.
No wonder that they contribute so much to get him elected and to avoid real competition.
MILT LAUENSTIEN
Gloucester and Exeter, N.H.
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